Paste your essay in here…Olivia Tu
Professor Limnatis
Hofstra University Honors College
4 October 2017
Plato’s Ideas on Love
Plato’s Symposium discusses the ever-present, complicated, and enigmatic idea of love. Throughout the book, several characters give diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas on the nature of love, its benefits, its origin, and the different types of love. Each speech builds on ideas that will lead to the conclusion made in Diotima’s speech.
One of the first ideas to be addressed is the nature of love, and how it affects people. Phaedrus explains his belief that Love promotes virtue in people and gives them courage. Because people want to impress their lovers and avoid shame, they will strive to act honorably and bravely. For a man, there is nothing more painful than for a boy he loves to witness him committing a shameful act. The power of love is so strong that if there was a city comprised of boys and their lovers, it would be “the best possible system of society, for they would hold back from all that is shameful, and seek honor in each other’s eyes” (Plato 10). Phaedrus emphasizes the power of love by saying that a city founded on it would be of the highest quality.
This introduces the idea of love being a powerful motivator, therefore setting the foundation for the ladder of love mentioned in Diotima’s speech. Phaedrus is the first to discuss how love motivates people to strive for higher ideals. In his speech, the ideal is esteem in the eyes of a loved one. Later on, more ideals such as wisdom and order will be mentioned. This will develop into the “climbing” of the ladder of love, as explained by Diotima.
After Phaedrus sets the foundation for the ladder of love, Pausanias expounds on the hierarchy of this ladder, and the different forms of love. He claims that love is not inherently good or bad; it depends on how it is performed. There are two kinds of love: Common Aphrodite and Heavenly Aphrodite. The former type is desire for the body and sex, and does not take virtue or wisdom into account. Someone experiencing this kind of love will do anything to achieve base satisfaction. This kind of love has potential to be bad, and is less valuable because it focuses on “the body more than the soul, and…the least intelligent partners” (Plato 14). The latter type typically takes the form of a transaction in which a boy gives sexual favors to a man in exchange for wisdom and enlightenment. This love transcends the body and creates devotion to knowledge and enlightenment. Pausanias places all favor on this kind of love because it focuses on “what is by nature stronger and more intelligent” rather than base desires (Plato 14).
Similar to Diotima, Pausanias places a higher value on love of intelligence rather than love of sexual and physical pleasure. Thus, the ladder of love begins to take shape. Pausanias also introduces the important concept of intellectuality playing a key role in the search for true beauty and love. The mind takes clear precedence over the body.
Thus, the first two speeches have introduced the motivating power of love, as well as its different forms. However, the nature of love itself has not been thoroughly explained yet. Eryximachus addresses this subject in his speech. Like Pausanias, he believes love has the potential to be good or bad. As a physician, it is his duty to encourage good love and eliminate bad love. He says love’s power comes from being “directed, in temperance and justice, toward the good” (Plato 23). Love breeds moderation by encouraging good qualities and balancing out the bad. He also claims that love is not just found in people, but also in music, nature, and medicine. The balancing nature of love acts in harmonizing music and creating health in the body. Therefore, love is a universal phenomenon that balances and promotes moderation and equality in many areas of life.
Eryximachus alludes to the idea of love being a “moderation” of two qualities rather than one extreme, as explained further by Diotima. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but rather is simply searching for those qualities. In addition, love is not a god or a mortal, but rather a spirit that acts as an intermediary between a person’s love and the object of their love.
Thus far, all of the speeches have been in support of the ideas Diotima introduces later on. However, it is against the nature of philosophy to only consume ideas in agreement with one belief. Thus, Plato introduces the ideas of Aristophanes in order to encourage the reader to question the concepts that have been discussed so far. Aristophanes tells a strange story about eight-limbed, two-faced people who were split in half long ago, and are ever after searching for the person from whom they were split. In essence, he tells the origin story of soulmates. He claims that once a person were to find his other half, he would like nothing better than to “come together and melt together with the one he loves” (Plato 29). Aristophanes claims that it is human nature to desire to unite with another person. This desire is called love. Aristophanes’s speech implies that the highest desire a person can have is to join with another person.
This idea is rather contrary to the sentiment expressed in Diotima’s speech, and alluded to in Phaedrus’s and Pausanias’s speeches. Aristophanes implies that, one a person is welded with their soulmate, they would be satisfied. However, this is the opposite of the idea that love is a force that keeps a person always searching and wanting for something higher.
