Plato's Symposium

Introduction

Plato developed a two layer view of reality, the world of Becoming and the world of Being. The world of Becoming is the physical world we percieve through our senses. This world is always in movement, always changing. The world of Being is the world of forms, or ideas. It is absolute, independent, and transcendent. It never changes and yet causes the essential nature of things we percieve in the world of Becoming. Though Plato was sometimes vague about the exact relationship between the two worlds, he has suggested two ways in which they may interact. Objects in the material world may be only imperfect copies or imitations of the ideal, and objects may participate in the formness they are representing.

The Symposium has suggested to me that Plato may have arrived at a new understanding of the relationship between the two worlds when dealing with the particular form of Man. In the Symposium, Plato seems to have reasoned out an internal mechanism through which men may make their way through the world of Becoming to the world of Being. He shows how, through the most mysterious and powerful medium of love, men may eventually arrive at the Highest Good, an intuitive and mystical state of consciousness. As Diotema says, only in such an experience is ultimate meaning found for human beings.

Plato's Symposium: A Comparison and Contrast of the Two

During his final speech to praise love in Plato's Symposium, Socrates describes many aspects of the true nature of Love and the objects of Love's desires. By systematically contradicting and invalidating the preceding arguments, Socrates establishes a contrast between the ideas of love and beauty; love being the state of pursuing a goal, while beauty is the goal itself.

Kraut (pp. 67-77) mentions prior to Socrates' speech, the general consensus among the attendants at the party is that Love is a beautiful god who loves good people and things. Socrates first seeks to invalidate the view of his host, Agathon, by posing many questions to his friend. Agathon's somewhat simplistic definition of Love as the desire for beautiful people and things, coupled with his concession that a man only "desires what is not at hand and is not present," (Kraut, pp. 67-77) forces him to admit that Love cannot be beautiful if he desires beauty. Socrates also establishes good as synonymous with beautiful. This leads to the similar argument that Love cannot be good if he also desires that which is good. After Socrates effectively contradicts these former arguments by forcing Agathon to admit to the inherent flaws in his own reasoning, he begins to establish his own view of love.

Socrates attempts to correct the flawed arguments of his peers by addressing Love's desire for beauty and good. While he reiterates his argument that Love can be neither good nor beautiful, he also argues that the converse is not true, that being that Love is both bad and ugly. Love, instead, takes an intermediate position between these extremes, and ultimately is ...