The Odyssey, By Plato And The Triumph Of Odysseus

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining

Plato’s Symposium explores the nature of love through several different telling’s of what love is by philosophers of the time. The speeches of Socrates, Alcibiades, and Aristophanes are of main focus, as their similarities and differences help the reader to decide the truth of the nature of love.

In Plato’s Symposium, sequential speeches praise the god of Love, but they stray from truth until Diotima’s speech provides a permanent form in which love “neither waxes nor wanes” (Sym. 211A). Through the speeches, love shifts from identifying with the concrete to the abstract, but still ultimately advances goals of present: Phaedrus sees love as helping “men gain virtue,” Aristophanes as only a “promise” to restore humans to their “original nature” and Pausanias and Eryximachus have to use two changing notions of love (Sym. 180B, 193D). In contrast, Diotima relates love as the closest humans can come to immorality, a future goal motivating us to seek completeness and an uninhibited timelessness. She uses this shift to explain love’s

Plato is often criticized for preaching the gospel of me first. The claim is that his understanding of love is essentially egoistic, and this is seen as troublesome for the obvious ethical reasons. But there may be an even more troubling issue with Plato's understanding of love. In this paper I will attempt to argue that for Plato, love is in a sense impossible; that it can only ever be a desire for something out of one's grasp. The stakes are high but perhaps there is a way to understand this problem in a way that seems a little less damning. To do this I will analyze arguments from the Lysis and the Symposium, first questioning even the possibility of love and then attempt to show that love is in fact possible, all though in weaker

The main argument is about the problem posed for the modern viewer by the eroticized body of the political ruler, which wasn't a problem for the ancient - Mesopotamians; that sexuality was inextricably linked to potency to male vigor and manly vigor to dominance and authority. In other words, Irene Winter's thesis is about sexuality signifying rule in ancient times.

Pederasty, or a homosexual relationship between an adult male and an adolescent male, was quite common in ancient Greek myth. For example, Pelops and Poseidon, as well as Zeus and Ganymede, were represented as lovers. But these bonds weren’t just mythological themes, they had real-life parallels at Olympia. Young male competitors participated in a variety of events ranging from racing to wrestling in the nude before a predominately male audience. Women also held roles as athletes and spectators.

Alcibiades reveals the workings of his relationship with Socrates, layering his dialogue with a mix of praise and blame. Utterly entranced by the power over others that Socrates enjoys through the use of his philosophical method, Alcibiades exclaims that “let anyone--man, woman or child--listen to you or even to a poor account of what you say--and we are all transported, completely possessed.”(215D). This ability resonates on a deep level with Alcibiades’ affinity towards personal distinction. The enchanting element of Socrates’ nature deceives Alcibiades into thinking of Socrates as his lover. Alcibiades supposes that by providing Socrates with sexual favors he might “teach me everything he knew”(217A). That is, Alcibiades had hoped to gain insight from Socrates’ hidden wisdom for personal

Social attitudes about “homosexuality” in ancient Rome differed remarkably to those assumptions of the contemporary Western civilization. The Greeks and Romans had no concept of homosexuality or heterosexuality; the ancient world was exceptionally tolerant of homosexuality, or more specifically bisexuality, as these relationships had been present even in Trajan’s reign. Male prostitutes were appropriately common on the streets, however, what was of great consequence within the sexual relationship between two men were age and the status of sexual dominance and sexual submission (Potts). Men were free to take part in sexual behaviors with other men without any perceived loss of social status, provided that the older male of higher status was in the commanding position. This status reflected on ones manhood and masculinity, “the role of the submissive reduced the passive partner to the level of a woman (Potts).” Nevertheless, Men were still expected to have sexual attraction and relationships towards women because virility and procreation were important to Roman

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

Interestingly, modern society is in many ways reflected through the writings of the Greeks and Romans. Studying how the writings of Aristophanes, Catullus, and Euripides approach and describe male gender deviance yields knowledge about Greek and Roman attitudes toward gender and the ways in which these attitudes have shaped how modern Western society views male gender deviance. Aristophanes, the most reactionary of the three ancient authors, critiques, in various ways, men who transgress gender boundaries, ultimately advocating for strict gender boundaries and masculinity as a way to defend against effeminacy and other forms of moral decay in Frogs. Catullus describes masculinity and gender deviance in a way that directly challenges gender norms, but also defends many harmful aspects of masculinity. Lastly, Euripides explores the performance of masculinity, the insecurities associated with those actions, and the effect of

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 the earliest of time in Greece, homosexuality became common within the civilization; which with this socially accepted involvement, some could say, provided the groundwork for the child molestation act of pederasty. Conversely, it appears the Greek’s institutionalized sodomy to a new level for children that involved predominantly upper-class men in the 7th century B.C.; shamefully, boosted with pride concerning this ‘training system as their civil duty.’ They professed to be giving needed guidance to young boys (eromenos); who became effectively courted by older men (the erastes or ‘lover’). The Greeks became flamboyant with their exploitation of adolescents and cunningly gave personal attention to young boys to produce sexual cooperation. Distinctly, there existed a real challenge between Greek homosexuals, involving who would become the ‘dominating partner;’ (which transpires as an extreme shame if you were the lesser); therefore, an infinite number of repugnant circumstances arose, while using children’s passiveness to conceal the men’s perverted actions.

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.

In today’s society sexuality has an undertone of heterosexuality from books, television shows, movies, and all forms of mass media. To be other than heterosexual is be different but however conforming to the idea of being different as homosexual is still be affirmed to the standard that heterosexuality is normal. This idea of the creation story from Aristophanes speech during the Symposium, I interpret that both homosexuality and heterosexuality is the norm instead of one without the one. According to the myth two halves are craving the other not just man and women craving each other. However in modern times we have developed a patrichal society that has forced heterosexuality as a suppression of women, as the manifestation of male power