Great Works of Literature, Spring 2017 (hybrid)

Plato’s Symposium, showcased many-a forms of love and their unique way of describing each form was quite intriguing to me. I enjoyed the description of love and reproduction in Diotima’s speech. She says the purpose of love is a reproduction in beauty. All people are pregnant in body or soul. Such love expresses itself through pregnancy and reproduction, either through the physical kind of sexual love or through the sharing and reproduction of ideas. Physical relationships are a necessary step in the ascent to love, but loving souls is a higher rung than loving bodies.

Catullus uses a sparrow in this poem as a symbol for his ideal relationship with his wife. He describes the bird as bringing joy and relieving his wife of a depression which she faces. Catullus is saddened that he cannot bring the same joy to Lesbia as the bird does. (“how I wish I could sport with you as she does, /bring some relief to the spirit’s black depression!”) The reason for this depression can be the do the unhealthy relationship Catullus has with Lesbia. The sparrow provides what he cannot.

Plato, in The Symposium, makes Love seem as natural parts of life. He refers to love as two different kinds of Love: 1) Commonly Love (Sexual attraction) and 2) Heavenly Love. With Heavenly Love being the most difficult to find because it is on a spiritual level. Plato then compares Love to someone’s health system within the body, how it communicates with each other to keep the person healthy. Love is also referred to as a person, a God many times throughout the story, a young god, and as a mortal man. He (Love) is also seen as the Moon, astronomically.

According to Plato, Love is dependent on Necessity. Always needing what it does not have. Once he receives what is needed, he gains happiness and knowledge of what Beauty really is. Love affects the decisions people make everyday, whether its a person, an object, a sport, or hobby, it is their passion.

The Symposium, by Plato, is on its face, a dialogue about the true meaning of love. Although, after reading the piece, the most I could ascertain was that it was not a simple dialogue but at some points a dialogue within a dialogue within a dialogue. The work begins with a dialogue between Apollodorus and a friend, who asks Apollodorus to recant the dialogues of love given by Socrates, Agathon, Aristophanes, Eriximachus and Alcibaids. How he expects him to do so for each person is a feat unto itself, but Apollodorus does attempt it, sharing each persons speech regarding love as they go around the table at a party, although he repeatedly said throughout the piece “it’s what he thought he heard.” The most challenging part for Apollodorus though, was when he got up to Socrates, who proceeded to make his elaborate point through questions to Agathon, and a dialogue between himself and a mythical Diatoma. How he did that is beyond me, and how Plato managed to tell it to us even more so. Although we learnt more than just the meaning of love from this dialogue, we were also afforded a glimpse into how Socrates went about teaching, he didn’t say it outright in fancy prose or rhetoric like the many members at the table, but did so in what has now been dubbed the socratic method of teaching. He strung Agathon along, asking him a series of simplistic questions allowing him to derive the conclusions on his own. And though that elaborate process he not only proved everyone else wrong but himself right. For truly, “Love is in between and being ignorant.”

In their epics, Plato’s and Homer’s conceptions of love are somewhat alike. In the Symposium, Plato tries to convey the idea that there are numerous perspectives to define love. Agathon’s lover, Pausanius believes that there are two types of love: Common and Heavenly love. Common Love is the affection or physical attraction between lovers, and Heavenly Love is the appreciation or spiritual bond between people.

Compared to The Odyssey, Plato’s Symposium included two kinds of love that are both conveyed in Homer’s epic. There is Common Love between Penelope & Odysseus, and Kalypso & Odysseus again. Moreover, there is Heavenly Love between Odysseus and his soldiers; they praise him for his intelligence and his leadership. Homer depicts Odysseus as a cunning and exemplary warrior that many commonly and heavenly love.

Plato describes that there are several different types of love. He mainly emphasis about erotic love. Such as gay love and love between an older and a younger man.

For the symposium, each person interpreted their thought about love. The most interesting part is Aristophanes’ argument. He use a myth to explain his idea. He said there were 3 genders, man, woman and half man half woman. Zeus chopped every person into half for punishment. So those who were men and women, they always wanted the other half back, became homosexual. In other words, homosexual is made by god.

I think the most important part is the conversation involved with Socrates. He said love is the thing that people pursue. They want to possess it forever. Meanwhile, as we mentioned in class, Plato thinks that the reason people are falling in love is because of the body. Human is actually pursuing other’s beauty. In addition, love also can be resulted by soul. Breeding between two people makes love immortal. It generated timeless and universal truth. Plato believes this is the most valuable thing.

Plato used an interesting blend of sarcasm, philosophical thought, historical views, and references to the Gods to explore the meaning of love in the “Symposium”. Taking the form of a dialogue during a dinner and night of drinking in honor of Agathon; they each took turns presenting their meanings of love starting with Pausanias. Plato utilized the symposium form to allow each of the speakers to offer their own interpretations of the nature of love, build on aspects of the previous speaker’s interpretation, and discuss the philosophical meaning behind their ideas. This series of dialogues throughout the night was successful in creating a general sense of what was believed to be the nature of love during that era, some of which can still be drawn upon and is relevant today. For example, the distinction Pausanias made between the two types of love, heavenly and common—sexual desire versus virtue.

Sappho, the only female author from ancient Lesbos with written works left, uses women as the main characters of her works where as Odyssey describes a story with a man returning to his homeland after manly war in Troy. The atmosphere of Sappho’s works is relatively emotional and sentimental but gloomy while mainly depicting her feeling of rage and melancholy. On the other hand, Homer’s work is more adventurous and heroic in which Odysseus took a long journey to his land overcoming several difficulties and temptations from female characters.

More importantly, Sappho reveals her deeper inner feeling toward love by writing poem 31 which says she would feel close to death when she watched a woman, she loves, talking to other man. This poem reveals how Sappho emphasizes emotional love. However, in my opinion, Homer’s perspective of love seems relatively frivolous when Odysseus says he is still loyal to his wife after having several sexual relationship with other women. Homer believes that a man/woman can truly love someone while having physical relationship with another person that he/she does not love.

In his work, Plato describes love in various ways. He starts off by giving a vague meaning of love but as the conversation progresses, love found a new meaning with each speaker. The first speaker Phaedrus describes love as either being “Heavenly” or “Common”. Heavenly love takes place between two people overlooking the sexual pleasures and Common love is only being attracted to a persons body. The description of love that stood out for me was the description given by Aristophanes. He starts off by saying that there were three genders: male, female and androgynous. They were cut in half by Zeus. To them love is finding their other half. This description is creepy yet interesting. Eryximachus compares love to body parts. He says that, the correlation between different body parts is love.

I greatly enjoyed reading all of the opinions on the meaning of love in Plato’s Symposium.

One of my favorite speakers in the work is Eryximachus (the doctor) because he introduced the concepts of “common” and “heavenly” love, which we touched on in class. He mentions that aside from medicine – athletics, agriculture, and music are all forms of love as well. Music is a form of love because a whole piece creates “agreement” between all of the notes.

We mentioned in class that common love is when one “loves” another person’s body. This type of love is based on lust and simple/mindless desires. Heavenly love; however, is when one is ready for a committed relationship. This kind of love is usually felt for boys of developing maturity who show signs of intelligence and with whom a life-long partnership is possible. This type of love is emotional (can be physical as well) and meaningful.

I also enjoyed the structure of this work. Its setting is mostly at dinner with the characters taking turns explaining their meanings of love while getting drunk. Also, I noticed that the conversation keeps getting deeper after every speaker. This is a very unique work, and that’s why it really kept my attention.