Essay on Plato's Symposium

Aristophanes views erotic love as a punishment originating from God (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 18). A punishment due to the fact that erotic love involves searching for our soulmate and until we find our missing half, we are incomplete (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 18-19). Comparatively, Alcibiades views on erotic love is shown in how he longs for his love interest, Socrates. Unfortunately, Alcibiades pursuit of Socrates fails and he experiences being rejected by Socrates (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 30-31). Thus, representing how erotic love can be cruel and is a risk that can result in feeling pain and suffering. Initially, Socrates view of erotic love started with the idea that we desire love because we lack an object of beauty or goodness (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 22). Through Diotima, Socrates comes to understand that his search for knowledge is inspired by love and as a result, he finds wisdom beautiful (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 23-24). According to Diotima, she views erotic love as existing somewhere “between ignorance and wisdom” (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 23). Diotima explains to Socrates that the truth about love is the desire for an enduring possession of the good (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 24). According to Diotima, immortality can be accomplished through procreation or creating new ideas to educate the next generation (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 24-25).

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.

In calling love “a serious mental disease,” Plato inspired centuries of authors, doctors, and philosophers. Unlike romantic comedy movies and the Top 40 pop songs chart, which idolize love, literature frequently portrays it as a sickness. Both love and mental illness affect brain chemistry, mood, and behavior. In pieces such as Euripides’ Medea, symptoms of love range from mental illness-like ailments to physical manifestations such as a vanishing appetite, concentration, and apparent sanity. In Longus’ work, love is described as having similar traits. Throughout the story of Daphnis and Chloe’s pastoral romance, love drives both of them mad with longing. Love amplifies their innocent feelings for each other, resulting in a disorienting combination of depression and mania. The affliction goes deeper; their total devotion to each other and pastoral

While Socrates’ speech mostly avoided romantic love, Aristophanes’ theory primarily focused on it. From Aristophanes’ viewpoint, romantic love is what one would feel toward the person who is their “other half”. In today’s society, many people believe that romantic love can be

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.

Plato's metaphor of the divided line is essentially two worlds; the world of opinion (the

Symposium is a gathering hosted by Agaton to celebrate his first tragedy award for playwriting. Each of the guests gave a speech about love. The speech dealing with questions about what is love; interpersonal relationships through love; what types of love are worthy of praise; the purpose of love; and others. A series of speech about the love ended by the entry of Alcibiades, known as a wealthy aristocrat of Athens for his good-looking, and political career. He entered the discussion drunkenly supporting by a flute-girl, follow upon his speech about love. His unexpected entrance and speech dramatically changed the mood left from Diotima’s serious dialogue with Socrates about the ideal love. The first five speeches contradicted each other and were reconciled in Diotima’s speech, especially her speech about “Ladder if love” and “love of wisdom ”, which implies the delicate relationship between Alcibiades and Socrates.

thesis what Aristophanes defines as love. He believes that love is innate: " love is born into

In the book,” Plato’s Symposium,” by Plato, who was a philosopher in Greece, he illustrates the dialectic discussion at a party at Agathon’s to celebrate his triumph of his first tragedy. In the Symposium; the guests Phaedrus, an Athenian aristocrat; Pausanias, the legal expert; Eryximachus, a physician; Aristophanes, eminent comic playwright; Agathon ,a tragic poet and host of the banquet; Socrates, eminent philosopher and Plato 's teacher; and Alcibiades, a prominent Athenian statesman, orator and general; discuss their own versions and viewpoints to praise the god of love. First, we have Phaedrus, who starts to say that love is the most ancient of the gods and should be praiseworthy, next we have Eryximachus who states that love affects everything in the universe and that it should be protected, next we have Aristophanes, who states that the reason why love is on earth is because god has split humanity in half and that man should fear the gods and should embrace love to feel whole again, and last we have Socrates who suggests what Diotima explains that love is in the middle of two things or objects and has both characteristics.

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 Socrates speech from Symposium, All of the Philosophers are sitting around together drinking and discussing each of their opinions of what Love truly means and is . During Socrates turn of discussion he explains what he heard from Diotima a woman from Mantinea. She stated that “Eros is not a god but Daemon who desires everything that is beautiful and since wisdom is one of the most beautiful things Eros desires wisdom.”Wisdom is a very powerful trait to have, many of the Gods already obtain wisdom so they don't desire nor love it.Those who are unknowledgeable are not wanting of wisdom and content with how they already are. People who are inlove desire to love delightful things.

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.

In this philosophical analysis, The Symposium provides examples of how Socrates represents the “idealized lover” in this descriptions of love provided by Diotima. Socrates embodies the dualistic forms of love in the metaphysical (the sprit) and the mortal (bodily) that form the perfect union of both aspects of life. The Symposium provides examples of love through the gods, right and wrong, and other aspects of loving, but Socrates embodies the dualism of the diamond (the spirit) and the mortal link to the body that must be unified in order to love as a virtuous person. Diotima defines the important link between the spiritual and the material world as a gauge for Socrates’ identity as a lover, since he exhibits the capacity to love the spirit/soul.

According Pausanius, one of the speakers in the Symposium, the highest form of love was the kind that formed between two men. While relationships with a woman or a youth could be characterized by the carnal love of common Aphrodite, only the relationships between males- either two men of the same age or between a man and a youth- could contain the intellectual and emotional love of celestial Aphrodite.