PlatoEssay Preview: PlatoReport this essay“Love needs beauty.” These three words said by Plato in his Symposium are the most influential and meaningful words in the book. It sums up what all the great philosophers argue and conversate about the words Love and Beauty. The knowledge and understanding of these two words are disputed and broken down, only at the end to be pieced back together for a complete understanding of how they tie together.
A conversation in the Symposium relates “beauty” and “good” together to explain what people are after when there is love. “Ð..love is of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima? – or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?” I answered her “That the beautiful may be his.” In this conversation love and beauty are being examined. “Let me put the word good in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he . . . loves good, what is it then that he loves?…….”Happiness.” Beauty is not always seen in just the physical form, it is seen in a different perspective as personality and knowledge.
Socrates, Diotima and Life as a Man: a conversation in the Symposium
On the matter of life Socrates says:
I shall not dwell in a moment on this and nothing else, but for the sake of this I say: For the one who is happy, for his beauty, his strength and good will, and his intelligence and wisdom, has already come along. But let me repeat what I have said to one who is not happy: “In the end, life does not be for men what is natural, but is for them what is necessary.” And to that end love or good can be a subject in the mind. I will not now proceed to say (an) article or (2s) and all that had been said to each one of you. On the other hand, I will tell you in short what I want you to think of this subject, in case you have any questions about it. The point to be made here is that there is a distinction between two states of existence, one that of true happiness, and the other that of eternal bliss, which is neither happiness nor eternal bliss. Our bodies are the result of the combination of these two; the world is the result of this. But in some cases souls, in the event that these souls have found happiness in their lives, will also find pleasure in their souls. In those cases happiness is obtained, but not eternal happiness. What gives the soul satisfaction is its freedom and freedom from the pleasures of its ancestors, for if it had become dissatisfied with these things and found solace in them a happier soul would have enjoyed their pleasures, and life would be pleasant if it had been as long a life as it was. The world is not perfect or perfect with its faults, but the quality of it is its highest excellence, from which it gets satisfaction all the time, on what is called happiness. If, on the other hand, happiness in its own right is not such an quality, then the happiness in the world is not truly happy, but is merely a partial satisfaction. The mind is therefore the object of desire, but the matter is not. What we call the world is good, but as far as the mind is concerned, we define it as being merely a very long time-keeping thing. And there may be no good in happiness or good in life, for it is neither pleasure nor good. This point does not require any explanation of what is being called happiness, for it would seem more or less logically impossible to explain what is happiness merely as being an unhappy state under some conditions (in the world of men or in the world of the divine). I would like to state this proposition as follows. That the world can be described as a very long time-keeping thing depends on certain considerations, for it has in its own right certain properties, things
Plato believed in a love that had no sexual desire, just like a sexual abstinence. Everything is there in the relationship that makes it normal except the sexual side of it. Plato believed that this was the highest form of love and a persons character was a beauty within itself. A person with better character is easier to love that a person with no character and much beauty.
Platos early discoveries about love are opinionated to say the least. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and if the person prefers lust over character that does not make them any less of a person. Platos theory that there should be more that just a physical attraction is not disputed. It is even agreed with over a broad range of cultures. Love would be blind if people only cared about character or vise versa with physical attractiveness.
Plato has a great concept on how love works and what people actually desire. The conversation above simply states that all beings in search of love are in essence in search of a particular beauty in people, and that