Agathon hosted a gathering for a small group of philosophers to talk about how they perceive love and what their own unique ideas are of beauty, virtue, honor, or anything else that may fall under the category of love. Eros, or Love, is a god that the philosophers have decided to praise with a speech of their own perspective. You get to see each philosophers different style and way of thinking within their speeches. All philosophers have agreed to drink while each other is speaking, but there is no pressure from one another or one’s self to drink excessively. The first to kick off the speeches is Phaedrus, an idealist, who believes that being shamed upon who you love most is of the highest caliber of embarrassment, even compared to relatives …show more content…
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 …show more content…
“A wrong relationship is one which involves the immoral gratification of a bad man, and a good relationship is one which involves the morally sound gratification of a good man (Waterfield 17).” The desire of a bad man is one who leads primarily for physical features, and in the end leaving who he may be with on to something new, thus having a temporary relationship or feeling with a companion. “Psyche which will never lose its charm, more than for the body, which must inevitably do so (Plato’s Symposium, Rosen 85).” I believe this particular statement to be true when searching for love because through time, your body has the possibility of becoming weak, while on the other hand it may be easier to keep your mind healthy and fresh. The mind can have memories and abilities that you have had as a child all the way up to when you become elderly. The mind can remain youthful, while the body has no choice but to age. The common lover looks for people based on how attractive they are, or if they may be wealthy or powerful in some way. The good side of love would put the beauty of the mind first before the body, since it can remain youthful in some sense. Those who put the love of the body first may just keep moving on to the next one, and may not find that special person to be fully happy and settle down with, although they may see beauty in the body, they may not see beauty in the mind which is not clear to
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.
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 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.
Separated by language, history and several hundred miles of the Mediterranean Sea, two of the world's greatest cultures simultaneously matured and advanced in the centuries before the birth of Christianity. In the Aegean north, Hellenic Greeks blossomed around their crown jewel of Athens, while the eastern Holy City of Jerusalem witnessed the continued development of Hebrew tradition. Though they shared adjacent portions of the globe and of chronology, these two civilizations grew up around wholly different ideologies. The monotheistic devotion of Judaism that evolved in the Hebrew lands stood in stark contrast to the Greek worship of polytheistic Olympians, a religion that often tended more towards the rational and philosophic than
In Anne Stevenson’s “Eros,” the god of love is shown to be broken and abused. Many negative words are used to emphasize Eros’ brokenness. He is described as a “bully boy,” a “brute” that “offends,” and is given “blows” delivered by “lust.” These words are not pleasant, as they illustrate an offensive, hurtful figure. As a “slave” to immortality, Eros is doomed to a “bruised” and “battered visage” for eternity. It is destined for him to endure such a future because of the nature of his job. These strong words of hate and hurt show the pain that love had to endure. The caller of love asks, “Can this be you, with boxer lips and patchy wings askew?” Eros answers with, what “you see is what long overuse has made
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
The Traditional Period of Greece, 500 - 338 BCE, cleared a path to a wide range of changes in Athenian history. The Athenian government transformed from an oppression to a vote based system, and after the Persian war in 499 BCE, Athens' begun to turned into a military superpower, also. Because of Themistocles supporting to construct a more grounded naval force, their military influence developed, making Athens' economy rise turning into the wealthiest city-states. The Peloponnesian War drew out the significance of lawmakers and pioneers, since now the administration is controlled by the general population. This war brought two of the most noticeable and powerful people to lead Athens through the war and molded Athens' future. The two pioneers are cousins, Pericles and Alcibiades. They have various similitudes, similar to their genealogy and instruction, while additionally using their interesting identities in their authority abilities.
The opinion and image that most people have of Eros, the god of love in Greek mythology, often reflect the view and representation that people have for love itself. Since love is such a puzzling matter, people quickly form an ambivalent opinion toward Eros. Robert Bridges and Anne Stevenson reveal these uncertain feelings toward Eros in their poems directed to the Greek god of love through their diction, allowing readers to notice similarities and differences in their works. Although Bridges and Stevenson expose a level of uncertainty and sympathy toward Eros in their poems, both poets different inquisitive interpretations of Eros divulge their true and differing feelings toward
Ignorance: the condition of being uninformed or uneducated; this basic definition is crucial to understanding one of the most controversial figures in ancient Athenian society: the philosopher Socrates. The man’s entire life was devoted to proving the fact that no one actually knew what they thought they did; that everyone lived in ignorance. This viewpoint earned Socrates many enemies, so many that even a renowned playwright, Aristophanes, decided to exploit the situation. He wrote his critiquing play of Socrates called The Clouds; a scathing criticism that the philosopher would partially attribute to his future indictment on charges of impiety and corrupting the
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
In the play Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, a man named Oedipus is trying to figure out what is causing a plague in the city. Throughout the play, many people are trying to give him clues that he is the cause for marrying his mother. Realizing this, Oedipus stabs out his eyeballs and leaves the city. In the play Antigone, by Sophocles, Antigone buried Polyneices, and Creon wants to have her killed because of it. Tiresias, the blind prophet, tries to persuade Creon that the gods actually want Polyneices buried. Creon then wants to release Antigone, but she had already hung herself. The rest of the family then commits suicide. In the end of both plays, Creon and Oedipus both suffer due to blindness vs. sight.
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
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 the Symposium, written by Plato, Socrates and others engage in a dialogue in the home of Agathon on love. Instead of "singing the honours" (94) of love like the other participants, Socrates uses a retelling of a discussion that he had with a woman named Diotima to tell the audience of what he perceives to be the truth of love.
In the Symposium 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 from that level to see the connection among people and ultimately, the lover of beauty enjoys a kind of revelation or vision of universal beauty, which we find ourselves in the pursuit of during our own study of Plato’s work. The