Platos Symposium Essay -- Socrates Love Symposium Essays Plato

Platos Symposium What is the consequence of love? What does love feel like? How does love come approximately? No one can truly explain it, yet in some way its understood. In Platos Symposium, a dinner party was held with the discussion of love as the main topic. Everyone was required to make a patois, an ode to Love, the spirit. The philosopher, Socrates gave his speech prevail, claiming that his speech was provided a repetition of what a wise wo gentleman named Diotima once told him. The speech was a powerful one, save before the night was over, a drunk Alcibiades entered. He was asked to make a eulogy for Love as well, but instead, talked ab erupt the nature of Socrates. The nature of Love and the nature of Socrates turned out to be extremely similar. In the Symposium, Socrates can be seen as the soma of Love itself. The notion of love that was understood at the end of the Symposium came astir(predicate) gradually. It transformed from speaker to speaker over the course of the party, and could be compared to the safe and sound process of understanding love that Socrates tried to explain in his profess speech. Its complexity was attained by taking small steps in a larger direction. Diotima explained to Socrates, that to attain the deepest love, he had to follow a accepted order. Much like stepping up on the rungs in a run(211c), loves nature started small, with Phaedrus and Pausinas merely stating that there was good love and bad love. This was the showtime step, starting with beautiful things(211c) and making those things reason for... ascent(211c) up the proverbial ladder. Next Eryximachus speech compared loves importance to that of medicines. He used the things of this world as rungs in a ladder(211c). Aristophanes then gives love a comedic approach, fracture up the adulation. Agathon was next, and his speech showed how love affected peoples minds. It created great poets, and spawned the practices of hedonism, luxury, and sensualism(197d). Aga thon was last before Socrates, and the closest to Socrates view. He was at the final steps of the deepest love, sightedness the beauty of peoples activities(211c) and of intellectual endeavors(211c).Love, the spirit, was said to be the son of Plenty and impoverishment(203c). One parent a polar opposite of the other, coming together to form the middle path named Love. The spirit Love was full of self-conflic... ...lings were not a eulogy for Love, they were personal opinions of his experiences with Socrates, and bluntly stated it. Although it must be taken into consideration that he was characterized as drunk while plentiful his speech, he reminded the party that the truth comes from wine(217e). Essentially, reassuring the reader that he is not in a condition to be making up lies. His description of Socrates nature was similar to that of Socrates own description of loves nature. However, Alcibiades was not at the party when Socrates made his speech, so there was no way could le ad used it to fashion a similar story of his own.Socrates was regarded as the wisest man at the party. He could need given a second-rate give notice (of)(215d) on love, as Alcibiades would have said, and woman, man, or child(215d) would have been overwhelmed and fascinate(215d). It was the effect Socrates had on people. Perhaps he was the embodiment of love? in time if his speech was fictional, he held a captivated audience of men who would have reveled in the chance to lay(219b) with the Socrates. Works CitedPlato, and Robin Waterfield, trans. Symposium. New York Oxford University Press, 1994.