Reflection About Love

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

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.

In the Symposium Plato places Socrates in a dialogue with the goddess Diotima. She says two things of interest to this paper about love. Firstly, at 206a that humans when they love long to possess the good and do so for ever, and secondly that at 206b that "To love is to bring forth upon the beautiful, both in body and soul (Hamilton 558)." The first statement makes a claim about what love is, a desire to posses the good, and the second a statement about what love does, bring forth the beautiful. I will now briefly analyze both claims.

When Pausanias begins to describe the meaning of love he breaks into two different types of love. Those being Aphsodite aka heavenly

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

There is a response to Phaedrus’ this point later in the symposium. By saying Love is “the youngest of the gods and is forever young” (33), Agathon claims that he cannot accept that Love is the most ancient god, though he agrees with a number of deal of what Phaedrus was saying. To prove his idea, Agathon argues that if Love had already been existed between Hesiod and Parmenids, they could have been living happily and in peace with each other. According to Agathon, not only Love is the youngest, but also Love keeps himself away from old age. “He is a constant companion of young men and (given the validity of the old saying that like always clings to like) he is therefore young himself.” (32) From here, readers can tell that these speeches are not independent. To some extent, they are

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

“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.

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

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.

Because all gods are happy and beautiful, Diotima says Love cannot really be a god. She insists that Love is a great spirit, "for all spiritual is between divine and mortal" (98). Love, as a spirit, serves like a middle man between the gods and humans on Earth.

Under the influence of Diotima, Socrates has come to understand that Love must not be confused with the object of love, which is in contrast, extremely beautiful and extremely good. Diotima has explained to Socrates that if love desires, but does not possess beautiful and good things, then love cannot, as most people think, be a god (Symposium 5). However, though Love cannot be beautiful or good, this does not mean on the contrary that he is ugly and evil, but rather at some point in-between. So Diotima, taught Socrates that Love is not a god, but a daimon, or something like a spirit that not only conveys the prayers of man to the gods and the answers and commands of the gods to the minds of man alike (Symposium 5), connecting one who desires something with that which he desires. “He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, … never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he

In M. Scott Peck’s work, The Road Less Traveled, he says “Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words” (81). He also seeks to define love as “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's personal growth” (81). For Peck, he recognizes that the nature of love is so mysterious that a true satisfactory definition of love has yet to be created and suspects his own definition to be inadequate. He also recognizes that love is categorically vast in that it is divided into eros, philia, agape, and others.