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Plato symposium different types of love
Plato's impact on human nature
Plato's impact on human nature
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When I was a child growing up, my biological father taught me a lesson I will never forget. He had a lovely girlfriend. Let’s call her Olive. Olive and my father were together for years, living happily and enjoying each other’s company. However, once I become older I was introduced to my father’s second girlfriend, let’s call her Jenny. Jenny, Olive and my father lived to together in the same house, just the three of them. Subsequently, the relationship did not last. I did not discover the truth until years later. Olive wanted a monogamous relationship with my father but my father did not feel the same way. The result of Olive’s heartbreak lead to the destruction of their strange but seemly happy relationship. The trio split and would go one …show more content…
In the Phaedrus, Socrates gives several speeches on the subject of Romantic love. Incidentally, Socrates is discussing about the same type of love I am. Given the time period and the numerous new definitions and discoveries on romantic since Plato’s time I interpret that when Socrates speaks of romantic love, he is speaking about true love. In his speech Socrates speaks of a young man he is hypothetically in love with. Socrates sees beauty (a God) that he is lacking within this young man, not just beauty in his appearance but beauty within his mind. Socrates said, “All soul looks after that lacks a soul, and patrols all of heaven, taking different shapes at different times (Phaedrus 111)”. Meaning the mind seeks for what it lacks. The young man is missing some important qualities to become whole while Socrates is lacking the beauty within the boy. He is lacking the knowledge and passion of a true philosopher. Socrates begins to cultivate his true love by teaching and improving the qualities of the young man. The young man and Socrates shared a beautiful goal of gaining knowledge and reproducing ideas. I write this example to support my claim that true love can only be found between two people in a monogamous relationship pursuing a beautiful …show more content…
Is it a chemical cocktail of hormones going crazing within our bodies? Is it some godly force that leads us to “the one” or is it for survival? “If love does possesses "a nature" which is identifiable by some means-a personal expression, a discernible pattern of behavior, or other activity, it can still be asked whether that nature can be properly understood by humanity (Moseley 2).” There is still a lot we do not know about love. I personal believe that people fall in love for all sorts of reasons. Love can occur when an individual sees godly qualities in a person like Plato. Love can come out of the need to no to be alone and survive with a partner at your back or maybe you see yourself in the person you love. There are many reasons to fall in love, but falling in love happens between two people. Two people build a relationship, two people set up the rules of that relationship and if that relationship progresses to true love then it is up to the two to pursue their beautiful goal
It is well known that Plato, a devoted student of Socrates, chronicled many of Socrates' speeches and conversations. Every so often one can find instances where Socrates and other players in these conversations seem to contradict themselves, or at least muddle their arguments. One such occurrence of this is in Plato's Symposium and Plato's Phaedrus. Both texts speak of love in its physical sense, both texts describe love and its effects, and both discuss how it is best realized, yet they do this in very different fashions, and for different reasons.
Love is one of life's great mysteries. People live and build their lives around love. For many people, love, or the quest to find love, is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Love is arguably the most overwhelming of all emotions. Many ideals and religions consider the bond of love sacred. But, why do people fall in love? Is romantic love an enigma, or can it be reduced to the presence of certain chemicals and neurotransmitters within the brain at a given time?
Socrates has Agathon confirm that when one does not have the thing that he desires and loves, that is when he desires and loves it. They agree that one "loves what he lacks and has not" (96). In Agathon's view of love that he expressed earlier, love is always of beautiful things. Therefore, if one loves what he lacks, then "Love lacks and has not beauty" (96), Socrates says. Agathon says this must be the case and no longer has any idea of his previous statements. If Love loves beautiful things, then it is not itself beautiful. And if everything beautiful is good, then love also lacks goodness.
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.
The notion behind loving someone is simply a very complicated and esoteric in nature. People often describe a certain chemistry, as in a certain attraction, needed between two individuals who are in love but Barbara Fredrickson is able to coordinate the definition of love on the basis of chemicals. Barbara Fredrickson is able to provide the definition of love on the deductive reasoning based on chemistry, biology, and neurology explained in Love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything we Feel, Think, Do, and Become. As Barbara explains "With each micro-moment of love, then, you climb another rung on the spiraling ladder that lifts you up to your higher ground, to richer and more compassionate social relationships, to greater resilience
Can a simple emotion such as love be regarded as one of the greatest weapons to create or attain power? It’s a renowned fact that human beings are by nature designed to need, crave, and even require love as part of their survival mechanisms. It comes to no surprise that one of the first accounts of antique poetry maintains love and the craving for it as its main theme; thereby, reinforcing the deep importance that it upholds in the lives of many individuals. Sappho’s “Deathless Aphrodite” clearly epitomizes the suffering and bitterness that arises from an unrequited love. In Sappho’s case, which portrays the case of many, she constantly finds herself in loneliness and despair for though she tries repeatedly, she is only let down recurrently as no one reciprocates the love she gives. It is only the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who holds
The meaning of love is as intricate and unique as the purpose that it serves. It seems that the nature of love is found in the mind, the body and the soul. In Plato’s Symposium each member of the drinking party gives their own interpretation of love. As each speaker engages in their discourse, the concept of love is evaluated from different angles. According to Phaedrus, homoerotic love is the highest form of love and that sacrificing oneself for love will result in a multitude of rewards from the gods, while Pausanias believes that there are two forms of love: Commonly and Heavenly. As a physician, Eryximachus claims that love appears in every part of the universe, including plants and animals and that protection results from love. Before starting his speech, Aristophanes tells the group that his discussion about love may seem completely absurd, as he explains that in the beginning one body had two people who were eventually split in half by Zeus. This is meant to explain why people are constantly looking for their “other half”. Moreover Agathon, the poet the symposium is celebrating, critiques the previous speakers by stating that they failed to praise the god of love. He claims that love rejects feebleness and embraces youthfulness while also implying that love creates justice, courage and wisdom.
