Philosophizing about love is a tempting endeavor. Enthusiasts and romantics feel addressed, while experts in aesthetics are challenged to engage in subtle considerations of form. However, they are not the intended audience, not in the sense of Plato's "Symposium." When love is philosophized here, it quickly becomes clear that it brings to light something that allows neither sentimentality nor moralizing: Eros is a cipher for the chosen relationship to the world. Philosophical Eros is the awareness of one's own needs and thus a love for truth; sophistic Eros is a misunderstanding of one's own needs and therefore a love for the self. The speeches delivered in the "Symposium" in praise of Eros clearly demonstrate that love can mean the search for truth or self-absorption, transcendence or lack of transcendence. And that Socratic Eros is self-giving.