Plato's Symposium: The Greatest Philosophers Of Today

It seems to be that the greatest philosophers of history all learned from one another. Aristotle taught Socrates, who taught Plato. We are lucky enough to have access to the minds of these wonderful theorists through their own texts and others’ accounts of their ponderings. Though the times are different, the ideas presented by these philosophers are still very relevant and in some ways have helped to shape today’s society. Plato’s Symposium is the somewhat fictional story of a story of a philosophical gathering that Socrates attended one day with his friend Aristodemus at the house of a man named Agathon. After eating, it was suggested that all present give a eulogy to the god Eros, or Love. The speeches are given in this order: Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, and finally, Alcibiades. Each deliverance coincides with the others as well as offers differences in their descriptions and praise of the god.
He believes that Love is the god that controls everything in the lives of humans and gods alike. Being a doctor, Eryximachus focuses his speech on how Love is present in medicine and other arts. He begins by complimenting the previous speaker, Pausanias, on his explanation of the two kinds of Love, Common and Celestial, and describes how they are related in the human body. He claims that it is good to praise the healthy body and bad to do the same with the unhealthy one; that a doctor should not even make notice to it.
Eryximachus goes on to define medicine as the practice of helping the body to find the harmony and balance of the Love that it once knew. A doctor’s goal is to make quarrelling body parts love each other, even if they are opposites not meant to work together. He implies that when the body parts are all doing their jobs in coordination with each other, then a body will know