Socrates and Love Essay

different concept of what love is. Each individual expresses love in their own way, some with affection and others with words. Even though love is complex, we can all agree that to be in love is to want something. Everyone wants something out of a relationship. Whether it be affection, care, protection, or knowledge we all need something. Some go into a relationship not exactly knowing what they are looking for but understanding that there is something there that we crave. To Socrates there is nothing more

Socrates and His Understanding of Love In Symposium, Socrates was shaped to be a perfect person: wise, self-disciplined and reflective. According to his friends and students’ saying, it is his deep love towards wisdom that guides him to think critically. In this case Socrates should consider love to be divine and beautiful. However, Socrates doubts Agathon’s statement of love. He disagrees with Agathon’s idea of love being ever young, beautiful, sensitive and wise. If Socrates honor love, then his

on that night, Socrates’ speech is one of the most important of the night as he is clearly a central figure, admired by the other guests. Socrates begins by presenting his argument that if love is nothing, then it is of something, and if it is of something, then it is of something that is desired, and therefore of something that is not already possessed, which is then usually beautiful and good. Human beings begin by loving physical beauty in another person, then progress to love of intellect and

A Different View of Love We have heard definitions of love through our lives that have been passed on for decades. Some of us have felt love, and some of us have been in love. But no one ever seems to question what love is, as if it is something that just plainly is. People tend to just go with it, and think that what they are feeling is really complete and substantial love. In Plato’s The Symposium, the reader is confronted with some very different views of love as brought to us by Agathon, Phaedrus

in regards to love, with each speaker proposing their own perception on the topic. Moreover, it is evident that all the speeches made prior to Diotima’s appearance in the text may have been a sort of buildup for Socrates’ recollection of his discussion with her like how Phaedrus argues that love motivates one to pursue virtuous acts which is a central theme in Diotima’s dialogue on love or how Pausanias’ categorizes love similar to Diotima’s separation of the various types of loves into stages on

introduces a speech in which Diotima teaches Socrates of Love—what he is and art of him. The dialectic tells of how Love came to be, the very nature of Love, and that Love is something entirely separate from beauty, yet he participates with beauty. Her dialogue expresses the faults in Socrates’ previous stance, along with Agathon’s, “that Love is a great god and that he belongs to beautiful things” (201e). Diotima’s dialogue with Socrates begins by expressing “Love is neither beautiful nor good” (201e)

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

gratification. For instance, when Socrates responds to Alcibiades' declaration that only Socrates possesses the worthiness of his love because he brings out the best in him, he speculates, "If I really have in me the power to make you a better man, then you can see in me beauty that is really beyond description and makes your own remarkable good looks pale in comparison" (S 904). Socrates diminishes Acibiades' worth as a lover because he cannot better Socrates internally, and Socrates values the soul, the internal

the end of the Symposium, Socrates speaks, giving an accurate account of love and the correct use of Eros. He opposes all of the other speakers and says that love is not all about our pleasure and sexual deviances, but to either impregnate the body and give life, or to impregnate the soul and pass on knowledge. Socrates speaks as if Eros is a love for the other person, to love someone so much that you want to enter into a bond that results in child rearing or a love for mankind that you want to

Love is a term that many philosophers and other academics have been attempting to describe and capture the essence of for centuries. In class, the concept of a “life giving touch” was discussed along with a conversation on dating and relationships. This discussion made me wonder what the major philosophies on love are and how these differ from the way it is typically viewed. Socrates, Descartes, Aristotle, and Plato have all expressed their own opinions on love in their various writings. Plato coined