Plato’s Symposium
I read today a nice edition of Plato’s Symposium (aff), which tries to describe the true nature of Love. Note that this is Love rather than love, so much time is spent deciding on if Love is a god and if so what kind of deity he is, only to have those notions overturned by Socrates who claims Love is in fact a spirit, something that binds different things together but in and of itself is not a thing:
The first, most startling thing about the book is that love between men and boys was considered not taboo, but the most ideal course of nature, so that what we might call today homosexuality and pederastry were simply mentoring and affection. Probably the lifespan of the Greeks had something to do with it, as they lived at most half of what we do now. Interesting, as well, is the idea that the only form of true love is between two men, for the purpose of attaining virtues and sharing intellectual discourse.
My favorite bit is Aristophanes’ speech about the nature of Love, where mankind originally had two heads, eight limbs, etc, and was sundered in half by the gods. So love is literally us trying to reunite with our missing half:
That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 9:00 pm and is tagged with intellectual discourse, innate desire, course of nature, aristophanes, two heads, aff, lifespan, deity, true nature, plato, greeks, human nature, different things, virtues, socrates, true love, affection, notions, human beings, mankind. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
One Response to 'Plato’s Symposium'
Leave a Reply
Please take time to enjoy the archives: June 2008 (2) May 2008 (1) April 2008 (1) February 2008 (1) January 2008 (3) October 2007 (2) September 2007 (1) August 2007 (3) July 2007 (4) June 2007 (3) May 2007 (2) April 2007 (5) March 2007 (3) February 2007 (3) January 2007 (1) December 2006 (3) November 2006 (4) October 2006 (1) September 2006 (3) August 2006 (2) February 2006 (3) January 2006 (2) December 2005 (3) November 2005 (2) October 2005 (4) September 2005 (1) August 2005 (5) July 2005 (4) June 2005 (1) May 2005 (3) April 2005 (8) March 2005 (8) February 2005 (8) January 2005 (11) December 2004 (6) November 2004 (6)
Fresh, related resources:
- Luce Irigaray: Letting Be Transcendence
Since Plato?s Symposium (and maybe even longer) the meaning of love has been a significant topic of philosophers. Irigaray?s exploration and discussion is refreshingly different. She, in a way, takes on the whole prior philosophic ... - Aphrodite
Eg Plato, Symposium 181a-d. ^ Pausanias, Periegesis vi.25.1; Aphrodite Pandemos was represented in the same temple riding on a goat, symbol of purely carnal rut: ?The meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat I leave to those who care ... - Gay Marriage Sucks!
Pausanias, in Plato?s Symposium, answers that homosexuality is the ?heavenly love? precisely because it is divorced from earthly carnality and centered around an idealized conception of beauty. It is purely aesthetic, and not at all ... - Plato Truth Virus
Both Socrates and Plato became two of the greatest thinking hackers in Western history. To me, the most fascinating of Plato?s works is Symposium because it?s an insightful account of how it all began at a typical dinner-party back in ... - Designers Are Not Philosophers
I'm assuming that he is referring to the myth of the hermaphrodite, that is, a human with both genders, as appears in Plato's Symposium. The myth is told not by Plato's beloved teacher Socrates, but by the comic playwright Aristophanes ...
on August 27th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
There’s a song in Hedwig and the Angry Inch based on this book.