Plato's Symposium

"Plato's Symposium"

Kaboom, that was the sound of Zeus's thunder crashing towards the Earth. During this time period the people in Greece believed in these gods. Also happening at the same time period was when the worlds most famous philosophers began to come out and teach. Most importantly the philosophers did what they were suppose to, and that was to question the world around them. One of the most famous philosophers in the Greek period around 416 B.C. was a man named Socrates. Socrates was student of the Diotima which taught him things about love, ignorance, wisdom and right opinion, which he rehearses to the people attending the dinner of Agathon's.
We will first start by analyzing what Diotima has said about the four cognitive functions,
Socrates ask Diotima who was his father and who was his mother? Diotima goes on to explain that it's a long story but she'll tell him anyway. She starts by saying "When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a feast, among them Plenty, The son of Neverataloss. When they had dined, Poverty came in begging, as might be expected with all that good cheer, and hung about the doors. Plenty then got drunk on the nectar—for there was no wine yet--and went into Zeus's park all heavy and fell asleep. So Poverty because of her penury made a plan to have a child from Plenty, and lay by his side and conceived Love. This is why Love has become follower and servant of Aphrodite, having been begotten at her birthday party, and at the same time he is by nature a lover busy with beauty because Aphrodite is beautiful. Then since Love is the son of Plenty and Poverty he gets his fortunes from them. First, he is always poor; and for from being tender and beautiful, as most people think, he is hard and rough and unshod and homeless, lying always on the ground without bedding, sleeping by the doors and in the streets in the open air, having his mother's nature, always dwelling with want. But from his father again he has designs upon beautiful and good things, being brave and go-ahead and high-strung, a mighty hunter, always weaving devices, and a successful coveter of wisdom, a philosopher all his days, a great wizard and sorcerer and sophist. He was born
First, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only out of that he should find fair thoughts; and soon he will find that beauty of one form is similar to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of common is what he is looking for, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same. And when he sees this he will lessen his violent love of the one, which he will feel contempt for and think a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a morally good soul have but a little good looking, he will be satisfied to love and take care of him, and will look out and bring to the origin thoughts which may better the young, until he is forced to consider thoughtfully and notice the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of all of them is from a single family, and that personal beauty is of little value; and after laws and institutions he will continue on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, a slave bitter and narrow minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and