In light of America’s Hallmark Holiday approaching, I decided to write my reflection on Plato’s account of soulmates. Beginning with the idea that humans were once “globular in shape, with rounded back and sides, four arms and four legs, and two faces, both the same, one cylindrical neck, and one head, with one face one side and one the other, and four ears, and two lots of privates, and all other parts to match”, Plato tells a story ultimately about completion: describing two people to be two parts of a bigger entity once whole. While this explanation and story of soulmates is frankly quite beautiful as he returns to the idea that, “this love is always trying to reintegrate our former nature, to make two into one, and to bridge the gulf between one human being and another”, I think Plato’s account of love and soulmates could be interpreted as rather dismal and limiting. Specifically, I came to this conclusion by analyzing what a relationship of two halves making a whole might entail and how Plato’s explanation does not necessarily allow for more than one romantic relationship or various types of love.
Because Plato’s story is about parts constituting a whole, it insinuates that one part existing is not
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Specifically, I think you can have many soulmates in your life and these relationships do not have to be romantic. For example, I would consider many of my friends to be my soulmates, as I would with some of my family members. Accordingly, I think that those relationships can be just as fulfilling or even more fulfilling than traditional romantic relationships. There are certain people with whom you can instantly and profoundly connect with and they can appear at any time in your life, in a variety of forms, and sometimes they are not meant to be around forever. A lack of romance or reproduction does not make them any less of a
What is a platonic soulmate? “A ‘platonic soulmate’ is a feeling of deep connection and understanding, without the romance typically associated with the term soulmate” (“What Is a Platonic Soulmate” 1). Like for example in The Great Gatsby I feel like Nick and Gatsby have a platonic relationship: they were both always there for each other, no matter how busy their schedule might be. Even when they disagreed with each other sometimes they would always make up.
The speeches within the Symposium and Phaedrus are aimed towards praising ‘Love’ or ‘Erôs’, this covers sexual attraction and gratification between both men and women and men and teenage boys, but the focus of the speeches here is on the latter, whether the relationship was sexual or not. The speeches of the Symposium are given as part of a competition of who can “give as good a speech in praise of Love as he is capable of giving” (Plato, 1997, pp. 462, §117c). This essay will refer to ‘Erôs’ throughout interchangeably with ‘Love’, as Erôs is the Greek God of Love, or of passionate desire. The focus of this essay will be which of the speeches within the Symposium offers the most convincing account of Erôs, with focus on the speeches of Eryximachus and Socrates and how their different conceptions of Love lead to their speeches being variably convincing.
This however is not the real dilemma at hand. There's an underlying concern in this reading, “How much do we truly know?” Plato constructed this piece with a clear belief that we, as human beings, don’t know anything. His stance is that every little detail should be critiqued for best results in learning. If we don’t ask
Examining one’s life can bring many joys. There are many things that give people the idea that their lives are meaningful. These ideas could be the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, entertainment, sports, power and money, possessions and security, being famous and success, meeting other people, knowledge and every other thing that can give the smallest amount of happiness to the person. In the apology Plato describes Socrates’ venture to question people would were wise and content with their wisdom, but when they asked a series of questions to test their wisdom they were revealed not to be wise and were now upset. The flaw in that was that these people did not examine what had happened to them and did not learn from it.
Socrates in the dialogue Alcibiades written by Plato provides an argument as to why the self is the soul rather than the body. In this dialogue Alcibiades and Socrates get into a discussion on how to cultivate the self which they both mutually agree is the soul, and how to make the soul better by properly taking care of it. One way Socrates describes the relationship between the soul and the body is by analogy of user and instrument, the former being the entity which has the power to affect the latter. In this paper I will explain Socrates’ arguments on why the self is the soul and I will comment on what it means to cultivate it.
