The 5 different definitions of love in Plato's Symposium

Phaedrus (Young) - 178a-180b

• Love is the oldest of all the gods, and thus confers the most benefits.
• Love teaches us shame in acting disgracefully and pride in acting well (we feel more ashamed to be caught doing something disgraceful when we are caught by a loved one).
• Love, then, leads to bravery, courage, and honor because if there were an army of lovers and beloveds, they would rather die than display cowardice in front of their partners.
• The gods value love as a guide to action, because they allow people who loved greatly to return from the underworld.
• Speaks in the context of male-male love (as most of the others do as well)

Pausanias (Agathon's life-partner) -180c-185c

• There are two kinds of love: heavenly and common (see blog post below)
• Love in itself is neither commendable nor detestable; rather, if it is done properly, it is esteemed and if it is not, then it has no merit.
• The main purpose of love is to produce virtue, which is why male-male relationships between the wise lover and the younger beloved are so esteemed (His praises of the longevity of relationships make sense given his relationship with Agathon.)
• Pausanias agrees with Phaedrus that love is good, but makes an improvement by adding the distinction between heavenly love and common love, and adding the qualifier that love is good only if it is the former.

Eryximachus (Doctor) 185c-189b

• Commends Pausanias's distinction between the two types of love and agrees with him therein.
• Agrees that it is good to gratify good people, and bad to gratify bad people.
• Expands upon Pausanias's explanation of love by saying that love is not purely emotional, as Pausanias has suggested, but rather that it is bodily as well (which makes sense, given that he's a doctor).
• He completes an analogy by saying that it is appropriate to gratify the healthy parts of the body, and bad to gratify the diseased parts of the body.
• Eryximachus then expands this idea of love to show that love has its place in music, agriculture, medicine, etc. It is the doctor's role to implant the good kind of love in the body and flush out the bad, restoring the body to a homeostasis of harmony. Likewise, love is manifested in unity and harmony in other subjects as well.
• Love is ever-present, all-powerful, and primarily concerned with unity

Aristophanes (Great comic playwright) 189c-193e

• There used to be 3 genders: male, female, and androgynous. The gods sliced them in half because they were getting too powerful, and love is the reunion of the two halves of a person.
• Androgynous individuals are heterosexual, with the other two genders being homosexual (I use the word "homosexual" loosely, since some would protest to the lover/beloved relationship being stigmatized this way).
• Aristophanes praises the male-male relationship for the same reasons that Pausanias does.
• "Love" is our desire for wholeness, and restores us to our formerly whole selves (This gets at what Eryximachus is getting at too).

Diotima

• Socrates shows that love is desirous of something which it does not have, meaning that if what the previous orators have said is true, then love can be neither beautiful nor good since it desires what is both beautiful and good.
• BUT, love does not have to be ugly and bad, since Diotima says that things don't have to be one thing or their opposite, but can fall somewhere in the middle. For example, love is not mortal or immortal but is a sort of spirit.
• gods use spirits to communicate with humans, so love is like a message to the humans from the gods.
• Love is the child of Poverty and Resource, and is like both of them, but somewhere in between. For example, love is always poor but very tough; somewhere in between ignorance and wisdom; always in need but can scheme to get what he wants; is neither immortal or mortal so it can result in forever friendship or a temporary relationship (in contrast to what Pausanias says).
• Diotima dismisses what Aristophanes says about lovers looking for their other half, and instead posits that love searches for what is good. In the same manner of Eryximachus, she says that we want to amputate diseased limbs meaning we only want to be attached to what is good.
• Love is the desire to have the good forever, and the closest we can get to this is through birth and reproduction because that's what gets us closest to immortality.
• She, like the others, advocates the male-male relationship by saying that men can be pregnant in both body and mind. They can be pregnant in body and seek to reproduce with a female, or they can be pregnant in mind and seek to reproduce wisdom and virtue in the mind of a younger beloved.
• As far as the whole "loving the bodies is bad but loving the minds is good" thing that Pausanias gets at, Diotima says that boys begin to love a beautiful body until they realize that there are lots of beautiful bodies, so they move onto the mind. Then, the love of the mind becomes more important and the love of the body falls away. Then, he just loves beauty in general rather than beautiful bodies or things.
• Then, he grows to love knowledge, which ultimately leads to love, which is the knowledge of beauty, which is eternal.

