Reflection About 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.

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. This spectrum of eros’ nobility brought forth by Diotima is reflected in and expanded on notions brought up in previous speeches, particularly those by Phaedrus and Pausanias, resulting in a much more complex understanding of love, its results, and what it stems from.

Love is seen as a simple concept to grasp upon, but in real life, human nature tends to overcomplicate it. The social, cultural and historical contexts of a specific time period or social system influences the way people implement their ideas, values and attitudes towards love. The complexities of love can be seen through the language forms and features of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, to which explores the romantic vision of love through her abandonment of the Petrarchan form. Likewise, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby explores love being non-existent due to the novel’s society being driven by the materialism of “achieving their American Dream.”

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 today’s society the overuse of the word “love” is seen prominently in the younger millennial generation due to the fact that love is the strongest adjective for admiration that we have in the english language. When it comes to relationships, many teenagers and young adults begin to experience strong feelings of admiration that they have never felt before. More often than not, we associate these feelings with love just because we have no prior experience that will give us an idea on what else to call it. There was once a time when that word was used only to describe relationships between family and spouses. But now, we hear statements such as “I love pizza” more than we hear someone say “I love you”.

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

Through the speakers presented in the Symposium, Plato showcases a variety of viewpoints about the essence, worth, and expression of love. Though it can be argued that Plato suggests that love is determined by how an individual chooses to interpret it, I will be arguing that he supports the idea that there is a difference between true love and false love. These differences in the forms of love can be seen through the ideas expressed in Pausanias’ speech, Eryximachus’ speech, and finally, Diotima’s speech which was expressed through Socrates’ speech. While the first two speech serve to portray that there is a difference, Plato showcases his opinions through Diotima’s speech. She defines true love as the appreciation of the abstract idea of Beauty.

In Plato’s Symposium, a group of philosophers all get together at a man named Agathon’s house and eventually decide to give speeches on love. The men all take turns giving their various speeches on Love, each attacking the idea of Love in a different way. Phaedrus talks about Love’s origins and how Love encourages people to be virtuous, Pausanias makes the distinction between Common Love (love of body) and Celestial Love (love of mind), Eryximachus talks about how Love promotes balance, Aristophanes talks about how Love is about people continually searching for their other half (quite literally), but how people can never find this other half, so people will never be whole, and finally Agathon talks about Love’s beauty and Love’s desire for beauty. When Socrates speaks, he starts off by saying that he will give the truth about Love, which he claims no one else did. He proves this by questioning Agathon’s speech, asking how Love can both be beautiful and desire beauty when people do not desire what they already have. Furthermore, Socrates recounts a conversation about Love with Diotima, whose view of Love combines parts of all the other speeches into one truth about love. True love is passing on one’s ideas through celestial love in order to live forever.

Plato’s “The Symposium” is the oldest source on love available in Kevin Reilly’s “Worlds of History: To 1500”; it paints a picture of different interpretations of love in ancient Greece and hints at how women were treated in this society. This story has been dated to 385 B.C.E. In it, Plato recounted an exchange between his teacher, Socrates, and several other men, who each shared their own interpretation of love. Pausanias, the second to speak, differentiated between Common Love and Heavenly Love. Common love, he said, was between a man and a woman, and was “of the body rather than of the soul.” He stated that only “foolish beings are the object of this (common) love…” Heavenly love only existed between a man and a young man and was more

In Symposium by Plato, a group of men gather around to seek one’s full understanding of the underestimated reasons of Love. Despite having different occupations, they all seem to agree on their views of love except for Socrates. Socrates communicates that Love is a god, and then decides to add that he came to his conclusion with the help of a woman named Diotima. Although their views of love are similar, they are also different and can be seen through another philosopher’s stories; Antigone and Oedipus. Socrates’ definition of love is characterized by Oedipus the King and Diotima’s definition of love is characterized by Antigone. Socrates’ understanding of love is that love is a desire to be conscious of what you need for something you do not have and for what you have because once you have it you will not feel the need to want it anymore; love is also a display of what you already have and are afraid to lose forever. Diotima’s understanding of Love is that Love is not a god, love is a demi-god. Because, he is a demi-god, he is in between wisdom and ignorance.

Plato’s Symposium is a philosophical text that contains many philosophers’ views on what they consider love to be. In Pausanias speech, he claims that love has many facets and he argues that loving is neither a good or bad act. He feels if loving is done properly and for the right reasons it is good, and if not it is bad. There are two different types of love that he describes. Common love is superficial love because its attraction is directed toward the bodies instead of toward the minds.

Plato’s Symposium attempts to define the eclectic theory of love, a theory that is often believed to be the universal principle that guides mankind’s actions. Plato introduces several narratives in the form of a dialogue that seek to characterize this multifaceted theory of Eros. The meaning of love naturally varies in each narrative. Yet, in this dialogue of love, Plato presents a metaphysical approach to understanding the ambiguous meaning of love. Ultimately, Plato values the perennial quest for knowledge above all else. In Symposium, Platonic love is exhibited in the relationship between virtue and desire, as expressed in Diotima’s ladder. Desire is the vehicle, or the means to an end. The six Athenians ultimately present different

In Plato’s Symposium looks at a dialog between intellectual men about a variety topics such as love. We can relate this to modern

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.

“Also, love can be categorized into two kinds: an older deity and a younger goddess. Both are good, but they are inseparable,” Pausanias chimed in. We all continued to throw in our views on love, and every single one of us seemed to have a different stand on the matter. I said, “Well love isn’t simply a thing, it’s a privileged. An honored privilege created by two individuals who are willing to go as far as die for the other.”