Aristophanes ' View Of Love

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.

Sappho's poems are heavily associated with love, the loving of another poem or story of someone driven to action by love. Sappho held to love as the strongest force of all. Love has the ability to change the world for the better. Love is neither censored nor simplified. Sappho's attitudes toward love attracted a great deal of attention, both positive and negative. In modern times there have been those who enthusiastically applauded her celebration of physical love.

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

In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes and Alcibiades share a specific view on love, while Diotima and Socrates share another. Aristophanes sees love as a pursuit of wholeness and ultimately the desire for humans to be complete. Aristophanes explains the origins of how humans came to have two arms and two legs as well as one sex organ. Humans used to be creatures who existed with eight limbs as well as two sexual organs, however they were far too ambitious and had even made an attempt on the gods. When this event occurred, Zeus and other gods met in council, and in their meeting, they came to the conclusion to cut humans in half, to ensure they could still exist yet not be overly ambitious. Humans have been on the pursuit to find their literal other half ever since separation. In other words, to find their soulmate.

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.

Eryximachus, the doctor, refers to love in the sense of being healthy and sick, and how like search for like. Usually people may try to find someone with similar characteristics to be their lover or beloved. Aristophanes who was originally supposed to go before Eryximachus used a sneeze technique that he told him to use to get rid of his hiccups, and Aristophanes pleads to Eryximachus specifically, to not view his speech as comical. Aristophanes talks about how Zeus split humans in half in hopes to weaken them, who originally had four arms, four legs, and two heads. He refers to love in a sense of finding your other half, in order to make yourself whole again. Agathon, the host, tries to convince the others that if they follow his ways of teaching then they will achieve happiness. Socrates, the big shot in the room, questions others and speaks of Diotima who has taught him what she believes to be true love. Alcibiades is the last to speak and comes in at the end already drunk and speaks the truth about Socrates. All speakers have done a great job of building off one another, disagreeing with, and challenging one another’s

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.

Virgil’s The Aeneid Book IV, begins with a conversation between Dido, the queen of Carthage, and her sister Anna. Topic Dido is torn between her love for Sychaeus, her beloved, deceased husband, and this Trojan warrior, Aeneas. He has entered her life, and Cupid has kindled the flames of love within her towards him. Dido explains to Anna that she feels betrayed by her heart and mind. Argument Dido states, “If my mind was not set, fixedly and immovably, never to join myself with any man in the bonds of marriage, because first-love betrayed me, cheated me through dying.”(BkIV.15-17) Reason Tearfully, she remembers her first love, stolen from her by the grave. Anna encourages this new relationship for Dido

What is love? Is it an object? Is it a feeling? Is it even attainable? Love is everything, it is an object, it is an emotion, and it cannot be bought, stolen, given. Love can only be found. Love is discovered in the most unthinkable places during the most unimaginable times. It can never be predicted who you fall in love with or when you do but all you do know is that you are in love and you would give anything for that person, and for your love to always stay resilient through all other obstacles and distractions. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Montague’s and Capulet’s are know and expected to hate each other until the miracle of love presented its self. Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet. They both fell in love when

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

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.

Apollo became more like his father zeus which they were both drawing to woman but unlike his father Apollo always want more. At it said in this ancient greek quote “ Once, a long, long time ago, all people had four legs and two heads. And than the gods threw down thunderbolts and split everyone into two. Each half then had two legs and one head. But the separation left both sides with a desperate yearning to be reunited. Because they each shared the same soul. And ever since then, all people spend their lives searching for the other half of their soul.” And in that quote my intention was that i felt that quote may have describe what apollo was yearning to have which was love. As may of us in modern day life may also be searching for , and it is also believed that gods were just like mortals with the same humanity as some but just immortal forever. In the eyes of ancient Greek mythology the gods are depicted so much like us. In which we share Pain and love, hand in

Overdosing on the drug Love is something that many people do quite often without even knowing it, until they experience the withdrawal symptoms. Book IV of the Aeneid by Virgil focuses mainly on Queen Dido and Aeneas’s love relationship. After Queen Dido falls in love with Aeneas he leaves her in Carthage to go focus on his own duties. Dido doesn't take this very well and the withdrawal symptoms of the love they had are fatal. Love is just as powerful as a drug.

We only call a certain category of those in love, lovers (Symposium 7) and in contrast with what Aristophanes had said about lovers being in search of their other half, Diotima argues that lovers love what is good. After all, the aim of loving beautiful and good things, of course, is to possess them, because the possession of beautiful and good things is wisdom and with wisdom comes happiness and happiness is deep-down what everyone is ultimately in pursuit of.