Example Essays Home

FAQ

Acceptable Use Policy

Tech Support

LOG IN!

Click HERE for Instant Access

This is a free preview of the paper.

Join Now
Log In

Plato and Horace on Love

Most would agree that love is the greatest gift that we can ever hope to give or to receive. But how does one know what love really is, and how can one exploit the significance of love and desire to construct a happy median in life? The ancient Greeks asked themselves these same questions thousands of years ago, and two very central scholars took the time to share their wisdom. In the Symposium, ancient scholar and philosopher Plato speaks through his literary characters and ultimately through Socrates, revealing to the reader that as a teacher, he wants us to make an ascent of increasing generality and transcend the material, corruptible, earthly love to connect with the pure, unified, heavenly love—the love of the gods. In book one and book two of the Satires, however, poet and philosopher Horace instructs his readers on love and desire by communicating to his readers that the good human life should be filled with healthy desires and pleasures, not with extreme pleasures, and that humans must value these pleasures in moderation to live life well.

In the dialogues of his Symposium, Plato enlightens his readers on the different meanings of love by writing through distinguished characters such as Eryximachus, t

The first, and ultimately the lowest stage of love according to Diotima, is the devotion to physical love and to the desire of a beautiful body. Plato explains this to the reader through the reiteration of Diotima’s discourse to Socrates by stating that “First, if the leader leads aright, he should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there” (Plato, 210A). This love and physical desire for one individual should, however, eventually lead to the realization “that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same” (Plato, 210 C). This generalization from a love of one beautiful body to a love for all beautiful bodies, which constitutes the second rung on the ladder of transcendence, describes a physical desire for all that is beautiful—other beings, landscapes, art, and nature. Stepping up to the next level, those who are able to love all bodies “must think that the beauty of people’s souls is more valuable than the beauty of their bodies, so that if someone is decent in his soul, even though he is scarcely blooming in his body [or bodily appearances], our lover must be content to love and care for him…” (Plato, 210 C). Diotima is telling Socrates (the audience) to transcend the physical aspects of individuals and other entities and to see them for their inner wisdom and knowledge. It is only after an individual can transcend the physical that he “will be forced to gaze at the beauty of activities and laws and to see that all this is akin to itself, with the result that he will think that the [physical] beauty of bodies is a thing of no importance” (Plato, 210 C). This love and appreciation for the beauty of knowledge and wisdom may or may not lead him to “grasp his goal” of love (Plato, 211 C). If he is able to grasp the true meaning of love, which Diotima calls Beauty, only then will he experience love of a soul for the sake of truer ideals. This love “is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself within itself…” (Plato, 211 B). This love for a beautiful soul can be, for example, in the form of love of a teacher for a student (Martin, 2003). For the teacher to be able to create beautiful thoughts, or even to arouse beautiful thoughts in the mind of the student, shows the teacher’s ability to use this Beautiful love in a virtuous and worthy manner. Diotima concludes her instruction on love by informing Plato that “the love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to tr