Love

The two main types of love discussed in Plato's Symposium are popular love and heavenly love.

Popular love is described as being sort of haphazard and driven by the fleeting passions. It is directed either towards a woman or towards a man, and is driven by a lust for the body rather than a desire for the soul's wisdom. It admires accomplishments in the beloved, but takes no notice of the manner in which they were required. It is characterized by a lack of harmony between the two individuals, and is considered wicked or base.

In contrast, heavenly love is considered noble, and is only directed towards a male, from a male. It is not a passion for boys, but rather is a love of wisdom and goodness. Thus, this love is captivated by the beauty of the mind or of the soul, and because it seeks wisdom and goodness, it makes both individuals wise and good. Essentially, the elder of the two is the pursuer, and he teaches wisdom and knowledge to the younger, who in turn gratifies the elder because it is considered right to gratify good men. This creates a sort of harmony between the two, and results in a forever friendship, even when the lover/beloved relationship dissipates.

Thus, love is the pursuit of wisdom that results in unity between a lover and a beloved.

Guard Your Soul (Protagoras 309a-314e)

"You cannot know to whom you are entrusting your soul,—whether it is to something good or to something evil."

When Socrates hears that Hippocrates is desiring to go see the Sophist, Protagoras, who has just arrived in town, Socrates is shocked that he would so willingly pay a sum of money just to go see him, unsure of what he will actually be gaining. Socrates establishes that if Hippocrates were to pay a sculptor or a painter, he would want to be taught the profession of painting and sculpting. Likewise, if he is paying a Sophist, he must therefore want to become a Sophist as well. Unable to describe what it is exactly that he wishes to gain from Sophistry, Hippocrates concedes to Socrates that what he is really wanting is education, not learning the profession, because he does not want to become a Sophist himself - in fact, Hippocrates says he would be ashamed to be a Sophist. Socrates then establishes that a part of education is indoctrination - at least when dealing with Sophistry - and that he is surprised Hippocrates would pay to be indoctrinated with an unknown doctrine by going to visit Protagoras.

In this excerpt, Socrates recognizes something that we often fail to recognize in this day and age: the sacredness - and malleability - of the human soul. He states that Hippocrates cannot just carry away what the Sophist gives him in his arms - no, he must carry it in his soul. Forever (314a). As consumers, we often fail to recognize that some of the things we purchase and take part in will not just alter our life through the function of the object, but will actually change us. We don't notice that the sort of music we choose to listen to, the lyrics we hum under our breath, the movies we watch, the things we read, the things our ears listen to, the arguments we buy, the things we allow our soul to become aware of are all slowly changing the very essence of who we are. Our generation is young, wild, and free of all repercussions regarding our rumspringa actions....so we think.

Growing up in the Church, we always heard statistics regarding youth who essentially fell off the Church grid during and after college. Our youth pastors all pleaded with us to be careful that we not "lose our faith" too. I think this "loss of faith" (disregarding a discussion of whether one can actually "lose their faith") is due to the fact that the new age is filled with the exhortation to be more open-minded. If you don't want to listen to someone else's point of view or opinion on how the world is or how it should be, then you are labeled as a closed-minded bigot. Because of this, more and more young people are opening their souls to doctrines that cannot help but change it. Strangely enough, I think Socrates would be on the God's side this time (haha). I don't think Socrates is advocating for closed-mindedness, necessarily, but I think he is cautioning one to take much care with what they allow their soul to be privy too. You can think critically about your faith (or whatever the belief/mindset in question is), and that's a good thing, but don't go listen to random, unknown doctrines when you don't want their effects on your soul. After all,

"You cannot know to whom you are entrusting your soul,—whether it is to something good or to something evil."

