The Idea of Bodily Desire
Socrates, in Plato's work "Symposium", introduces the ladder of love through his conversation with the God-like figure, Diotima. The more knowledge about love one gains, the higher they climb and the less they focus on physical beauty. After Socrates has explained these concepts, Alcibiades steps in. He is confused because he himself is in love with philosophy, but he is also lost in bodily desire. According to the ideology of Socrates as expressed in Plato's work "Symposium" the musician girl from Mehta's "A River Sutra" is at the bottom of Diotima's ladder because she is so entirely infatuated and obsessed with the love of physical beauty, and not Socrates ideal, which is love of wisdom. In the same way, one might say that also Alcibiades is lost in bodily desire at the bottom of the ladder.
In Diotima's Speech, Socrates explains that Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty; "love is wanting to possess the good forever" (Plato 52). He introduces love as a broader term; it is what makes a person happy, and therefore one only desires good things. According to Diotima, Love is a spirit that mediates between man and gods and is therefore not a god. He argues that an ascetic life with passion for wisdom and beauty is the true Love. By saying this, Plato is rejecting the act of sexual love. This argument is in harmony with a philosopher's pursuit of truth. The ultimate goal is to live a pure life so that afterlife goes as smoothly as possible. The body is in the way, trying to disturb this process. Therefore, he concludes, the philosopher's search for wisdom is the most valuable of all pursuits.
Socrates states that understanding love is a process. The process is called the "ladder of love." One begins as a young boy who is attracted to one beautiful body in particular and together they take part in beautiful rituals. The next stage is to understand that all bodies are similar and that it is foolish to only love one specific body. This will make the boy love all beautiful bodies. After a while he will understand that real beauty comes from the mind, not from the body. He will then come to appreciate and love those who are beautiful in mind, whether they are beautiful in body or not.
Aristophanes believes that two humans used to be combined as one, and we were separated by the Gods because they thought we had too much power together. He thinks the purpose of love is to seek out our other half and be with them. In his speech, however, he fails to think about whether or not our other half is good or bad. Diotima takes goodness into account. She says “…a lover does not seek the half or the whole, unless, my friend, it turns out to be good as well” (205E). Her speech is superior to Aristophanes’ because she states clearly that you are not supposed to love someone unless they are good. By good I mean having knowledge and wisdom.
Love is pointless because most of the things it provides can also be provided by platonic friends. Also, platonic friends usually won’t require a restriction of freedom to attain things such as companionship or a feeling of self worth, which love provides at the cost of required sacrifice. Kipnis, however, believes that love is “most essentially human” (P 1). Kipnis, despite being against love in her essay, still acknowledges her view that love is an essential thing for humans. Essential is too strong a word to use for love. I think that love itself is pointless to search for, but if you stumble on a pure love that provides more than it steals, then it’s certainly something to pursue, and possibly consider marrying them. I don’t think that this makes love an essential thing, but instead it’s the want and the need to reproduce that is essential to being human; this goal of reproduction is most attainable when you’re married, so a pure love helps the goal
Diotima, Socrates' great teacher from the Symposium, a work by Plato was one of the most influential women thinkers of all time, whether she was a real person or a literary fictional character. She related to Socrates the theory of love that he described to the partygoers at Agathon's banquet, a celebration of Agathon's victory at the competition of Dionysis in Athens and of Eros.
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.
I have always thought that there was only one type of love, which was that feeling of overwhelming liking to someone else. I am aware that Lust does exist and that it is separate from Love, being that the desire for someone's body rather their mind. In Plato's Symposium, Plato speaks of many different types of love, loves that can be taken as lust as well. He writes about seven different points of view on love coming from the speakers that attend the symposium in honor of Agathon. Although all these men bring up excellent points on their definitions on love, it is a woman that makes the best definition be known. I will concentrate on the difference between the theory of Common and Heavenly love brought up by Pausanias and the important role that Diotima plays in the symposium.
In the Symposium, a most interesting view on love and soul mates are provided by one of the characters, Aristophanes. In the speech of Aristophanes, he says that there is basically a type of love that connects people. Aristophanes begins his description of love by telling the tale of how love began. He presents the tale of three sexes: male, female, and a combination of both. These three distinct sexes represented one’s soul. These souls split in half, creating a mirror image of each one of them. Aristophanes describes love as the search for the other half of your soul in this quote: “When a man’s natural form was split in two, each half went round looking for its other half. They put their arms around one another, and embraced each other, in their desire to grow together again. Aristophanes theme is the power of Eros and how not to abuse it.
As the last speaker, and the most important one, Socrates connects his ideas with Diotima of Mantinea’s story of Love’s origin, nature and purpose. Different from the earlier five speakers who regard Love as an object and praise different sides of it, Socrates, referring to Diotima’s idea, considers Love as a pursuit of beauty gradually ranging from “physical beauty of people in general” (Symposium, Plato, 55) to the “true beauty” (55). The first five speeches bond with each other. Each of them mentions the opinions of the former in order to either support or against them. However, just like the elements of a beautiful picture, they fail to show us the integration of love.
