Plato Love According To Diotima
Love According to Plato “What is love?” This question, while seemingly simple, is very complex. To many people love is special. Love plays a countless number of roles, both positive and negative, for each and every person. Therefore, everyone at some point in their lives has experienced love. It is something that we all long for, thereby making it something that all humans have in common.
Each person’s experience is different which makes it hard for anyone to find the right words to express this intense feeling. This is due to the word “love” being an expansive term in the English language. The word “love” covers a variety of emotions, attitudes and behaviors; it can be taken in a romantic, familial, friendly or material context. In today’s …show more content…
1). In Plato’s The Symposium, Diotima mentions a ladder of love which can be viewed as the journey from the appreciation of the body to the knowledge of the Form of Beauty. According to Diotima, love is a desire for things one does not have. Since what a person loves is beautiful then this means that they themselves lack beauty (Levy, Santas). Love and happiness is a desire everyone shares and is obtained through possession of the good. People desire what is good for them, thereby making what a person loves (i.e. art, music, sports) good for them. This desire will never be extinguished since every person will forever wish to possess what is good for them. Love then becomes not just the desire for the good but also the desire for immortality (Challender, Levy). Diotima tells Socrates that, “…the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old” (Socrate’s Speech from the Symposium, pg. 8). However, the act of giving birth is not the means to reach immortality, merely mankind’s attempt at being immortal. For Diotima tells Socrates, “Marvel not then at the love which all men have their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality.” (Socrate’s Speech from the Symposium, pg.
Each person’s experience is different which makes it hard for anyone to find the right words to express this intense feeling. This is due to the word “love” being an expansive term in the English language. The word “love” covers a variety of emotions, attitudes and behaviors; it can be taken in a romantic, familial, friendly or material context. In today’s …show more content…
1). In Plato’s The Symposium, Diotima mentions a ladder of love which can be viewed as the journey from the appreciation of the body to the knowledge of the Form of Beauty. According to Diotima, love is a desire for things one does not have. Since what a person loves is beautiful then this means that they themselves lack beauty (Levy, Santas). Love and happiness is a desire everyone shares and is obtained through possession of the good. People desire what is good for them, thereby making what a person loves (i.e. art, music, sports) good for them. This desire will never be extinguished since every person will forever wish to possess what is good for them. Love then becomes not just the desire for the good but also the desire for immortality (Challender, Levy). Diotima tells Socrates that, “…the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old” (Socrate’s Speech from the Symposium, pg. 8). However, the act of giving birth is not the means to reach immortality, merely mankind’s attempt at being immortal. For Diotima tells Socrates, “Marvel not then at the love which all men have their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality.” (Socrate’s Speech from the Symposium, pg.