Plato 's Symposium, Sequential Speeches Praise The God Of Love, But They Stray From Truth

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.

thesis what Aristophanes defines as love. He believes that love is innate: " love is born into

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.

Agathon hosted a gathering for a small group of philosophers to talk about how they perceive love and what their own unique ideas are of beauty, virtue, honor, or anything else that may fall under the category of love. Eros, or Love, is a god that the philosophers have decided to praise with a speech of their own perspective. You get to see each philosophers different style and way of thinking within their speeches. All philosophers have agreed to drink while each other is speaking, but there is no pressure from one another or one’s self to drink excessively. The first to kick off the speeches is Phaedrus, an idealist, who believes that being shamed upon who you love most is of the highest caliber of embarrassment, even compared to relatives

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.

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

     What is the meaning of love? What does love feel like? How does love come about? No one can truly explain it, yet somehow it's understood. In Plato's Symposium, a dinner party was held with the discussion of love as the main topic. Everyone was required to make a speech, an ode to Love, the spirit. The philosopher, Socrates gave his speech last, claiming that his speech was merely a repetition of what a wise woman named Diotima once told him. The speech was a powerful one, but before the night was over, a drunk Alcibiades entered. He was asked to make a eulogy for Love as well, but instead, talked about the nature of Socrates. The nature of Love and the nature of Socrates turned out to be extremely similar. In

In Plato’s Symposium, he constructed a dialogue between peers at a drinking party regarding the art of love. After hearing speeches of others in attendance, Socrates presented the thoughts of his former teacher, Diotima, by recounting the speech she had delivered years ago. Diotima first dissected two manifestations of the phenomenon: acquisitive desire, which is a longing to acquire something of beauty, and procreative desire, which is the longing to reproduce in the presence of beauty, either in body or in soul. She then described the ascent of eros, discussing forms of love in terms of their nobility. Throughout her speech, Diotima reflected and expanded on notions brought up in previous speeches, particularly those by Phaedrus and Pausanias,

In The Symposium, Love is described to be a goddess by the men who are praising her powers in several eulogies. However, Socrates proves that their claims are incorrect evaluations during his speech. Socrates chooses to analyze and discuss the truth of love through rhetoric rather than submit to the ‘illusionary’ art of poetry that the other men used. Although the context of Love is set up in the mythological sense, Socrates’ speech transcends the topic from merely describing the goddess’ powers to separating her as an entity from the actions and emotions that go along with the conception of ‘loving’: “I think you saw Love as the object of love instead of the lover” (Plato, 40, 204b). Socrates, takes the route of philosophy and aims to

The Symposium presents a philosophical discussion about love between specific historical individuals, including well-known Athenian poets and intellectuals, and the politician Alcibiades (introduction). Each person at the symposium needs to deliver a speech that represents his idea of love. At the end of The Symposium, Socrates expresses his sophisticated point of view by presenting a conversation he has with Diotima, an objective fictional character who represents his idea of love. By providing a logical, fundamental and comprehensive examination of love, Socrates’ speech contributes significantly to The Symposium in the effort to promote the philosophical approach of objective truth. This effective inspection of love makes readers understand

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

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

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).