The Internet Classics Archive | Symposium by Plato - 14 views
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Daryl Bambic on 05 Feb 15Context: The group is deciding how they will drink given the excessive partying from the previous night.
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Nick Adoranti on 05 Feb 15Hiya
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Eric Bensoussan on 05 Feb 15Im surprised that philosophers drank so much
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hebaali1998 on 05 Feb 15How can you have a philosophical conversation while being intoxicated?
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entirely has this great deity been neglected." Now in this Phaedrus seems to me to be quite right, and therefore I want to offer him a contribution; also I think that at the present moment we who are here assembled cannot do better than honour the. god Love
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Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods; and the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life, and of happiness after death.
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Such is the entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the custom which prevails in our part of the world.
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Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting
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Mankind; he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love
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original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost, and the word "Androgynous
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will restore us to our original state, and heal us and make us happy and blessed.
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ut I would rather praise the god first, and then speak of his gifts; this is always the right way of praising everything.
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virtue I have now to speak: his greatest glory is that he can neither do nor suffer wrong to or from any god or any man
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for I do not praise in that way; no, indeed, I cannot. But if you like to here the truth about love, I am ready to speak in my own manner, though I will not make myself ridiculous by entering into any rivalry with you. Say then, Phaedrus, whether you would like, to have the truth about love, spoken in any words and in any order which may happen to come into my mind at the time. Will that be agreeable to you?
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Socrates then proceeded as follows:-
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The inference that he who desires something is in want of something, and that he who desires nothing is in want of nothing, is in my judgment,
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nd yet, added Socrates, if a man being strong desired to be strong, or being swift desired to be swift, or being healthy desired to be healthy, in that case he might be thought to desire something which he already has or is. I give the example in order that we may avoid misconception. For the possessors of these qualities, Agathon, must be supposed to have their respective advantages at the time, whether they choose or not; and who can desire that which he has? Therefore when a person says, I am well and wish to be well, or I am rich and wish to be rich, and I desire simply to have what I have-to him we shall reply: "You, my friend, having wealth and health and strength, want to have the continuance of them; for at this moment, whether you choose or no, you have them. And when you say, I desire that which I have and nothing else, is not your meaning that you want to have what you now have in the future?
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Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is in want;
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a mean between wisdom and ignorance?
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he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit (daimon),
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But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth;
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neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want."
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ho then, Diotima," I said, "are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?" "A child may answer that question," she replied; "they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them.
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of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?-or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?
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Let me put the word 'good' in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves good, what is it then that he loves?
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"Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further," she said, "what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which they have in view?
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onception and generation are an immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they can never be.
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love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality."
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Marvel not," she said, "if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.
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Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of immortality."
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But souls which are pregnant-for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?-wisdom and virtue in general.
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he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same!
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rowing and decaying, or waxing and waning; s
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ut beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change,
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And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
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beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?"