Love, a small word, yet so powerful in meaning. For each person love is a different concept, idea and meaning. It affects individuals in ways that are indescribable, whether that entails a profound passionate desire, tragic suffering or merely warm and tender affection; love is truly an experience like no other. However, despite all of these various affects there is one commonality in regards to love every person shares; it is strived for, idolized, and treasured. Throughout history love has played a key role in society. Love has brought people together, inspired masterpieces and even driven men to war. Either positively or negatively love strings up everywhere. However, with so many entities regarding love the question of the true object of love arises. For most the idea of love is an attraction toward another person, but love goes deeper than this. …show more content…
Socrates, being an idealist, strays from idea that love is found in the desire for materials and the body; rather he prioritizes knowledge and intellect as the true form of eros. To him “the beauty of the minds” is “more valuable than that of the body” (Plato 48) due to the fact ideas are constant, lasting and being, while the body is fleeting and becoming. Ideas have the potential to become immortal making sexual desire interior. Socrates, however, learned of love from Diotima, where she describes love as the pursuit of beauty. This may seem like a contradiction to Socrates idealism, but according to Diotima pursuing beauty is not acting upon sexual desires, but rather the refinement of them. Simply training one’s desires to find a higher purpose. Searching for a beautiful person is an act all people look for, but looking further than just the body and seeing the beauty of the mind one possesses according Plato helps lead toward the understanding of eros. Diotima points out, what many people fail to realize is the attraction to a beautiful person is the only an idea constituting that