In Plato’s symposium, the characters all give their own praise of the god of Love, and each has their own unique viewpoint. Phaedrus believes that Love is an old god who promotes virtue in people, whereas Pausanias believes that Love is two gods, Common Love and Heavenly Love who are both objects of simple and sexual desire, respectively. The entire night is spent drinking and discussing what Love really is, ending with Alcibiades trying to seduce Socrates but never succeeding. Socrates claims he cannot be seduced because he is more focused on finding wisdom, which is also the reason that after drinking all night he is neither drunk nor hung over. All of the men focused on what love is and drank all night to enjoy themselves, and in the process forgot that their own wisdom could help them to find what makes them happy and help them to discover their good life. In pursuing love as the answer to their good life, Socrates’ friends lost their wisdom and passed out drunk while Socrates was sharing his wisdom with them. Because of this, the guests at the dinner party missed out on valuable advice for life and finding their good…
“Love is the desire to have the good forever.†Diotima continues with saying that “every type of desire for good things or happiness is what constitutes ‘powerful and treacherous love’â€Â. Diotima describes love as something that can be obtained through enthusiasm when it is only directed at one thing at a time. However, she also describes love as a longing for immortality, in that the closest mortals can come to being permanently alive and immortal is through reproduction. She believes that everyone goes through this cycle, in which the desire of good things leads us on a journey to discover love and to continue our love by reproducing.…
3. What points does Socrates make about the nature of love in his conversation with Agathon?…
Socrates is known as the lover of wisdom and the lover of beauty. His speech is a response to Agathon who comically states that love is beautiful and young, the opposite of Socrates. Socrates inquires is love considered to be a love of something or of nothing? He compares that to how a father is a father to his children and a brother is a brother to his siblings. Socrates expresses that love’s desire suggests that one does not own what he or she loves. Socrates further explains this by giving the example of a healthy man having the desire to remain healthy. One’s desire for things is for the future. The desire rests in the preservation and not the lack thereof. This statement of love being a love of something shows that there is a connection…
The word Love is a strange feeling that can be one of the most exciting things someone will ever experience. It’s a feeling of warm, personal deep affection that one has for another person or thing. In Helen Farries poem “Magic of Love” she is very straightforward about how love makes someone feel “It can comfort and bless/ it can bring happiness” (601). But in John Frederick Nim’s poem “Love Poem” he uses metaphors to talk about love and you have to pay close attention to what he is saying. The theme of these two poems is love and the opposing views of the author’s views of love.…
Throughout the course of the speech, Socrates describes love based upon an interaction with a woman named Diotima. After explaining to Socrates that good and bad and beautiful and ugly are more of a grey concept as opposed to a clear cut concept, she tells Socrates that love is a “great spirit” whose purpose is to fill the unknown space between humans and gods. Diotima then tells Socrates of the origin of Love, following Aphrodite’s birth, and how it relates to Love’s parents, the Penia, the embodiment of poverty, and Poros, the cunning and beautiful son of Metis. Additionally, she explains love as a cycle of continuous birth and death. She explains to Socrates that love is neither wise, nor ignorant which further illustrates her claim of love’s equivocalness.…
Truly, love takes on many different forms. Love, for many centuries, has been given many different names. It also serves different functions. To distinguish a specific type of love, one of them is called eros. How love as eros can be defined is based upon the utilization of a specific writer’s perspective. Numerous published written works may account for the definition of eros. In this Essay, Plato’s perception of love as eros will be described. Furthermore, how and why Socrates, of “The Apology” by Plato, embodies Plato’s definition of eros will be shown. This embodiment will be based off Plato’s eros as poor being, eros as an intermediary between God and men, and eros as resemblance of the “god of Plenty”, eros’ father (Needleman 15 – 17).…
In the Symposium, a most interesting view on love and soul mates are provided by one of the characters, Aristophanes. In the speech of Aristophanes, he says that there is basically a type of love that connects people. Aristophanes begins his description of love by telling the tale of how love began. He presents the tale of three sexes: male, female, and a combination of both. These three distinct sexes represented one's soul. These souls split in half, creating a mirror image of each one of them. Aristophanes describes love as the search for the other half of your soul in this quote: "When a man's natural form was split in two, each half went round looking for its other half. They put their arms around one another, and embraced each other, in their desire to grow together again. Aristophanes theme is the power of Eros and how not to abuse it.…
He boasts that he is more capable of developing a better speech along the same basic theme with the addition of his own concepts. In his second speech Socrates proposes to tell the truth about love. Socrates still agrees that one should choose the non-lover over the lover; however he proceeds to raise his own valid points that refute Lysias' opinion. Socrates first distinguishes the differences between the lover and the non-lover. He goes on to say that in every human there are two principles of a better and a worse, also known as reason and desire. These principles lead up to the overall master power of love. Socrates then discusses the conflict of the pursuit to find pleasure versus the good. Nevertheless, he retreats back to the idea that love is a god or divine presence that therefore cannot be evil. Socrates claims that love is the gift of the gods, a heaven-sent form of madness or possession. This idea of madness is one of the prevailing and central themes that Socrates focuses on in his speech. He claims that this madness will bring the greatest blessings and is one of the most necessary aspects of life. Socrates speaks of how madness leads to love and if you choose the lover over the non-lover then you will be more at a disadvantage. He goes so far as to divide his madness into four different kinds. First there is…
The Symposium by Plato revolves around the subject matter of love. Plato writes about seven different views on love. All of the different views come from the speakers that attended the symposium in honor of Agathon. Eryximachus suggests that each guest should make a speech in admiration of the g-d of Love. The most irrational view on love is provided by Aristophanes' speech.…
Love is a good topic to talk about. Today, if people were to sit down and talk about it, it would most likely consist of talking about how to treat the other person you love, whether it is romantically or loving your friends and family. However, in the case of the Symposium, the men in this conversation took the topic more in depth than I could have imagined. I believe that Aristophanes had a very interesting opinion on love. I feel like although his argument is quite odd, it does bring up a good point that does connect to an expression that people use today.…
In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis, a Christian, defines four types of love: agapé, the love from God, storgé, the love from familiarity and family, eros, romantic love, and philia, the love of friendship. There is no definite answer to the question of which of Lewis’s four loves is the strongest; it varies with time, place, and culture. But by looking at the type of love a…
He introduces love as a broader term; it is what makes a person happy, and therefore one only desires good things. According to Diotima, Love is a spirit that mediates between man and gods and is therefore not a god. He argues that an ascetic life with passion for wisdom and beauty is the true Love. By saying this, Plato is rejecting the act of sexual love. This argument is in harmony with a philosopher's pursuit of truth. The ultimate goal is to live a pure life so that afterlife goes as smoothly as possible. The body is in the way, trying to disturb this process. Therefore, he concludes, the philosopher's search for wisdom is the most valuable of all…
Plato’s Symposium consists of a series of speakers who speaks about Love. Each one of the speakers has their own views when it comes to the topic of love. The speakers dealt with many questions relating to the topic. For example, they talked about what love was. They also talked about the purpose and relationship through love.…
In the introduction, love is personified, capitalized, and given the pronoun he: “. . . Love is more inclined to take up his abode in a gay palace and a dainty bedchamber than in a wretched hovel. . . “ (274). This assumes that Love is a male, and because the Decameron is written for “women in love”, a woman may only experience love through a man. This also suggests that Love is a physical force as opposed to metaphysical: without a physical man, a woman is Love-less.…