After successfully introducing a foundation for Diotima’s speech as well as a counter argument of sorts, Plato broadens the subject back to the nature of love. Agathon’s speech is rather simple; he says love is beautiful and virtuous. He claims he is talking about the god rather than the benefits people gain from love, as others had discussed before him. He ascribes to love the qualities of sensitivity, bravery, justice, wisdom, and moderation. Love favors people who are “soft and gentle”. It avoids walking on earth, skulls, and other materials that are not soft, and settles in gentle souls. This shows that love values the intangible. Love is also “balanced and fluid in his nature”, which allows it to be moderate (Plato 33). Similar to Eryximachus, Agathon alludes to love’s avoidance of extremes. It is “neither the cause nor the victim of any injustice”, and therefore embodies justice (Plato 34). The bravery of love comes from the fact that “Ares has no hold on Love, but Love does on Ares” (Plato 35). As in Phaedrus’s speech, Agathon draws a strong connection between love, virtue, and courage. Through his reasoning, Agathon paints an image of a balanced, moral, and strong spirit of love.
This speech acts as a callback to first speech, where Phaedrus also talked about virtue and laudable characteristics in relation to love. By broadening the picture of the characteristics of love, Agathon creates a smooth transition to the conclusion of the Symposium. Agathon’s discussion of love itself allows Socrates to question him on this issue, and subsequently introduce the ideas mentioned in Diotima’s speech.
Socrates corrects Agathon by saying he is talking about the object of love, not love itself. He questions Agathon to show him that love, because it desires beauty, is not beautiful because one cannot desire what one already has. Using the same logic, he proves that love is not good. Socrates only makes these claims, however, so that he can afterwards show how Diotima refuted these ideas.
Diotima’s speech is a culmination and a clarification of the ideas expressed in the previous speeches. She explains that, just because love is not wise or beautiful does not mean that it is ugly or ignorant. Love is simply the desire for wisdom and beauty. It is also a spirit that mediates between a person and their object of desire. Being born from Poverty and Resource, love is constantly searching for what it needs, but has the cunning to obtain it.
From there, she expounds further upon what it is love actually wants. Reproduction as the ultimate goal of love. Everyone is pregnant is some way, and everyone desires to give birth. This birth can be the physical production of a child or the production of ideas and wisdom. In any form, reproduction is a way to become “immortal” and extend one’s ideas and legacy into the future. She also explains the ladder of love, in which a person “goes always upwards” and progresses from loving the physical to loving the intellectual and intangible. A man will grow from loving one beautiful body to loving all beautiful bodies (Plato 59). This advances to loving minds, then to loving knowledge. The final stage is to “know just what it is to be beautiful” (Plato 59). The ideal of beauty itself is undefinable, yet purer and more fulfilling than the mere images of beauty. Therefore, it is the highest achievement to gaze upon beauty itself.
One of the most important ideas in this passage is that love is not static; it should be dynamic and future-oriented. The idea is that one must be ever climbing the ladder of love. Love can’t end with togetherness, as expressed in Aristophanes’s speech, because there should always be more searching and questioning about the truth and desire. This sentiment about love is similar to that of philosophy. In both love and philosophy, one should never be satisfied, and instead should be constantly searching for the truth. By equating love to philosophy, Diotima stresses the importance of knowledge, enlightenment, and the constant search for a higher level of both.
Though Diotima and Socrates place a higher value on knowledge and loving beauty itself, I don’t think any one “rung” on the ladder of love is necessarily worthless, or that upon reaching a higher place one should forgo the lower levels. It is not a hierarchy so much as a progression. There is pleasure to be gained and concepts to learn from all stages, and one is not more valuable than the other. Although knowledge may be fulfilling to some, intellectuals are not superior beings to those who choose to love beautiful bodies instead.
Though comprehensive and conclusive, Diotima’s speech is not the last to appear in the Symposium. Alcibiades makes his drunken entrance and expresses his sadness that he could never seduce Socrates. He is unsuccessful in this endeavor because, while Alcibiades loves Socrates’s beautiful body, Socrates is higher on the ladder of love and instead values ideas and knowledge.
Alcibiades’s speech serves as an example of how different forms of the ladder of love exist in life. There will always be people who are in different stages of progress in realizing the true nature of love, knowledge, and beauty. Through this example, Plato grounds and materializes a rather abstract and philosophical discussion on love. Despite this, the true message of the book is not one of materialism. Plato is encouraging the reader to seek knowledge, strive for virtue, and most importantly, question everything.