Comparative Literature - Sex & Culture

Which of the Six Main Speakers in the Symposium Presents the Strongest Case for the Rationality of Eros?

Among the six speakers in the symposium I feel the strongest case was presented by Socrate, although, there is furthermore another kind of love, namely, “the madness of a man who, on glimpsing beauty here on soil, and being reminded of true beauty, becomes winged, and fluttering with eagerness to go by plane up, but incapable to depart the ground, examines up like a bird, and takes no heed of things underneath — and that is what determinants him to be regarded as mad”. This madman is the philosopher of the Symposium, who when he declines in love with a young man is directed by his love to ascend by stages to the pattern of the beautiful. What makes his madness a divine gift, although, is that the ascent is now revealed as engaging recollection of a former pre-natal ascent taken in the business of a god.

From the wealthy literary account of this ascent, we require to take away just one idea: souls have different psychological structures counting on which god they pursued, since this groups a top limit on how much of the types they glimpse, and so how much they can subsequently recollect. Since profiting get access to types nourishes and strengthens the reasonable element in the soul, this furthermore assists work out their motivational structure: the more powerful their reason is, the more probable it will be to do well in commanding the other elements in the soul.

 

Why have you Selected this Speaker Over the Other five?

I have selected the overhead cited speaker because followers of Zeus, for demonstration, select someone to love whose soul resembles their patron god. So they request someone who is “naturally disposed to philosophy and authority, and when they have discovered him and drop in love they manage everything to make him philosophical”. Nonetheless, the dropping itself engages a gigantic psychological upheaval. The very dark equine of appetite immediately urges in the direction of sexual intercourse. The white equine — “constrained then as habitually by shame” — retains itself back. Eventually, the very dark equine forces both the charioteer and the white equine “to proceed in the direction of the beloved and mention to him the pleasures of sex”. Again they balk, “indignant at being compelled to manage awful and improper things”. But eventually, “when there is no limit to their plight, they pursue its lead, giving in and agreeing to manage what it notifies them”.

As they arrive close to the beloved, although, to start intercourse, the blinking face of the beloved reminds the charioteer of the beautiful itself, in order that his memory “again sees it standing simultaneously with temperance on a holy pedestal”. He becomes scared and “in rapid reverence declines on his back, and is compelled at the identical time to drag back the reins so viciously as to convey the equines down on their haunches, ...