I am outraged after reading this. First, the approach that was taken (multiple layers of theory of mind) opposed the main topic, love. How the fuck do you expect to talk about love if you don't even have the balls to honor it enough at a close degree. Why the hell am I, as the reader, supposed to believe what comes from the grapevine; Plato and his crew were sketchy mother fuckers. The second and third issue I had with this piece of literature are more pertinent to culture and how the academic world ran with this. Love was conversed about while everyone was DRUNK; other than lowered inhibitions, drunk people don't really come up with the most coherent ideas. Yes, some of the definitions and concepts presented are very applicable into a larger context, but academics forget that this was a prototype conversation about love. How can so many people blindly follow this shit religiously? Are you really that emotionally unaware? Yes, the conversations were somewhat elegant, but why the fuck do you take it for fact and allow this to influence so much of our cultural systems now? I don't understand why people have taken this as one of the last needed steps towards making sense of love. It's ludicrous! People should begin to realize that this is a very small starting point. There should be an expansion in the terms of affection to aid humanity in being able to describe the level of their emotional attachment. By accepting the Symposium as a done deal, you have limited your emotional understanding of the very complex realms of your self. In English there are very few words to describe the level of affection one has towards another (like, admire, yearn, lust, and love); it's no wonder people in our following generations have so much fucking trouble understanding why breakups hurt so fucking god damn always. People do not understand the depth or the magnitude of their emotions, and it is evident in the limited language that we have to be able to admit it. I have even found myself using stupid made up shit like, "I like like you." What the fuck is that? If you expand the language, you will more likely be able to help people understand their emotions, and therefore help them manage their emotions. Furthermore, isn't it convenient that, like in the use of the bible, people pick and chose the parts of the symposium that they want to talk about. The text was about half-naked, drunk men getting together to talk about love; that's pretty gay if you ask me (I'm using gay with the proper definition of a man who has emotional, physical, and spiritual attraction to the same sex). Then they go on to talk about gay relationships (I won't tell between who for those of you who haven't read this), and they even talk about a story in which that was an accepted norm. It's ridiculous that people use this text to bestow their wishful desires onto themselves, and yet they ignore an entire part of the community just because of cultural context. Why aren't the fucking academics advocating for gay marriage with this literature? Why is society favoring a couple of lines in the bible that are fallaciously revamped out of historical context in order to oppress people of non-heterosexual identity? I write this review in hopes that others begin to reflect on what the fuck they pick and choose; people deserve to know MORE about love. The Symposium was a cute start; now, let's get the party going a bit more. I think its long over due.