Similarities Between Symposium And Meno

In Plato’s dialogues the symposium and Meno, both focus on the role of forms and through them the importance of how humans attain knowledge. However even though their goals are similar towards the attainment of knowledge, both arguments in the end are different to one another, when defining the role of forms. In this paper I will analyze both dialogues in their argument to the role of forms, and refute why the two dialogues are incompatible with one another, nevertheless shedding light on connecting ideas that make them share somewhat similar thoughts. Ultimately In doing so this essay will argue why the Meno and Symposium are not compatible with their idea of forms, even though both present strong premises towards defining it.
In the second
In order to attain the eternal form of beauty/goods is through the procedure of ascent. The first step is starting with the devotional love for a single physical body then learning to love the ‘soul and entire essence’ of this physical being, doing this for the purpose of happiness. After loving a single body/soul, the individual ought to learn to love all the bodies of what is beautiful and good (then loving the soul of all of them). reason for this is if the body is good and beautiful we want to ensure that it is kept forever; to make this ‘love’ everlasting one must birth more ‘bodies’ from this to ensure that this love will be immortal. Moving away from the literal focus of what plato’s dialogue speaks of and the metaphorical sense; Plato is speaking about loving a category of knowledge, putting self-devotion into it this thought and creating more ideas from it, and then give birth to it, making it your legacy. An example Socrates’ (Plato) uses is how Homer left his epics, or how political leaders greatly affected their cities making their name remembered either positively or negatively, making their idea (legacy) of them immortal. However, we should love all knowledge, rather a specific
The symposium defines the forms as the beauty and good in the physical world, as well as the attempt to explain what the realm of forms is, and why it is important to philosophers as the lovers of wisdom; whereas the Meno defines the forms through the concept of recollection where the soul attains its knowledge of eternal truths from the realm of forms; this is where the realm of forms is introduced, and the importance of epistemology in how humans can know anything at all. This is where holding point between the two dialogues hold its tension between one another, because they are indeed holding an argument towards explaining the realm of forms, but the examples of birthing compared to recollecting the forms is what makes them incompatible. The symposium is having the ability to find the good in any type of knowledge, build upon them and make them into a reality; the idea of immortality is not through the soul, yet it is through ‘the legacy of knowledge,’ for when the mortal dies their legacy is preserved and that is what makes the individuals themselves immortal. All individuals as Plato puts it, are pregnant in the soul and body and desire a way to birth this beauty/good into the world; this speaking as a metaphor too birthing new idea/legacies, and it would definitely be a painful process, and difficult because it would need to be cared as a