Symposium

Within Plato's Symposium, a series of six dialogues regarding the nature of Love are discussed at length. However, it is the very last dialogue – in which ... that made the interaction with Diotima particularly profound is that it challenged the assumptions which were previously unquestioned by the men who came before her in the Symposium; that Love is a god, which pursues the often-imbalanced relationship between two lovers. This questioning strips the previously unchallenged arguments down to their bare bones ... Epirus). Additionally, Plato's inclusion of a female character was a perfec...

• Word Count: 768
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... through her description of this ascent. Ultimately, it can be deduced that by being a lover of knowledge, one can in turn be a lover and seer of true Beauty. Throughout the Symposium, the audience hears many accounts from various intellectuals that have been invited to a special party. These great minds are Phadrus, Pausanias, Eryxamachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates, (Diotima) and Alcibiades. These philosophers ... realization of truth and that truth progressing into ultimate beauty. Finally, one can now understand the relationship between wisdom, truth and beauty. Diotima's wisdom...

• Word Count: 1088
• Approx Pages: 4

... . The ideas these men put forward in describing the nature of something as powerful yet intangible as love are wonderful. The people in Plato's Symposium are truly great and wise men. They each have their particular viewpoints, based on their characters and professions. The physician and healer, Eryximachus, ... I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover, than a beloved youth. (Symposium, 20)" The moral value of this sentence is questionable. It basically condones, even promotes, homosexuality and the abuse of children. Whi...

• Word Count: 1657
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... an enormous potential to generate accelerated economic growth. Moreover, female education has a disproportionate impact on fertility rates, levels of public health and social progress. At the World Bank symposium "Education: a critical path to gender equality and women's empowerment" (Washington D.C., U.S.A., October 2007), many suggestions were raised in the course of evidence-based ... Bank staff, academics, government officials (e.g. Afghanistan's minister of education) and senior representatives from a plethora of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) involved in education. During t...

• Word Count: 5954
• Approx Pages: 24
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a woman (Diotima), in which Diotima, not Socrates, gives meaning to the word and concept of eros. This is ironic because from the beginning of the Symposium it is made explicitly clear that women are not wise enough to know and discuss eros. This is the first speech that the opinion of a woman is ... fills us with togetherness and drains all of our divisiveness away"(197D). In Diotima's speech love is beautiful when "in birth." This passage pertains to Symposium as a whole because it includes many of the main points that the other speakers were trying to get at. The idea that love leads t...

• Word Count: 925
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... always searching for an underlying meaning, something deeper than the author's main point, or something that can be found in a summary. In reading Horace's Satires and Epistles and Plato The Symposium, a very ironic discovery can be made. Socrates and Horace have apparently been granted authority by their immediate audience on their respective topics, however they use others to reveal their struggles ... long dialogs, blatantly declaring his own shortcomings, Horace ensures that the reader will notice and reflect on them. He does not put himself on a heavenly level, like Diotima in Plat...

• Word Count: 1606
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Legalizing Marijuana "The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) estimates that the government's war on pot smokers [alone] costs taxpayers $9.2 billion annually" (Feder, Murdock, "Symposium"). Possession of marijuana was made a crime within the United States in 1937 when Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. Besides this law the drug has been commonly used among US ... United States. The legalization of marijuana would decrease the incidents of drug related crime in the United States. "Cannabis [marijuana] arrests constitute 44 percent of all drug apprehensions" (Feder, Murdock, "Symposium"). If m...

• Word Count: 1220
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... Xenophonteon Socrates. From these four accounts, he is depicted as an unexciting didactician who was quick to give advice, and was a paragon of common morality and religious practice. IN the Symposium, he is defined as a man who can influence others. For instance, of Callias, the tyrant, only Socrates influence is said to have tamed him. The main example is taken from ... his own name or through the mouth of Cyrus in the Cyropadia. Accordingly, no one appeals to such works as Oeconomicus for evidence regarding the historical Socrates. "His Apology and Symposium are similarly disregarded...

• Word Count: 1375
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography

... works; The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Plato's five greatest and most well known writings are, The Apology, Phaedo, Crito, The Republic, and Symposium. Like I said above, The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo are all about Socrates' trial and execution. Symposium is about the function and purpose of love. The Republic is about Plato's ideal form of a republic. A significant portion of Plato's writing is ... ...

• Word Count: 1563
• Approx Pages: 6