Platonic love

about love, but it returns to the traditional question/answer method of dialogue that Plato and Socrates are so fond of. The two pieces, when read separately, offer competing views of love, and its role in life and society, but when I read them together I came up with an entirely different interpretation. In both the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Eros serves only as a platform to discuss the value and importance of leading a life of philosophy. Platonic love begins with the Symposium, wherein a discussion on love quickly turns to a critique of non-philosophic ways of life. The introduction to the story…

than others. These dialects contain strengths and weaknesses for approaching of understanding love as well as a conflict on the superiority of which individuals should abide by. Aristophanes’ accounts for the origin of love as being due to people originally having been welded with twice as many limbs and organs but forced to being split into halves by the gods as a form of punishment; thus for every person there is a missing half necessary to restore the person to completion as a full human…

What is addiction? How does one become addicted? What causes us to become addicted? These unanswered questions and nearly hundreds of others have prompted the scientific and psychological communities to allocate a great amount of time, money, and research into unlocking the inside workings of addiction. Though we have compiled enormous amounts of data and experimental research regarding this terrible state of being, some of these questions are still left unanswered. Johann Hari, a Swiss-British…

development of philosophy. He is major influence was his teacher, Socrates, who impressed in him that ‘love of wisdom’ and He passed that onto his own student, Aristotle. Some of Plato’s marvelous works are: Phaedrus, The Symposium and The Allegory of the Cave and the themes depicted in them are freedom (philosophical education), madness (in love and in life), love and beauty ( in all the aspects of our lives.) Now, I’ll go on into a deep analysis of Plato’s works previously mentioned, I’ll…

The passage that I found most interesting in The Symposium is related to the speech of Aristophanes, which defines the changing nature of love as a mythical and biological definition in the human condition: “First you must learn what human nature is in the beginning and what has happened to it since, because long ago our nature was not what it is now” (Plato p.25, 189d). In this passage, Aristophanes is defining the mythical story of the differences between human beings in the biology of sex,…

society but in a manner that will create humour and not outrage. The topic of marriage appears to be an ongoing debate throughout the play and is constantly bought up. Algernon and Jack dispute about the essence of marriage when Algernon labels a marriage proposal as "pleasure" and "business", causing Jack to accuse him of being "unromantic". Algernon regards marriage as a social obligation that he must fulfil in order to maintain a respectable name in society. However, Jack's view of marriage…

I will be addressing Diotima’s speech on the nature and rites of Love. Diotima finds that “mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal”. The rites of Love have the ability to connect mortal and immortality, fulfilling our ultimate goal. “One goes always upwards for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stairs: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and…

Plato’s symposium is nothing less than a brilliant masterpiece, presenting us with a damning decision between the two views of love. If we choose the path Socrates has delineated, rising to the Good, we are unable to take the first step on the ladder as long as we reflect on Alcibiadies and Aristophanes. An individual can only fully follow Socrates if they are persuaded of his account to be true, but Alcibiadies and Aristophanes makes us think otherwise. Alcibiadies and Aristopahnes causes the…

giving a speech in praise of the god of love. Taking turns each man gives his definition of love and some of the speeches concern themselves with how love interacts with nature. One of the more influential speeches was given by Socrates in the narrative of a woman named Diotima. This speech is more focused on a definition of love, one different from what most people consider, and how it can be used to reach immortality, an ascent to knowledge and truth. The search for truth, which will to lead…

Symposium Plato’s Symposium is a philosophical text about the true nature and purpose of love in 4th century BCE society. Love is analyzed from the perspective of several men at a symposium, and then restated by Plato in his own words and perspective. The symposium consisted of diverse theories of love, which were mostly homosexual between two men, imitating commonality in Greece at this time. Pausanias, one of the attendees of the symposium, argues that love in itself is neither good nor…