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Plato's symposium on love
Plato's symposium on love
Plato's symposium on love
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On the surface, Sappho’s fragments seem like they are simply about a naïve and lovesick girl. In the Symposium, Alcibiades appears similarly to Sappho, being extremely devoted to Socrates. Both Sappho and Alcibiades want to experience love because they think it will make them happier, but each for different reasons. Sappho wants the experience of loving and being loved. Alcibiades wants the knowledge he believes he will gain from love, but neither are approaching love the correct way, as Diotima and Socrates describe it, to actually make any real and permanent improvement. Love is a means for a human to improve oneself and one’s life, but love must be directed towards this improvement for progress to be made.
Alcibiades thinks that by loving
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Diotima says when using the ladder one, “…should go from one to two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful practices, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful practices, and from practices to beautiful forms of learning” (Plato 49). This progression is important to be able to get the highest value out of love which is to get the ultimate knowledge that it can provide about beauty and good. Sappho and Alcibiades misuse these steps in different ways. Sappho says that some believe that the most beautiful sight on earth is that of a powerful army, either on foot or on ships, “But I say that it is what you love” (Carson). Sappho thinks the most beautiful sight is what you love, but according to Diotima’s ladder people should love things because they are beautiful, not that things are beautiful because you love them. Sappho is stuck on the bodies portion of the ladder. She is only directing her love towards the physical aspects and experience of love because she believes this will make her happy. During his speech, Alcibiades says about Socrates, “My heart pounds and tears flood out when he speaks” (Plato 54). Alcibiades is genuinely attracted to Socrates’ mind, as seen by his appreciation of Socrates’ words, and he thinks that this one mind will unlock higher knowledge for him. This puts him higher on the ladder than Sappho. He is starting to appreciate practices and learning through listening to the speeches of Socrates, but neither are making progress up the ladder. Alcibiades is not working though the rungs of the ladder himself, he is relying on Socrates to transfer knowledge to him, but even if this worked, Socrates is unwilling to love him. Sappho is stuck on the beautiful bodies portion of the ladder. Sappho’s focus is purely on appearance and the experience of mutual desire. She has not
Socrates a classical Greek philosopher and character of Plato’s book Phaedo, defines a philosopher as one who has the greatest desire of acquiring knowledge and does not fear death or the separation of the body from the soul but should welcome it. Even in his last days Socrates was in pursuit of knowledge, he presents theories to strengthen his argument that the soul is immortal. His attempts to argue his point can’t necessarily be considered as convincing evidence to support the existence of an immortal soul.
The Tragedy of Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium. In Symposium, a selection from The Dialogues of Plato, Plato uses historical allusions to demonstrate Alcibiades’ frustration with both social expectations for the phallus and his inability to meet these expectations. Alcibiades’ inability to have a productive sexual relationship effectively castrates him and demonstrates the impotence caused by an overemphasis on eroticism. The tragedy of Alcibiades is that he realizes he is unable to gain virtue through sexual relationships and will therefore be forced to remain mortal, yet he is unable to alter his condition.
For these two articles that we read in Crito and Apology by Plato, we could know Socrates is an enduring person with imagination, because he presents us with a mass of contradictions: Most eloquent men, yet he never wrote a word; ugliest yet most profoundly attractive; ignorant yet wise; wrongfully convicted, yet unwilling to avoid his unjust execution. Behind these conundrums is a contradiction less often explored: Socrates is at once the most Athenian, most local, citizenly, and patriotic of philosophers; and yet the most self-regarding of Athenians. Exploring that contradiction, between Socrates the loyal Athenian citizen and Socrates the philosophical critic of Athenian society, will help to position Plato's Socrates in an Athenian legal and historical context; it allows us to reunite Socrates the literary character and Athens the democratic city that tried and executed him. Moreover, those help us to understand Plato¡¦s presentation of the strange legal and ethical drama.
