Socrates And DiotimaViews On Love In Plato's View Of Love

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.

Plato’s Symposium has survived for many years. Written somewhere between 384 and 379 B.C.E. (Puncher, et. all 823), this work provides insight inside a Greek’s interpretation of what love is. Pausanias’ idea of love is vastly different from Aristophanes’ idea, but the two speeches share a similarity to the Christian idea of love. Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher.

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

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.

"For those who intend to live beautifully must be led through the life of the whole life by what neither city nor private person can do great and beautiful deeds" (118). Phaedrus is talking about how love and doing great things are needed for this symbiotic relationship. He also goes on to say how the beloved affects the man's thinking when he does shameful acts. " I then say that a man in love, if discovered doing something shameful, or suffering it from another and failing cowardice to defend himself, would not be pained so pained at being seen by his father or friends or anyone else as by his beloved." (118) Eros is so profound and cunning that it when doing amoral acts that he does not feel as much humiliation and lament for when his beloved gazes upon his eyes in horror.

The view of love presented in Plato’s Symposium is not a very positive one to a modern reader; although some of its eulogies can appeal to various emotions or make sense logically, they fail to present love in a way that is both humane and sends a positive message. While Aristophanes’ eulogy depicts humans as inherently flawed and lacking independence, Socrates’ logic based definition takes away the emotion and humanity from love and leaves readers with an unappealing image of love that leaves little to no room for mystery, curiosity, and pure emotion. One of the most famous eulogies delivered in the Symposium is delivered by Aristophanes in the form of a myth; he states that long ago, people lived in conjoined pairs with two faces, four arms,

Rutherford goes on to propose that the Phaedrus is concerned with 'a vital choice Phaedrus must make, ... concerned with love' — being properly read 'in part as a conversation-dialogue, presenting the process of Phaedrus' turning to philosophy' (1995: p. 248-9); thus we see 'Socrates as a lover wooing Phaedrus' to philosophy. (p. 247)

In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima argues that love is not only a desire for both the beautiful and the good, but also a need to give birth, whether it be physically through a woman, or through the soul, by giving birth in virtue. In Virgil’s Aeneid, however, love is not this complex. Although love can involve the desire for good, as seen in Aeneas wanting his family, and the Trojan people especially, to prosper in the future, it can also act as a robber of rational thought, motivating people to act with uncontrollable passion, (as depicted again by Aeneas at the end of the Aeneid.)

Socrates’s speech with Diotima’s reference in regards to love was a little hard for me to understand. However, I managed to understand most parts of it I think. From what I understand, Socrates tries to explain that love shouldn’t be characterized as either beautiful or good. Therefore because it cannot be either of them, I think it is the relation between the beautiful, the good and for an example, those we would love. Here, love is rather seen as OF something and so it could be a relationship between two people.

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

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

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.

Plato’s Symposium describes the nature of love to be the driving force towards immortality. Aristophanes perpetuates this idea through his allegorical description of human’s original nature, and the component of the driving force of love within that nature. The underlying goal of this force of love is immortality, though he does not directly articulate it in his speech. It is with the emergence of Socrates’ ideas that we are equipped with sufficient evidence reinforcing Aristophanes’ story to be one in which immortality is the end goal, and that we are made to realize Socrates’ speech is really a further elaboration on what Aristophanes put forward, providing the tools to truly comprehend his true point.