Intro Overview of the class: During the course of the semester, there were texts that ranged from Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the early medieval, and the late medieval. Some of the kinds of text read in class: Some of the texts read in class are Plato’s Allegory the Cave, Ovid’s Art of Love, Iconoclast Controversy, etc. What those texts had to say about love: In Allegory the Cave texts, it mentioned the love for knowledge and enlightenment of humans and how it affects our views based on being exposed to the personal experiences. For Ovid’s Art of Love, it had some information that was advice for women, living life to its fullest, satisfy gender expectations. In the Iconoclast Controversy, it a love of either having images present or not in order to fully honor God and religious figures. The different kinds of love they described and discussed: The love that was demonstrated in texts are love for women, love for enlightenment, love for images, love for God, etc. …show more content…
The text that impacted my view on love is Sophocles Antigone because it talks about the love of family, the misogyny that was shown in Creon’s character, and demonstrated that gender roles in power and in the household existed at the time as shown by Ismene’s actions in declining to go against the law to bury her brother. Antigone felt that their family was being picked on because they won’t let anyone, not even family to honor the dead family members and decides to risk her life burying the corpse of Eteocles knowing she will die. Meanwhile, Creon issued his proclamation because he wants everyone to obey him and use Eteocles as an example for the people to never go against his him and his regulations. Furthermore, the reasons Ismene gives to Antigone as to why she won’t help her is the family history they have due to their father and brother, women being subjected to following the rules men place, and can’t go against the citizens with their
When one feels loved, or when one loves someone they feel happiness. This is essential for leading good life and creating a positive world. Without love there would be loneliness, sadness and despair which only negatively impacts our society as a whole. Our families are our first examples of love. A parent's love for their children is unconditional providing a strong foundation and a sense of belonging. In the book Antigone Creon forgets about being loving and kind and instead he was rash and cruel. This is because instead of doing what a loving father would have done and let his son's fiancee free, he decided to try seem strong and stick to his original decision even though it was wrong. This is why this story ends in Tragedy. All this could have been been solved with love. Loving your family isn’t the only type of love. People can also fall in love with someone else and create a relationship. Relationship love makes you feel important and wanted and gives strength. In the book Anthem, Equality meets the Golden One and they fall in love. Their relationship is what gives allows Equality the strength to flee his oppressive society and join the Golden One and start a new, free society. This wouldn't have been possible without love. Today people fall in love all the time. This can be extremely beneficial to the both of them. Psychology, people have been proven to be happier in a relationship than being single. Also financially, people are better off having the support of a partner. This all leads to a better world for us all to live
One of the overarching themes that spanned over the many books we read over the semester, was the nature of love and the search for meaning. Love is an inherent aspect of humanity, and while it is an often inexplicable and complex sentiment, it is intrinsically connected with mankind's search for meaning in life. Love often leads a person in directions that they do not expect, and this is obvious in the very different applications of love in different books. However, one common idea about the relationship between love, suffering, and wisdom, can be argued for based off the ancient texts that we read. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Antigone, and The Tale of Genji, love is used as a vehicle for wisdom through suffering and loss.
Antigone, however, decides she would rather please the gods than man and buries her brother against King Creon’s orders. She is fully aware of the consequences should she get caught, yet she openly disobeys, even against her sister’s warnings. She gives Creon no additional respect either as a male in a patriarchal society or as a king and ultimate authority figure. In fact, she calls him a fool! Antigone boldly states to Creon himself, “If my present actions strike you as foolish, let’s just say I’ve been accused of folly by a fool,” (Sophocles p.657). The strong will and defiance she exhibits are very characteristic of modern feminism.
In Plato’s Symposium, sequential speeches praise the god of Love, but they stray from truth until Diotima’s speech provides a permanent form in which love “neither waxes nor wanes” (Sym. 211A). Through the speeches, love shifts from identifying with the concrete to the abstract, but still ultimately advances goals of present: Phaedrus sees love as helping “men gain virtue,” Aristophanes as only a “promise” to restore humans to their “original nature” and Pausanias and Eryximachus have to use two changing notions of love (Sym. 180B, 193D). In contrast, Diotima relates love as the closest humans can come to immorality, a future goal motivating us to seek completeness and an uninhibited timelessness. She uses this shift to explain love’s
Plato is often criticized for preaching the gospel of me first. The claim is that his understanding of love is essentially egoistic, and this is seen as troublesome for the obvious ethical reasons. But there may be an even more troubling issue with Plato's understanding of love. In this paper I will attempt to argue that for Plato, love is in a sense impossible; that it can only ever be a desire for something out of one's grasp. The stakes are high but perhaps there is a way to understand this problem in a way that seems a little less damning. To do this I will analyze arguments from the Lysis and the Symposium, first questioning even the possibility of love and then attempt to show that love is in fact possible, all though in weaker
Love makes people do unreasonable things. There are different types of love, such as, family, relationship, and friendship. Most people think that love is an essential for the human body because love makes people do excellent things. They argue that people need love to inspire themselves. But really when people love another person, it brings pain to them because people go into a different planet, it means when they are loving someone too much people do not see the truth because the love that they feel for this person is blinding them. For example, in Antigone the character Antigone breaks the law to bury her brother. She claims that “I am going now to make a grave/ For our brother, whom I love” (78). She does not care about Creon’s law because Antigone just wants to follow the truth according her wishes about god.
