Plato’s banquet, the greatest symbolic work of ancient philosophy
Plato’s banquet is considered one of the greatest symbolic works of ancient philosophy. The characters of this writing must propose a speech in praise of love around Eros. In this essay, Socrates’s criticism will be identified to Aristophanes’ speech about love.
In the first place, Aristopanes in his speech mentions the myth of androgynous that deals with the origin of human nature, in which he tells that man was a round being with two faces and there were three sexes the male, androgen and female. Zeus separated those bodies by turning them into two halves, so man is always in eternal search of love "of the other half" and full happiness is when he is loved "the love of each other is innate in themen and restorative of the ancient nature that tries to make only two and heal human nature ”(Aristophanes .193a). It is also mentioned that Eros is a God and the guide to meet the beloved, then Eros’s love is the desire to find the other half (loved) and the integration to be only one until the end of their lives.
Secondly for Socrates Eros is a demon an intermediary between divinity and the human, due to its nature it is in the search for beauty and to reach the form of absolute beauty it must be first began to fall in love with a single bodyBeautiful and fertilizing knowledge, then recognizing that all bodies are beautiful, then knowing that loveto the contemplation of absolute beauty “… this is precisely the correct way to approach the things of love or to be conducted by another starting with beautiful things here and using them as steps to be ascending continuously … and starting from theseIn that knowledge that is knowledge of nothing but of that absolute beauty ”(Socrates.211c) which has always existed, is eternal, completely beautiful. That is why Eros apart from being a demon is a philosopher because he is in search of absolute beauty (knowledge) and everything beautiful is good.
Finally, what critics criticizes Aristophanes is that Eros is not a guide God but a demon eros is not the search for loved being, since affirming this is to love and wish the body more than the soul than the soul. On the other hand, when keeping the beloved until the end of their days they do not immortalize the beautiful (knowledge) for Socrates Eros is the search for the beautiful that must be immortalized through knowledge, in addition, full happiness is not reached when finding theAmado, but when reaching absolute beauty. In conclusion, if I agree with what Socrates criticizes, since if Aristophanes affirms that the power of the god Eros is to help find the beloved and thus obtain full happiness, firstly a God is not in the search for what he already has(beauty and happiness) In addition, a body is not necessarily beautiful and love the body that the soul is not meaning of happiness, since the body deteriorates instead the soul is eternal.
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