Forms of Love in Plato's Symposium Essay

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.

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

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.

deal with concepts of homosexual love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, whereas Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. Though both of their perspectives are similar in ways such as their ideas of physical attraction and desire, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.

     What is the meaning of love? What does love feel like? How does love come about? No one can truly explain it, yet somehow it's understood. In Plato's Symposium, a dinner party was held with the discussion of love as the main topic. Everyone was required to make a speech, an ode to Love, the spirit. The philosopher, Socrates gave his speech last, claiming that his speech was merely a repetition of what a wise woman named Diotima once told him. The speech was a powerful one, but before the night was over, a drunk Alcibiades entered. He was asked to make a eulogy for Love as well, but instead, talked about the nature of Socrates. The nature of Love and the nature of Socrates turned out to be extremely similar. In

Love is one of the most fundamental forces at work in Hesiod's Theogony.Ê Personified as Eros, Love is one of the first gods to appear.Ê Although he is parentless and fathers no children of his own, he plays catalyst to the reproductive creation of the world.Ê Just as the world is not perfect, however, so Eros is not an entirely benevolent power.Ê He affects all beings indiscriminately, which results in the proliferation of monsters and dark forces.Ê He is also persistent in his work, continuing to facilitate the production of new gods who threaten the established ones, causing tensions, rivalries, and all out war.Ê In fact, we find that Love?s creative power is the root cause of a

This idea is brought forth in The Symposium when Socrates is talking about his encounter with Diotima and her story of the “Ladder of Love”. This story gives us an understanding of how we should love and what it means to be truly beautiful. Diotima shares with Socrates the process by which one can aquire these final ‘visions’, and then they are explained to us. One begins as a young person by being attracted to beautiful bodies, and to one beautiful body in particular. This produces beautiful discourses with this body. Which does not necessarily mean sexual acts. A person could be attracted to another just because their physical body is beautiful. The next stage is to

However strong the emotional attitude of prejudices may be in Othello, Love is the most powerful emotion and ironically the emotion that leads to the most vulnerability. Loves of all kinds are tested in the tragedy and ultimately all fail to rectify the horrible situation. Marital love for Othello and Desdemona serve as both a heaven and a hell on earth. As Othello portrays by saying,

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

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

Platonic love only partially identifies with Pausanias’s theory. Pausanias’s speech and the speeches of the rest

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.

Plato’s Symposium gives us a look into how philosophers of the past viewed romantic love. Of all the speeches given in this work, Aristophanes had one of the most interesting theories. His theory referred to a myth in which at one point humans were very powerful. Because of these past humans’ strength, the god Zeus decided to cut them all in half, forming two beings. Now, we as separated humans are desperately trying to be reunited with our literal “other half.” With this myth in mind, Aristophanes theorizes that love is that pursuit of wholeness with our significant other. Socrates takes a different approach when explaining his theory of love. Instead of focusing on love in the romantic and sexual sense, as the others did, Socrates explains how love is the pursuit of happiness. With that in mind the question is asked what, to humanity, would true happiness be perceived as? Socrates’ answer: Immortality. Since immortality is unrealistic, humans must resort to immortalizing themselves by means of creation. Whether that be by leaving a piece of themselves behind in the form of children or a work of art, such as a book or painting. It is that drive for eternal happiness that Socrates believes love to be.