Desire In The Symposium

The author Stephen Mitchell reflects on a scripture titled “Bhagavad Gita”. This scripture is a new translation based on ancient Hinduism. Throughout the scripture, it explains the teachings that can be used in an everyday life situation. Its diverse audience can learn how to face different dilemmas, and how to live in this world with happiness and peace by doings ones’ duties. It also helps the audience understand the true purpose of life. For those who go through the encounters of life educating themselves with perfection, knowledge, and intelligence, they are considered God dearest devotees. Overall, the scripture assures that God will respond to his devotees with love. Its teachings focus on those who are suffering and

* As the prince asked Lord Krishna on whether he should kill for the war, Krishna used the arguments above and more to show that there would be transcendence and so on, and when a person is “killed”, his or her spirit would just throws away its worn-out body and enters a new one.

This contrasts both Phaedrus’ and Aristophanes’ descriptions of love. She broadly states that “a lover does not seek the half or whole” unless it is “good” because people will even amputate, or separate, part of their own body if diseased (Sym. 205E). Aristophanes argues “love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness” but Diotima explains this cannot be true if the other half is bad, even if it seems to bring wholeness, such as bodies with a temporary veneer of beauty (Sym. 192E). So, love must be explained by separating it to an upwards trajectory, rising towards the concept of good. Otherwise love is only an impermanent “promise” (Sym. 193D). Therefore, Aristophanes’ lack of separation from the concrete cause love to come from incompleteness and a fallen condition (Dutton Lecture). Likewise, Phaedrus’ speech lacks a removal from the present and therefore fails to explain love’s effects, as seen in his Achilles and Patroclus example. To Phaedrus, Achilles still dying after Patroclus passes is love, for “no one will die for you but a lover” (Sym. 179B). But, Diotima claims this love is unhealthy as it fails to represent the abstract notion of beauty. Since beauty is something to be indirectly experienced, it is unmeasurable and instead “preserves”

Life is pink, or so says Louis Armstrong’s version of Edith Piaf’s beautiful French song, La Vie En Rose. Plato is arguably the most famous philosopher from Ancient Greece. The Symposium, one of Plato’s most famous works, is a brilliant piece of literature centered on a group of men telling their own versions of what they believe to be Love. The Goddess of Love however, is the main focus of Plato’s work more so than the act of actually being in love. This becomes the men’s main focal point for the duration of their speeches. Both the story and the song, depict versions of love of Love that are relatively common. In the soft tones of La Vie En Rose, the perfection of what being in love can become is heard clearly. Believing that everything is wonderful and it could never change is a symptom of the rose coloured glasses Armstrong is singing about. Socrates in believes that Love can be both horrible and bad. There are people who believe that love is the solution to all of their problems, and those who believe that there are bad aspects that come with being in love. Hundreds of years apart, and these two men are trying to send different messages about the same subject—love.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the fourth discourse which is composed of forty-two verses, Lord Krishna, the narrator guides Arjuna- a warrior who is finding himself pondering about the simple principles of life while he is fighting the war. In the fourth discourse Arjuna learns from Lord Krishna about faith, wisdom sacrifice, ignorance, doubts of the soul, action and inaction, selfless service, and self-realization which ultimately leads to the ultimate truth, which is the path for the spiritual soul to reach its maximum potential here on earth and the afterlife.

It can start a war or end one. Give you the strength of heroes or leave you powerless. It can be snared with a glance but no force can compel it to stay. Love. It was the downfall of Troy and the triumph of Odysseus. The dual nature of love in Greek myth as both destruction and salvation may have led to Plato’s unique conceptualization of love. In The Symposium he speaks of two Aphrodites: Common and Heavenly. The first has domain over physical attachments and is considered vulgar. The second, being divine is concerned with the soul, not the body. It is a heavenly love, a love of the mind, the spirit. It is also exclusively for same-sex partners. Although Plato’s conception of love may not have been the prevailing notion of the time, it is

Beginning his own attack on the misconduct of love Socrates concentrates on the objective that the “lover is an exploiter”. (Weaver p. 10) Socrates describes love as a kind of yearning passion that conquers rational thought and leads toward the pleasure of physical appearance. The lover desires for the obtained item of affection to delight him essentially as much as conceivable but only individuals who are consumed with this love, only the item possessed will please them. Therefore, the lover views everything that is superior, equal to, or is disputing with resentment. Thus, the lover attempts to make the beloved subsidiary to oneself in each reference. Throughout the time the lover is maintaining the beloved from acquiring any more knowledge and physical strength, this implements an unhealthy effect that the beloved is helpless in any critical situation. The lover exercises continual compulsion over the beloved depriving of all praiseworthy qualities, and this is the price the beloved pays for accepting a lover who is beyond logical reasoning. Socrates reveals the beloved as the inferior in every account, keeps the beloved weak and dependent, this lover is not motivated by benevolence or humility but selfish appetite. The lover is an exploiter and has the kind of desire that dismisses rational opinion and moves toward enjoyment of physical beauty. They only want

Sappho is an ancient Greek poet who is known for her capability in the theorization and processing of love, though in The New Sappho her curiosity and amusement tends to turn its perspective to the idea of age. While we are used to the common concept of love and appearance of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in Sappho’s poems, it seems that The New Sappho is both a play on her age, as well as a metaphor for her new subject. The poem’s title seems to suggest a rebirth or a renewal of being, yet in contradiction her physical form is aging.

