Response To Plato's Symposium

Response: After reading everyone's speeches displayed throughout the Symposium, I felt as if their styles were very unique to themselves and they openly displayed their opinions without hesitation. Although they are all discussing the unanimous topic of Eros, they discuss the matter with such different tones that display Eros in multiple personas. I found this striking because every single speaker viewed Eros in their own way, often shifting the mood of the dinner back and forth.

Starting off with Phaedrus, he gives Eros a "heroic" feeling as he displays the God to be of noble quality, a righteous God that rewards people who display self sacrifice for love. With the quote "Thus then I claim that Eros is eldest and most honored of Gods, and …show more content…
While he claims to respect both, his style and tone show otherwise. He mostly supports the "Heavenly Eros" as the God that showcases love between two males, tying them with traits like strength and intelligence. He claims Common love to be associated with vulgarity and a goal to only have sex. In fact in the quote "Now, the Eros of Vulgar Aphrodite is truly vulgar and acts at random", he actually uses the word "vulgar", implying such a negative connotation to one of the versions of Eros he doesn't necessarily …show more content…
They completely change the tone from praising Eros to introducing the belief that Eros is actually not a God, "a being neither moral nor immortal". Diotima's speech consists of a logical tone. This is because she uses facts to back up her beliefs, facts that she actually takes from the other speeches, twisting them in way to prove their interpretations wrong. In the quote "It is of procreation and begetting of children in the beautiful", she merely gives Eros the purpose of giving birth to children, belittling the supposed "Godly" status of Eros that the other members of the dinner believed. This speech was really interesting to me as the mood of the dinner had changed in way I didn't