This quote relates to my thesis because this quote shows the love and feelings Antigone has. Another quote that shows Antigone’s love is a statement which states, “Go then if you must, but remember, no matter how foolish your deeds, those who love you will love you still.” This quote shows that people who love you, will continue to love you throughout good and bad moments of your
“Pleasure to her alone who mock us, Merciless Aphrodite” (655-6) Aphrodite is the goddess of love, whose power none can escape from (647). Sophocles’ “Antigone” highlights the relationship between two young lovers: Haimon and Antigone. Their tale ends tragically as the two decided to take fate into their own hands and ended their lives. This sounds like the story of Shakespeare’s star-cross lover – and at a first glance, one could perhaps see “Antigone” simply as a sad love story – except for the fact that this relationship seems to be one-sided, with Haimon carrying all the emotional burden. In the end, while it was Antigone’s own pursuit to achieve Arete that led to her death, for Haimon, it was his love for Antigone that led him to his.
In Plato’s Symposium, Agathon, Aristophanes and Diotima discuss the goodness and purpose of love. The men are gathered at a drinking party hosted by Agathon and begin their accounts on love. Aristophanes praises love and discusses the origin of desire while Agathon discusses the nature of love and that to which it is attracted. However, Socrates conception of love, as narrated by Diotima, questions the origins of love and what Love is himself. During her speech Diotima refines the various theories of love as discussed at the party and concludes that we grow in our conception of love to closer characterise the beauty and goodness of it.
Love, in classical Greek literature, is commonly considered as a prominent theme. Love, in present days, always appears in the categories of books, movies or music, etc. Interpreted differently by different people, Love turns into a multi-faceted being.
“No woman shall seduce us. If we must lose, Let's lose to a man, at least. Is a woman stronger than we?” (Sophocles.II.3.539-540) says Creon, King of Thebes and uncle to the disobeying but brave Antigone in Antigone by Sophocles. A patriarchal society is a community in which male domination over women, Sophocles explains the journey of Antigone in getting her brother buried and yielding against the laws of Thebes in a man dominated city. Antigone portrayed in the play is loyal and stubborn, she would do anything that feels ethical and honest to her even if that disregarding the laws created by men. She responds to the standards of King Creon by going against her own blood, not believing that women should subjected to the rule that they
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.
Love can be expressed in many different ways. In Antigone, familial love is central in Antigone’s life because she loves her brother Polyneices even though he was a traitor. In her speech to her sister about Creon forbidding Polyneices’ burial, Antigone makes it clear that familial love cannot be tainted.
Sophocles first displays the failure of love through the war and deaths of Polyneices and Eteocles. Polyneices, the brother of Antigone and Eteocles, has broken familial ties and gone against his own people, as he is a commander in the Argive army that attacked his home city of Thebes. With this background, Sophocles is able to reveal how anger can be a stronger emotion than even love as the two brothers met “face to face in a matchless rage” (195). Here it is emphasized that love can be overshadowed by rage and greed as both brothers neglected their shared blood and history and instead were motivated by a place of hate as they fought for power. Rage not only overtook filial love between Polyneices and Eteocles on the battlefield, but before this. Eteocles and Polyneices were unable to share the crown after their father Oedipus’ death. The fight for power ultimately led to Polyneices being exiled from Thebes. This fight for the crown functions as a smaller internal war between the two brothers. Both the internal and external wars allow for love to be exposed as fickle. Love is fickle as it can easily be transformed into hate and this is shown when to loving brothers are torn apart by a single quarrel. With love comes strong emotions and when these emotions are transformed to hate, such hate is unconquerable just as “love (is) unconquerable” (224).
Joseph Keighley was a thirty year old father whose wife had been subjected to a terrible illness. He loved her so much that he would perform any task she wished for him to do for her. however as time passes, she had passed away and his devoted heart for her rendered him to not be with any woman other than his wife. Love, a powerful word and action is often described to be something in which you devote your feelings and emotion to something or someone with full intent, however Love in Antigone, a tragic play, written by Sophocles reciprocates this idea in a completely new way. A theme that Sophocles writes throughout Antigone could possibly be the idea of loyalty to the city versus family, and he often grazes upon the origin on many of the themes, providing sufficient amount of details that could be used to support them. However, a possible main occuring theme of Antigone is that Love is unconquerable. This theme surfaces in many ways throughout the play, specifically, in the idea of Love overpowering every aspect that the Greeks and Athenians believed to be impenetrable.