Plato’s Symposium (Kristen Black)
Dated between 385 and 370 BC, Plato’s Symposium is a collection of speeches at a Greek gathering that all make attempts to define love and address love’s complications. The introduction serves to explain that the story is not happening as the reader is reading it, but this is simply a retelling by characters outside of the actual party. Phaedrus is the first to speak and decides to talk to his companions about the presence of bravery through love. A product of Chaos and Earth, love is actually a god, and the bravery that it provokes in men is made apparent in storytelling that Phaedrus performs. Pausanias brings up the differences between Common Love and Heavenly Love. He believes both are worthy of praise, but Common Love is felt through the body; Common Love typically involves sexual acts between males and females. Heavenly Love is more about the connection of minds and souls between two males. Eryximachus believes that love is found in the balance of opposites that exist in nature. Aristophanes describes an origin story in which Zeus, the supreme god of Olympians, cut humans in half, forcing each half to search for the other half, in constant pursuit of wholeness. Socrates is next to speak and claims that love is between ugliness and beauty, between mortal and immortal, and between wisdom and ignorance. He then goes into details to describe the “Ladder of Love” involving love’s end goal of giving birth from the soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment