Plato's Relationship Between The Soul, Love, And Soul

Unlike the body, the soul is immortal. It is a form, or perhaps an idea that dictates the ideals of beauty. Unlike the soul, the body inevitably changes through body modifications, stress, health-related issues, and time. Soul, beauty, love, and the body all intertwine together, even if sometimes their ideas oppose each other, like the purity of the soul versus the impurity of the body. The relationship between the soul and the body, and love and beauty is well depicted in Plato’s Symposium: “Ladder of Love”. He refers to both the physical and the metaphysical characteristics of the body to claim his perception of the relationship between Love and beauty and body and soul. In “Ladder of Love,” Plato, through Diotima, discreetly shares the steps of the ladder to properly acquire the true perception of beauty. Each rung of the ladder, he claims, has its particular significance. To defend his claim, he reasons that in order to ascend to the next rung, one must acquire and understand the significance of the current rung. …show more content…
The first rung, the foundation, is solely based on the physical being of one specific body (1). Plato mentions that it is the husk of the being that determines the physical beauty. For example, does one have clear, prestige, and smooth skin? Is one overweight? Or does one have tattoos or piercings? However, he claims, the husk of the body, itself, is not enough to fully understand true beauty. Moving up to the second ladder, instead of considering one body, Plato implicates that all bodies are equal. Whether cleared or skinned or rugged skin, tall or short, overweight or underweight, or black or white, all bodies are similarly