The Nature Of Love In Plato's Symposium

Through Alcibiades’ speech about love, it should be connected with Diotima’s speech which comes from Socrates. She claims that Eros is the love of beauty, but not the ideal love. “ Then don’t compel what is not beautiful to be ugly, nor what is not good to be bad. So too for Eros, since you yourself agree that hi is neither good nor beautiful, do

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.

The Symposium revolves around a Greek party made up of various men throwing around their views on love, building up to height of the evening by a speech from Socrates. Socrates knows the true way to obtain love, and tells of a tale between him and his mentor, Diotima. Through Diotima, Socrates is able to

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.

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.

Well I’ll tell you’, she said. ‘It is giving birth in beauty whether in body or soul,’” (Symposium 206 B). Here Diotima has clearly expressed the purpose of love, something Aristophanes clearly avoided and roots it in beauty, which he also avoided. The rest of her speech then goes to talk about the “Ladder of Love” and the whole exploration on the plurality of love.

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

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

Desire is described as a strong want for any specific entity, and it is a theme commonly found throughout literature, albeit every time period and work has their own particular interpretation. In particular, Plato’s The Symposium and De Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons depict desire in a similar fashion, involving intense passion and longing. However, they differ in their interpretation of morality and integrity of individuals when faced with great desire, illustrating the evolving nature of the human condition, and how we come to make sense of our deepest emotions. Written during the time of the Ancient Greeks, The Symposium approaches the justification for desire and love from a mythical creation perspective, which was a common method used to understand the natural world.

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

The older man will exchange his knowledge and virtue to the younger man for the fulfillment of the older man’s sexual desires. Like Plato, Pausanias believes that the highest maxim in the world to strive for is virtue: “For he too has demonstrated something about himself: that he is the sort of person who will do anything for the sake of virtue—and what could be more honorable that that? It follows, therefore, that giving in to your lover for virtue’s sake is honorable, what ever the outcome.” (185B) Yet, Plato, through Socrates and Diotima, differs from Pausanias in the way in which virtue is obtained. For Pausanias, the relationship between desire and virtue requires favors to be exchanged for both bodily and mindful stimulation. Since virtue is the desired outcome for the young man, he must submit to the authority of the older man by basically any means necessary, namely through sexual favors. Homosexuality appears to be a common beginning for the quest of virtue and philosophy, but by what means necessary to obtain these ends? Plato presents Pausanias’s theory to be only partially correct, as he ultimately extols a love that requires no sexual love. In Pausanias’s theory of love, sexual love is necessary to fulfill the both needs. Plato’s ideal form of love is fully expressed in the concept of Diotima’s ladder.

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 is written in such a manner that each speech accounted has at least one insight into the nature of love or Eros that is latter expanded, contradicted or confirmed by the speech given by Socrates using Diotima 's wisdom. Plato was very wise in his teaching on love, progressing from the simple to the much more complex, climaxing with the with the recounted exchange of Socrates and Diotima and then finalizing the instruction with a comical, but well-placed praise of the paragon of a beloved from a completely drunken fool. This ordering is contrived but serves as an excellent framework for investigation into the question of what exactly is Plato 's idea of love. Building upon the notion that Diotima 's speech illuminates the highest mysteries of the art of love, the best course of investigation is to review each speech with the context of Diotima 's claims to distill out the recurring ideas. These ideas then can be constructed into a decent definition of Platonic Love.