Dichotomy Of Love In Plato's Symposium

Plato’s “Symposium” is centered around the occurrence and subsequent retelling of its namesake, a drinking party or convivial discussion, especially as held in ancient Greece after a banquet. The symposium is held in celebration of Agathon's tragedy winning first prize at the Lenaean festival the previous day. Having been drinking excessively the night before Eryximachus recommends that they not drink too much this evening in the interests of their health. He suggests further that they send away the flute-girl, who was to be their entertainment, and engage instead in conversation. Having been conversing with Phaedrus, who had lamented that the poets compose songs of praise to all the gods but Love, Eryximachus recommends that each person present

The point of view expresses a false dichotomy of earthly and heavenly love and the dichotomies that underlie and depend on the reasoning. The basis of Socrates’ speech is the agreement that agree that Love must be love of beauty, which in turn implies that Love itself must be wholly without beauty. Socrates builds off of the idea and goes on to point out that if good things are beautiful, then love must also be lacking in good things, and cannot himself be good. Diotima argues that not everything must be either one thing or its opposite, contending with the presence of dichotomies that Pausanias’ contentions are based on. The example given to demonstrate the logic behind Diotima’s notion of love is that having unjustified true opinions is neither wisdom nor ignorance; wisdom consists in justified true opinions, but one would hardly call a true opinion ignorant. Diotima claims that love’s function is “to bring forth upon the beautiful, both in body and in soul” in separate ways (Plato 558). The “conception and generation that the beautiful effects” is taken in a more literal, biological, sense in relation to the body–the creation of a child (Plato 558). In relation to the mind, the “conception and generation” of beauty is the cultivation and dissemination of wisdom. While contradictory to Pausanias’ dichotomies, diotima’s notions of love is complementary. As mortal beings, we maintain ourselves in existence by replacing the old with the new, and so reproduction is just one further way to achieve immortality. Diotima asserts that love is neither mortal nor immortal but “halfway between mortal and immortal” (plato 555). While the conception of offspring and philosophical notions are mortal elements, the existence of both create immortality. While the distinction between earthly and heavenly love is rejected the superiority of love based in wisdom is still in place because ideas last longer