Within Symposium, Plato portrayed Love not as an idealization, but rather on the judgment that was made from Love’s control of the human body (lecture). One speech in particular, the one told by Aristophanes, presents an interest and mythical view on the concept of love. The love he describes is a dedication to the idea of soulmate love (lecture). Spherical people were being that were completely round, “they had four hands each, as many legs as hands, and two faces, exactly alike, on a rounded neck. Between the two faces, which were on opposite sides, was one head with four ears (Plato 25).” As these beings has more limbs and eyes than any god, they were considered too powerful which led to the god Zeus, splitting them in half. Once split, the beings began to die as they starved and became idle as they could not live without their other half (Plato 26-27). Aristophanes concluded that as their separation from one another was the cause to their deaths it was no less than a demonstration for the desire humans have to love one another, as stated on page 27, “This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other … heal the wound of human nature.” The perspective Aristophanes presents is about a fusion between one object - or individual, and the object of desire; love is about momentary intimacy both physical and emotional. Aristophanes presents the desire of the momentary intimacy that the human body craves in his speech by saying “ The purpose was this so that … they could stop embracing, return to their jobs, and look after their other needs in life (Plato 27).” This particular quote is important because it represents Aristophanes’ overall view that, human beings desire one another, they need one another; however, one they obtain their object of desire they are free to continue on with the rest of life’s
In Plato’s work Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausania, Eryximachus, Aristophane and Agathon, each of them presents a speech to either praise or definite Love. Phaedrus first points out that Love is the primordial god; Pausanias brings the theme of “virtue” into the discussion and categorizes Love into “good” one or “bad” one; Eryximachus introduces the thought of “moderation’ and thinks that Love governs such fields as medicine and music; Aristophanes draws attention to the origin and purposes of Love; Agathon enunciates that the correct way to present an eulogy is first to praise its nature and gifts. 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 from “physical beauty of people in general” (Symposium, Plato, 55) to the “true beauty” (55).
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
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.
Now in the third speech, Socrates’ cautious soul addresses him of his alluring defamation of love opposed to the divinity face of love. “ …A[a]ccording to Ibycus, lest by ‘doing something amiss with the gods, I should take in exchange honor from human beings’. ”(Phaedrus p. 45) By making amends Socrates begins a retraction of his speech. Socrates explains that love stems from a form of madness, but clarifies that not all madness is wicked.
According to the stories by Edith Hamilton in Mythology, love can be deadly/dangerous/woeful, inevitable/necessary/destined, and sweet/helpful. To begin, Hamilton shows that love can be sweet and helpful. This is the case with Ceyx and Alcyone in “Ceyx and Alcyone.” Love ended up saving one of the lover’s life. When Ceyx went on a sea voyage, Alcyone warned him that it would be perilous and that he could die because the winds are so vicious and acute. “She told him with streaming tears and in a voice of broken sobs, that she knew as few others could the power of the winds upon the sea. In her father’s palace…‘I have seen the broken planks of ships tossed up. Oh, do not go…at least take me with you. I can endure whatever comes to us together” (110). However, Ceyx loved Alcyone so much that he did not want her to get hurt, so he did not let her go with him. A vicious hurricane hit the sea the day that Ceyx sailed. He ended up dying but was happy that Alcyone was unscathed. “The men on the quivering, battered boat mad with terror, all except one who thought only of Alcyone and rejoiced that she was in safety” (111). In this case Ceyx’s love for Alcyone was sweet and ended up helpful for his lover; had he let her come along she would have most likely died. His love for her was too strong. At the end the gods pitied the situation and resurrected Ceyx and made him and Alcyone birds so they could live happily ever after. Thus, in this story, love was helpful in two ways—it helped save Alcyone’s life, and love ultimately was responsible for turning Alcyone and Ceyx into birds where they lived happily, together, for a very long time. “Pygmalion and Galatea” also shows how love can be benevolent and helpful. Pygmalion was a “woman-hater” u...