According to the Bhagavad Gita, a truly wise person should seek to subdue his senses in order to achieve Brahman State. The Bhagavad Gita opens with a scene in which Arjuna, a warrior prince, is speaking to his chariot driver who is really the god Krishna. Arjuna is deeply troubled by the fact that he is fighting his relatives and wishes to abandon the fight. It is here that his dialogue with Krishna begins. Their conversation revolves around many issues and questions that Arjuna has, one of them being about emotion and desire. There seems to be a fairly straightforward answer to his question. Many times in the book, Arjuna is told that he should subdue his emotions. However, there are still more questions to be answered. Why should emotions and desires be supressed? How does one suppress these desires? Finally, what is the cultural effect of this teaching? It is through these first two questions that Arjuna is able to understand the role of his desires, and through the third that the cultural effects of this doctrine can be explored.

In Plato’s work Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausania, Eryximachus, Aristophane and Agathon, each of them presents a speech to either praise or definite Love. Phaedrus first points out that Love is the primordial god; Pausanias brings the theme of “virtue” into the discussion and categorizes Love into “good” one or “bad” one; Eryximachus introduces the thought of “moderation’ and thinks that Love governs such fields as medicine and music; Aristophanes draws attention to the origin and purposes

India gave birth to Hinduism which expanded quickly. This spiritual tradition focused on finding peace and eternal tranquility rather than temporary satisfaction from the worldly pleasures. In order to transmit the idea to other people and guide them through it, they came up with different writings to illustrate this. The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads are popular writings that exemplify the beliefs and thoughts of Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita addresses the question about how a person can be one with Brahman, the universal soul or god, while living in this world. This document is set as a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna. Arjuna is being encouraged by Krishna to fulfill his duty as a warrior and part of the Kshatriyas, one of the higher divisions in the caste system. Arjuna has to enter this battle and fight in order to live up to his duty and consequently live free from attachments and walk in the path of finding himself as one with Brahman. On the other hand, the Upanishads guided all kinds of people regardless of

In calling love “a serious mental disease,” Plato inspired centuries of authors, doctors, and philosophers. Unlike romantic comedy movies and the Top 40 pop songs chart, which idolize love, literature frequently portrays it as a sickness. Both love and mental illness affect brain chemistry, mood, and behavior. In pieces such as Euripides’ Medea, symptoms of love range from mental illness-like ailments to physical manifestations such as a vanishing appetite, concentration, and apparent sanity. In Longus’ work, love is described as having similar traits. Throughout the story of Daphnis and Chloe’s pastoral romance, love drives both of them mad with longing. Love amplifies their innocent feelings for each other, resulting in a disorienting combination of depression and mania. The affliction goes deeper; their total devotion to each other and pastoral

Platonic love only partially identifies with Pausanias’s theory. Pausanias’s speech and the speeches of the rest

Plato was a philosopher from Classical Greece and an innovator of dialogue and dialect forms which provide some of the earliest existing analysis ' of political questions from a philosophical perspective. Among some of Plato 's most prevalent works is his dialogue the Symposium, which records the conversation of a dinner party at which Socrates (amongst others) is a guest. Those who talk before Socrates share a tendency to celebrate the instinct of sex and regard love (eros) as a god whose goodness and beauty they compete. However, Socrates sets himself apart from this belief in the fundamental value of sexual love and instead recollects Diotima 's theory of love, suggesting that love is neither beautiful nor good because it is the desire to possess what is beautiful, and that one cannot desire that of which is already possessed. The ultimate/primary objective of love as being related to an absolute form of beauty that is held to be identical to what is good is debated throughout the dialogue, and Diotima expands on this description of love as being a pursuit of beauty (by which one can attain the goal of love) that culminates in an understanding of the form of beauty. The purpose of this paper is to consider the speeches presented (i.e. those of Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Agathon) in Plato 's Symposium as separate parts that assist in an accounting of the definition and purpose of platonic love.

Again, philia is another level of love and King describes it as “an intimate affection between personal friends, it is types of reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship” (King, 400). In another word, Philia doesn’t require the physical attraction and passion that is standard in eros rather depend on standard friendship. Philia love is deeper than eros, but usually non-sexual intimacy between close friends and family members or as a deep bond establishes by soldiers as they fight alongside each other in the battlefield. In fact, philia works on the idea that an individual loves because that individual is loved by someone else. Perhaps, the feeling of love that experiences between soldiers in battle