Love and beauty is another theme that recurs in Greek discussion, especially in Plato’s dialogues. In the Phaedrus and especially the Symposium, Plato discusses the nature of erotic love and give the argument for the ultimately transcendental object of love: Beauty. In both dialogues, Plato presents Socrates as a quintessential philosopher who is a lover of wisdom, and through his great speeches we are able to grasp Platonism and Plato’s view on the interesting theme.
This is referred to as Plato’s ladder of love. According to this theory, a lover must give up all previous objects or individuals as he progresses upward on the ladder aiming to discover the Ideal Form of Beauty (Wiki Symposium). Plato describes the steps of the ladder of love to be first, the view of physical beauty, second the view of beauty in general, and following that, the moral beauty of minds and knowledge. Finally, the absolute idea, to view that of beauty itself, and to attain the love of wisdom, is Plato’s last ring on the ladder (Traumatized). Socrates believed “by going through these stages, one will ascend from loving particular kinds of beauty to loving Beauty itself, from which all beautiful things derive their nature” (Sparknotes). This concept became the starting point of the Platonic love theory, a type of love that is pure and non-sexual. In the end, Socrates concluded that there is no greater companion for human nature than
Throughout The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, the author argues that the coevolution of plants and humans is seen within the relationship of humans manipulating plants to fulfill their desires. Pollan touches on four main examples where coevolution can be easily seen throughout history and the present. The apple satisfies sweetness, the tulip beauty, marijuana intoxication, and the potato control. As we are benefitting from evolving the plants for our own interest, the plants themselves are benefitting as well. The environmental message of the book surpasses that of coevolution and dives into the technology of genetic engineering
In classical Greek literature the subject of love is commonly a prominent theme. However, throughout these varied texts the subject of Love becomes a multi-faceted being. From this common occurrence in literature we can assume that this subject had a large impact on day-to-day life. One text that explores the many faces of love in everyday life is Plato’s Symposium. In this text we hear a number of views on the subject of love and what the true nature of love is. This essay will focus on a speech by Pausanius. Pausanius’s speech concentrates on the goddess Aphrodite. In particular he looks at her two forms, as a promoter of “Celestial Love” as well as “Common Love.” This idea of “Common Love” can be seen in a real life context in the tragedy “Hippolytus” by Euripides. This brings the philosophical views made by Pausanius into a real-life context.
Throughout literature, subject matters of desire and destruction often go hand in hand. From desire of destruction to the destruction of desire, there are many ways the subject matter of desire and destruction are constructed into themes. Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire and William Shakespeare in Macbeth take similar stances in this discussion throughout the ages, focusing their views on the destruction of desire. They claim that absolute desire, desire with complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, or at least without through consideration, leads to absolute destruction, whether it be destruction of their life, their self, or hope of obtaining their goal.
The only love is true love. This means that when one loves another, the love that they are feeling should encompass all attributes of the person they are loving. If one were to say that they loved another for their beautiful eyes, this would not be true love. In order for it to be love, one would not just see the beautiful eyes, they would see everything about that person as beautiful. Elizabeth Barrett Browning agrees when she says to not love for a smile or a look, instead one should love for loves sake. ?Thou mayst love on, through love?s eternity? (206 14). True love is also a love that is eternal; true love is never ending.
Some people believe that there is no such thing as “true love” they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. “True Love” is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that “Love is wanting to posses the good forever” In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of “True love”. Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.
One of the eight concepts is “Eros” or Erotic love, which represents sexual passion and desire— typically falling under romantic relationships. Eros is mostly based on sexual feelings and desires rather than anything else. The next type of love is “Philia” or Affectionate love, which describes the love of friends—especially ones that experienced hard times with each other. This type of love is free from romance, but mostly focuses on loyalty. In addition, “Storge” or Familial love symbolizes natural love between family, principally between parents and children. Like “Philia” it is also free of romance. The fourth type of love in Greek society is “Ludus” or Playful love that symbolizes a playful form of love, for example, between lovers. Every relationship should maintain the playful form to retain a fresh relationship and to stray away from always being serious. The fifth type of love is “Mania” or Obsessive love, which a person becomes jealous because they want love and to be loved. This love can lead to many problems in a romantic or interpersonal relationship because of jealousy. Next is “Pragma” or Enduring love, which symbolizes a matured love over time. Furthermore, this relationship has passed physical touches— but developed into a casual, loving relationship. Does not only include marriages, but friendships that have occurred for a long time. Moreover, “Philautia” or Self love occurs when we love ourselves regardless of anything. The Greeks acknowledged that we must first love ourselves before we can demonstrate love to anyone else. We cannot share what we do not obtain, we must first love ourselves (Sol, 2016). Additionally, the eighth type of Greek love is “Agape” or Selfless love, which is unconditional love. Out of all the types of loves, it is the purest due to the reason it does not expect anything. Regardless of how many mistakes or flaws a person has,