Milestone 1: Literacy Analysis Paper: Love means loving someone unconditionally. Loving them with flaws and all. Love is a part of being human. How can you love without accepting the society you live in? Nowlan’s poem
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
Sappho, as seen in poem 16 when she states that Helen went sailing for Troy not for her children or parents, but for love, implies that love is of utmost importance, more so even than one’s family. Sappho attempts to portray love realistically; with both the joy and pain that love brings to one’s life. In poem 31, Sappho focuses on the sharp pain love is capable of bestowing on someone. Sappho first speaks bitterly about the man talking to the women she loves. After recounting the passion she feels for this women, Sappho then discusses how she feels as if her despair might kill her. The jealousy expressed in this poem is one of the many woeful consequences of
Socrates is struggling to find a job not only because he is an older African-American, but also because he is a convicted murderer. Many times throughout the text Socrates finds himself having violent thoughts and has an internal battle to keep himself under control. This struggle to fight off his violent past is an ironic and direct analogy to the Greek philosopher Socrates; who is famously know for philosophizing about the ethics of good and evil. Samuel Coale describes Socrates character in a critical essay, “he tries to achieve self-reliance in a world which barely recognizes him as a self or an individual at all, and that self-reliance rests squarely on his own willed self-restraint” (Coale). Socrates finds himself trying to apply for a job at a super market when it is clear that management has no interest in hiring him.
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 is arguably the most powerful emotion possessed by mankind; it is the impalpable bond that allows individuals to connect and understand one another. Pure love is directly related to divinity. Without love, happiness and prosperity become unreachable goals. An individual that possesses all the desired superficial objects in the world stands alone without the presence of love. For centuries love has been marveled by all that dare encounter it. Countless books and poems have been transcribed to explain the phenomenon of love, but love surpasses all intellectual explanations and discussions. Love is not a definition, but rather a thought, an idea. This idea, the idea of love, burns inside us all. Instinctually, every soul on Earth is
“I am to speak in praise of Socrates, gentleman and I will just try to do it by means of similes” (215c). Alcibiades compares Socrates to the gods Silenus and Marsyas. Silenus isn’t the most attractive god but is beautiful on the inside just like Socrates. Marsyas lures people with her music, just like Socrates lures people with his words. Alcibiades is a young attractive man that believes Socrates will want to desire him just base off his looks.
The egotistical solider, Pyrogopolinices, believes that he is irresistible to all women, having the ability to pick whatever woman he wanted as his own. This vanity is the exact thing that gets him beat at the end of the play. Pyrogopolinices abducts Philocomasium, the courtesan and lover of Pleusicles. Palaestrio, the slave of Pleusicles, goes to tell his master what has happened and in the end, is captured and put in the same house at Philocomasium. Keeping their friendship under the radar, the two find ways to reunite the lovers and to eventually free themselves from Pyrogopolinices.
Because of the many translators of the original Greek that Sappho wrote her poems in, each version you see is different. The general idea, however, remains the same, and the emotions still come across strongly, no matter what. Because of this, when reading Sappho’s work, you should read a few different translators, because each will stress different
In Sappho's poems, she does not take on a typical point of view of love as she describes the allure and agony through her own experience. This alternative approach to love is shown in Sappho's poems 16 as she makes a connection between her own life and the emotions behind the Trojan war. Also, in 31 she describes a physical pain that opens up her life to the audience through her experience with jealousy. Another link between author and audience is seen in poem 94 as Sappho tells a story of her heartbreak. Then in Sappho's fragments 48 and 51, there are short personal phrases, allowing the readers to fill in the rest with their thoughts. It is with Sappho's first-person perspective that she creates an intimate connection with the audience
with some very different views of love as brought to us by Agathon, Phaedrus and
In this way, he is presenting the philosopher is the best parts of Eros, for he both knows what he lacks and has the desire to seek it out. If he knew he was wise, he would lack the desire to seek wisdom. But he must also have the desire to seek wisdom. So Socrates, a great philosopher, presents the philosopher as the ultimate “lover.” Although Socrates is presented as a humble and simple man, it is quite impossible to ignore these connections.