The language in Plato’s symposium and the expression of Sappho’s poetry are similar in that they both deal with homoerotic love. Sappho, the only ancient Greek female author whose work survived, talks from the female point of observation, where as Plato’s work concentrates on the idea of love among males. In spite of the fact that both of their points of view are comparative in courses, for example, their thoughts of physical fascination and want, Plato’s work creates a better understanding of the nature of love then Sappho’s ideas. This understanding will be shown with three arguments and counter- arguments in order to demonstrate the dominance of Plato over Sappho. It will than be concluded with an overview of the main idea and a recap of the three arguments made for Plato.
The various ideologies of love mentioned by speakers in Plato’s Symposium portrayed the social and cultural aspect of ancient Greece. In the text, there were series of speeches given by Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Socrates, and Agathon about the idea of love, specifically the effect and nature of Eros. Within the speakers, Agathon’s speech was exceptional in that his speech shifted the focus of the audience from effect of Eros on people, to the nature and gifts from the Eros. Despite Agathon’s exceptional remarks about Eros, Socrates challenged Agathon’s characterization of Eros through utilization of Socratic Method.
In the Republic, Plato gives an argument saying the soul is immortal. In this paper I will present his argument and show that his argument is invalid. I will show why the conclusion is not true and restate the argument to make it valid to help with Socrates’ claim. Plato’s argument on why the soul is immortal: 1. Something can only be destroyed by the thing that is bad for it.
His past experiences has led him to believe that love should be masked by lies that in a sense it should the truth should be a voluntary definition behind love. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes’ delivers a speech about his experiences of have loved or being in love. Aristophanes’ speech captures how powerful the feeling of love, that since birth love has condition our lives involuntary and will remain so. Love to Aristophanes’ is a form of completion that a lucky couple receives once the meet each other. This completion is empowered by an enormous amount of love, intimacy, and affection that neither bonds can be separated.
Friendship is an important part of the human life that guides human existence that guides how two humans in mutual understanding and relationship relate to each other. Nehamas and Woodruff (1989) provide Aristotle's description of friendship; that is goodwill that is reciprocated. Friendship is a phenomenon that happens every day in life amongst human beings with people falling in and out of friendship. There exist various kinds of friendships that are founded upon various needs, relations, and reasons. The source of the reciprocated goodwill brings the difference between perfect or complete friendships and imperfect or incomplete friendships.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is at its core a metaphor for what Plato believed to be wrong in Greek society at the time. The fact
aligns with reason and resists the desires of the appetite. It is in this part of the soul where the courage to be good is found. In the unjust soul, the spirit ignores reason and instead aligns with the appetitive desires, manifesting as the demand for the pleasures of the body. Plato asserts that the wise and just soul allows reason to govern the other parts, while the unwise and unjust soul allows conflict between the parts.12 Just as there is the appetitive part of the soul—the largest part of the soul—there is the productive class, or the workers, who have souls of bronze and account for the largest part of the population.13 This class includes the general population of laborers, plumbers, masons, carpenters, merchants, and farmers.
This complies with the beliefs of most religions today. Although Aristotle believes that God is self absorbed and doesn 't take notice of the goings on on earth, Plato doesn’t believe in a God at all. Instead, Plato believed that there were a bunch of Forms floating around in another dimension and that reality isn 't real, but a glimpse of the other dimension. The idea that this isn 't
Part A- Socrates In thinking of Socrates we must recognize that what we have is four secondhand sources depicting him. That of Plato, Xenophanes, Aristophanes, and Aristotle. All having radically different accounts on Socrates and his views. Out of all them we consider Plato’s to be the most possible account, even though we face a problem of different versions of Socrates.
Juno proves love is power, but later love is abused through romance. In the beginning of Book II, Aeneas is very willing to discuss his past with Dido. Dido listens patiently to Aeneas, while he reveals his past. Aeneas even mentions a beautiful vision of his mother, “my gracious mother stood there before me; and across the night she gleamed with pure light, unmistaken goddess, as lovely and as tall as she appeared” (Virgil, Aeneid 2.795-298). Aeneas throughout Book III is still talking about his encounter with the Trojans.