Questions from Plato’s Symposium.

5. Explain the Dynamic Power of Love

Love is a great spirit that acts as the gateway between all things divine and mortal. Mortal men give petitions and sacrifices. Gods give commands and requitals are passed. Love has the power to interpret and ferry across these from both realms. Through Love passes all the arts of divination, the arts of priests, and all concerned with sacrifices, mysteries, incantations, sorcery and witchcraft. While this happens though, it is important to know that the Gods do not visit the men directly. Through love comes the communion and conversation of men with gods and gods with men both awake and asleep. Love completes all that passes through and binds them together into a whole.

6. Explain the myth of Poverty, Plenty and Love as well as its analogical use to explain the origin of love.

The myth about the origin of love takes place at the feast held by the gods for the birth of Aphrodite. During the feast, Poverty came to the festivities and started to beg around the doorway. Also attending the feast was Plenty, who was the son of Neverataloss. Plenty drank plenty of nectar and while heavy, fell asleep in Zeus's park. Poverty saw her chance to create a child with Plenty. She took advantage of Plenty in the park and conceived their child Love. Love became a lover busy with beauty having been born at Aphrodite's birthday party. Love was now the follower and servant of the beautiful Aphrodite.

The characteristics of Love are expressed analogically

7. Explain the Philosopher

Nobody desires what he or she already has. Gods, for example, do not seek after wisdom if they are already wise, as would anyone not seek after wisdom if they are already wise. Those who are ignorant also do not seek after wisdom. The ignorant think themselves as good enough to not desire wisdom and do not think they are lacking in it because they feel they do not need it.

This explanation from Diotima puzzles Socrates. He asks her to describe who the philosophers are since those who seek after wisdom are neither wise nor the ignorant. Diotima replies that a philosopher is between the two, like love. Wisdom itself is one of the most beautiful things, and since Love is a love for the beautiful, it follows that Love must be a philosopher himself. Love and the philosopher receive their traits from a resourceful and wise father and a resource less and unwise mother they are between the two realms of wisdom and ignorance.

8. Explain the 2x2 square.

T S

Diotima Socrates

Socrates Agathon

This table represents a mean analogy (A:B::B:C) between the people Diotima, Socrates and Agathon. Their teacher/student relationships are shown. The mean analogy states that Diotima was the teacher of Socrates and that Socrates was the teacher of Agathon.

9. Explain "...he loves what he lacks and has not..."

Love is the love for something and desires the object of its love. The desiring desires what it lacks and does not desire what it already has. Those who say for example "I am healthy and want to be healthy" or "I desire what I have" wish to have what they have at the present in the future. Therefore this love for the blessings he has now is wanted to be preserved for him in the future and always be available for them. This is love that which is not available for him or possessed by him. Therefore he loves what he lacks and has not.

0. Explain "he would look to Homer and Hesiod and the other good poets and wish to rival them"

1. Explain the steps leading to the perfection of beauty.

Step 1: love one body and beget beautiful speech

Step 2: notice that the beauty in one body is the same to the beauty in another body

Step 3: become a lover of all beautiful bodies and relax and think lightly the intense passion

he has for only one.

Step 4: you must believe that the beauty in souls is more precious than beauty in the body.

If anyone is decent in soul that should be enough for him to love and care for.

Step 5: see that all beauty is of one and the same kin, so that he may believe bodily beauty

is but a small thing.

Step 6: go from practice to knowledge and gaze upon beauty as a whole, not as individual

Step 7: give birth to many beautiful and magnificent speeches and thoughts in the abundance of

philosophy until he gains one knowledge and one science of beauty

2. Explain the sudden vision of beauty and its relationships.

Upon reaching the very last step the person will see a sudden vision of beauty that is marvelous in its nature. For the sake of all the hardships in the first steps this beauty is everlasting, never being born or dying or increasing or decreasing. Secondly the beauty is beautiful in its entirety, not being beautiful now and ugly then or beautiful in one direction or place and ugly in another. This beauty will show itself not as a mortal being but by being by itself with itself always in simplicity. All other beautiful things are part of this overall beauty. When they are born or die the whole beauty does not become either more or less. Nothing happens to it. Taking these steps to the perfection of beauty and reaching the sudden vision of beauty is in life and there alone, life worth living for man, while he contemplates Beauty itself.

3. Explain why Aristophanes and Agathon resist agreeing with Socrates conclusion at the end of the dialogue.

At the end of the dialogue, Socrates forces Aristophanes and Agathon to admit that the same man ought to understand how to compose both comedy and tragedy, and that he who has the skill as a tragic poet has the skill for a comic poet. Both Aristophanes and Agathon did not want to agree to this because they in fact were not skilled poets even in their supposed strengths. Agathon, who had just won a prize for a tragedy play, had a speech of failed attempts at being funny. Agathon also failed to speak to his original attempt at praising Love He was bad at creating both a tragic or humorous speech. Aristophanes, who was renowned for being a comedic writer, had a speech with no humor in it. Socrates made them admit their own flaws in their abilities.

4. Explain the role of the two metaphors in Alcibeade's speech

The silerns

The manyas

5. Compare the description of Diotima with the qualities assigned to the arts that pass through the intermediary of love.

Socrates described Diotima in a few brief details. Diotima was wise in many manners and was known for helping the Athenians perform sacrifices, which held back a plague for ten years. Diotima has qualities in common with the arts that pass through the intermediary of love. Through the intermediary of love pass all the arts of divination, and the arts of priests and all concerned with sacrifices, mysteries, incantations, sorcery and witchcraft. Since Diotima has the qualities involved with sacrifices, priests and sorcery she is made as a personification of love and therefore becomes a symbol of love as an intermediary.