Phaedrus: The Definition Of Romantic Love

Symposium is a gathering hosted by Agaton to celebrate his first tragedy award for playwriting. Each of the guests gave a speech about love. The speech dealing with questions about what is love; interpersonal relationships through love; what types of love are worthy of praise; the purpose of love; and others. A series of speech about the love ended by the entry of Alcibiades, known as a wealthy aristocrat of Athens for his good-looking, and political career. He entered the discussion drunkenly supporting by a flute-girl, follow upon his speech about love. His unexpected entrance and speech dramatically changed the mood left from Diotima’s serious dialogue with Socrates about the ideal love. The first five speeches contradicted each other and were reconciled in Diotima’s speech, especially her speech about “Ladder if love” and “love of wisdom ”, which implies the delicate relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates.

Our human nature was not what we always thought of it to be, in simpler times two were made as one. We roamed the earth in unity with our other halves without the burden of trying to find them. However, Zeus did not find this to be in his best interest because of how we behaved so he split each being in two. As a result of this split we must now go about our lives in search of our other half. This is the speech that Aristophanes gave in Plato’s Symposium a book composed of various speeches from many different famous Greek people. Aristophanes’ view of love is compelling because it describes our very human nature to find our love, it justifies the reasoning of why there are different sexualities, and it gives an explanation as to why our bodies are the way that they are today.

Socrates sees love as something that is in between being beautiful and ugly and believes that love is a search for beauty and wisdom. Much like Diotima, Socrates presses Agathon to have him admit that love is not beautiful as it desires beauty, and one does not desire what one already has therefore it is not beautiful. Socrates view contrasts with that of Aristophanes from the benefits of love to the nature of love, as Socrates sees no benefits in something that is not beautiful. Love is seen as primarily a relational property by Socrates that holds between things rather than a desire or a need for another person. Love is not itself beautiful or good or anything specific as much as it is a relation that holds between the beautiful, the good, and those who

According to Aristophanes, love (eros) – the highest form of love that one human being can feel towards another – is the desire of dissected halves, one to another, for restoring the wholeness of the nature’s origin. I will explain what does Aristophanes mean by his metaphor and why do people fall in love.

How does love govern a family? It governs husbands to return to their wives, to go on a journey to home. We have all been on a journey. A journey, however, does not usually include coming home. The Odyssey is Odysseus’s journey home to his family. Home is where the family is. While the relationship in a healthy family is communication, there are some instances in the Odyssey where there is an unhealthy relationship. In the Odyssey, are the families that are portrayed ‘rooted and grounded in love?” The loving relationship of family had valuable impact on Odysseus, that he made the journey home, while other families became scattered.

Unlike Eros love that is solely based on a strong emotion and only being shown the good quality of each person, Philos love is based on a “give and take” where two people benefit mutually in varies way from each other. Being giving and taking equally is important in this type of love, and the concern that each partner is benefiting is essential to each partner. It can be statement in truth that Philos love is a higher type of love then Eros, where love is not just based on a strong emotion experienced before the understanding and appreciation of both partners that is gained from the pervious and continuing friendship.

love is good and only becomes ugly if a lover's motive is exploitation. Pausanias has brought out

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

with some very different views of love as brought to us by Agathon, Phaedrus and

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

“Love is complex: considered simply in itself, it is neither honorable nor a disgrace-its character depends entirely on the behavior it gives rise to,” (Plato 183d). There are two different types of love that Pausanius refers to, which are the common and heavenly love. The common love is based on your love for someone for their body, sex or beauty making it physical love and desire for a person. Heavenly love is love for the mind such as your intelligence and strength, someone you can benefit from making one more wise. Any love that is encountered has a purpose whether is it the love between a mother and daughter or the love between a husband and wife. In the end, all love leads and is directed to virtue and improves the loved ones.

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.

Overdosing on the drug Love is something that many people do quite often without even knowing it, until they experience the withdrawal symptoms. Book IV of the Aeneid by Virgil focuses mainly on Queen Dido and Aeneas’s love relationship. After Queen Dido falls in love with Aeneas he leaves her in Carthage to go focus on his own duties. Dido doesn't take this very well and the withdrawal symptoms of the love they had are fatal. Love is just as powerful as a drug.

Though before knowing how to find love, one must know the basics when it comes to the act of loving in general.

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