Eos And Love In Plato's Eros: God Of Love

Eros aka god of love aka son of Aphrodite or more commonly known as cupid an entity of sexual desire and or love. This being of some sort has been around for eons in many forms and it is always interesting to hear how others think of Eros. For instance, From Plato’s dialogs in Symposium Eros was presented as a divine force of one kind or another that brought benefits to human’s value. however though Eros is of sexual desire or love in Plato’s dialogue he seem to de-emphasize the physical sexuality of Eros to a degree as if Eros is really a guide to something either divine or close to the divine or to finding the other half in our lives. Even in the dialogues, this idea applied in relationships of some sorts between either man and deities or

Eros the guide to the divine or to our other half is an interesting thought and perspective. However let’s start off with what are Plato’s dialogues, which are translations of Plato’s well known and influential pieces of work there are a few of these dialogues each with their own aspects on love. Symposium is comprised of several speeches on the topic of Eros it also has an astonishing description of love’s presumed final form being beauty according to a highly renown man of philosophy Socrates . Who is portrayed in the dialogue and lastly the dialogue is “artfully dramatic works of philosophy ever composed” (Plato, Nehamas and Woodruff). Now this is where the idea if Eros being a connection to the divine by Eros origin

Also within The Speech of Phaedrus it was talked about how “There is a certain guidance each person needs for his whole life […] nothing imparts this guidance as well as Love” (Plato, Nehamas and Woodruff, Symposium). From that sparked the back and forth philosophical conversations between the characters of Plato’s dialogues: Pheadrus, Pausanias, Eryxmachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates and Diotima (whom was being relayed through Socrates), and Alcibiades each giving their view on Eros and its effect on people between humans and divine as either guides to knowledge of higher things, and in fact to something either divine or closer while Aristophanes, on the other hand, presents Eros as helping us find the "other half" that will bring us back to something like our original form (Walter). Reading each speeches interesting views on Eros one being Eros as a guide for bringing man closer to the divine as they grow this is shared in Phaedrus of Eros guiding men with love to be more virtuous. Pausanias giving the idea that there is two kinds of Eros