In Greek culture around the time of Plato, the perfect ideal person was considered. Plato’s idea that there was a perfect world of ideas affected this pieces subject and the subject’s action. Many works of his time period were sculptures that were meant to be viewed from all angles, attempting to be a closer match to that of the ideal. This idea that the ideal world was real and what matter not the physical also effect the actions depicted in many works of this time period. Most of the works are
“Plato’s Symposium” Kaboom, that was the sound of Zeus’s thunder crashing towards the Earth. During this time period the people in Greece believed in these gods. Also happening at the same time period was when the worlds most famous philosophers began to come out and teach. Most importantly the philosophers did what they were suppose to, and that was to question the world around them. One of the most famous philosophers in the Greek period around 416 B.C. was a man named Socrates. Socrates was
Context and Contradictions in Plato's Phaedrus and Plato's Symposium 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
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. Before we search for the idea of why Diotima is a woman, we should first discuss a little about her. We know that, if
The Symposium is a book written by Greek Philosopher Plato, dated in c.385-380 b.c. Plato was a student of Socrates as well as a writer and scholar. Amongst many other things like mathematician and scientist Plato helped pave the way to western philosophy. Composed for all who are curious of love and want to further their understandings of love. The symposium tells a story about what love truly is, and how love exactly works, along with the nature, purpose, and idea of love. The book is constructed
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
Gender-Based Notions of Homoerotic Love: Sappho and Plato’s Symposium The poetry of Sappho, and the speeches in Plato’s Symposium both deal primarily with homoerotic love, although Sappho, one of the only female poets in Ancient Greece, speaks from the female perspective, while Plato’s work focuses on the nature of this love between men. There are several fundamental elements that are common to both perspectives, including similar ideals of youth and beauty, and the idea of desire as integral
categories of their friendships are well elucidated. The friendship that Alcibiades seeks to obtain is that of erotic pleasure, while Socrates shows qualities that reflect a perfect kind, allowing this relationship to be asymmetrical. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates, an important figure in Greek philosophy, is depicted as one who possesses great virtue and the embodiment of one who has attained the idea of beauty by successfully climbing the ladder of love described by Diotima. Although possessing
The Symposium (which means “Drinking Party”) (Puchner), is a connotation that goes back to Ancient Greece from approximately the seventh century BCE, and was a significant part of the Greek culture, known as a gathering for the upper socially classed Greek men. A symposium was held at one of the homes of a participant, in a room specifically dedicated to such assemblies called the “andrōn”. In this room seven to eleven couches were organized along the walls, allowing the men to sprawl out on while
them without choking. We end up turning these immeasurable things into literary defecation. Love, for instance, has been constant subject among writers and philosophers for eons. Everyone from E.L James to Plato has written on love and attempted to explore it with language. In Plato’s Symposium, love is discussed
else matters. When I was reading Plato’s Symposium this song kept playing in my mind for the fact that it addresses different kinds of love, or eros, which is the main concept of the Symposium, just with a different approach. Everyone has heard of Plato’s Symposium at one point in their life, after all it is a literary classic. When I began reading the novel I had no idea what a symposium really was, but according to the book’s introduction a symposium literally means “drinks party” when translated
allegories. The words of Socrates in the Symposium and Republic were written by his mentee, Plato, who uses Socrates’ persona to reflect his own thoughts (though, not necessarily all of his proper beliefs). Therefore, the apparent inconsistencies between Plato’s works may be reconciled when the disposition of Socrates in these texts is considered: he is a character. Socrates and other characters are purely vehicles of Plato’s thought-provoking persuasion. In the Symposium, the interlocutors give praise to
many disciples throughout his life including Plato, one of the more popular students. Plato is the author of many philosophical writings, many of which are about Socrates. He questioned the idea of virtue and studied the
ECHOES OF PLATO’S SYMPOSIUM DOWN THE AGES “Because of the centrality and power of love in human experience, men and women throughout the ages have felt the compulsion to sing songs, to write verse, and to tell stories about this ineffable and mysterious force which leads them to the peaks of felicity, and to the depths of despair. Love indeed is an ultimate, if not the ultimate, human concern. It is the universal principle undergirding all human
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. Let’s first focus on the Phaedrus, where Plato gives a detailed account of the psychology and the art of
Plato’s Symposium: The 7th Speaker - Interstitial Space of the Twin Soul The Symposium is considered one of Plato’s great literary works. Although short in its Platonic dialogue, many philosophers agree that Plato wrote the Symposium to explore the true nature of love through Socrates’ wisdom. The Symposium is set at a dinner party and offers speeches from six prominent Athenian intellectuals. Each speaker presents varying perspectives on love as a eulogy to Eros, the God of Love. The varying perspectives
literature, is commonly considered as a prominent theme. Love, in present days, always appears in the categories of books, movies or music, etc. Interpreted differently by different people, Love turns into a multi-faceted being. 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
Plato’s The Symposium creates an atmosphere that attempts to justify love in a way that excludes women in order to substantiate Plato’s belief that men are more intellectually capable than women. The constant explanation and praise of love among men not only illustrates Plato’s view that males are superior, but it also reveals his reverence for relationships between men as opposed to relationships between men and women. In addition, while the Symposium focuses on a sense of love that yearns to find
in Plato's Symposium 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
Socrates stuns the Symposium when he tells how Diotima showed him that “Love is neither beautiful nor good,” thus contradicting the theme of all speeches before his (201E). Diotima’s logic begins by postulating that love is equivalent to desire. This statement is supported by Aristophanes’s speech in which he describes the origin of human nature. Zeus split the spheres of the three original types of humans: male, female and androgynous; to form the two sexes. Ever since the division of spheres