The Sophists, but mostly Anthiphon

After reading the excerpts about Antiphon, I realized that the majority of Plato's writings about Justice, especially his conversations in The Republic about the nature of Justice, were constructed on the foundation that Antiphon provided.

First of all, Antiphon posits that Justice is following what the nomoi prescribe when there are witnesses present, and following the decrees of phusis when witnesses are not present. After a little research, I discovered that that the numoi/nomos are laws, lawmakers, having to do with societal law, etc., and that phusis is essentially the law of nature, or that natural conscience you have within you. Essentially,  Antiphon says that following the phusis are necessary, while the numoi are simply extra laws that everyone has agreed upon. Thus, when one is in private, one need only follow the phusis, but in public or in society you must follow the agreed upon laws. To do this is Justice.

Now, he goes on to prove that being Just is best, or leads to the most happiness, which Plato also argues in the Republic. He says that though the numoi may seem to be in conflict with phusis, and may seem to cause discomfort or pain, or at times seem not adequately just, it is better to live in communion with others and heed the numos rather than to abide in nature and live by the phusis. Thus, Hobbes' saying "human nature is nasty, brutish..." seems also to be an echo of Antiphon. He argues that nomos is grounded in phusis.

Antiphon also lays down the foundation for the idea that only the person who is Just in private as well as in public is the truly Just person (Ring of Gyges and all that...).

He then moves on to talk about eunomia and anomia, eunomia meaning proper order and right conduct, and anomia meaning the opposite (I think basically Justice and injustice). Antiphon argues that tyranny springs from "nothing else but anomia". He says that this only happens when nomoi and justice dissipates.

Thus, the groundwork is laid for Plato's Just city in The Republic

Democritus' Epistemology

Democritus is a materialist: he believes that physical matter is the only reality and that psychological states can be explained as physical functions.

So he starts thinking about what someone can know, and he comes up with two things
      First, he believes that only things that can be perceived are real or true.
     Secondly, he thinks that the truth of something is in its appearance.

But, given his atomic theories, he realizes that there are opposite and infinite appearances of one thing due to the shape, arrangement, and position of its atoms…and all of these appearances can’t be true!

So….What can we know?

Well, he says that thought and sensation are caused by atoms impinging on the body from the outside, but this leads us to a huge epistemological problem: If what we know about the world is derived from our sense experiences, but the senses themselves are not in direct contact with the nature of things, just these atoms, then we can’t really know anything. And, he’s not a skeptic, so he wants a better answer than that.

He wonders if the mind could overthrow the senses, but this wouldn't work because he still thinks that the senses are the mind’s only route to truth. They’re all we’ve got to go on, but they just aren’t substantial enough. For example, you can’t perceive atoms with your mind, you have to sense them. Our knowledge of the properties of atoms is always based on the senses. But then you have this conflict because the senses report properties that the atoms don’t really possess in their nature, like colors and tastes. This means that there’s this huge potential for doubt – there’s a large gap between what we can perceive, and what actually exists.

So basically, here’s where we’re at. Democritus says that the knowledge of truth is difficult, because perception through the senses is subjective. The same senses prescribe different impressions for each individual, meaning that we can’t perceive the Truth through our senses. We can only interpret the sense data through the intellect and try to grasp the truth.

 So, he comes up with the fact that there are two kinds of knowledge.

        The first is bastard knowledge, which is Concerned with the perception through the senses. He says this is insufficient for knowing truth, because it is subjective according to the individual. It’s subjective because sense-perception is due to the effluences of the atoms from the objects to the senses. When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sense-impressions arise from those stimulations.

          The second is legitimate knowledge. It’s achieved through the intellect, and you must evaluate “Bastard” knowledge/sensory perceptions through inductive reasoning.  After you take into account subjective sense impressions, you can:

1)      Examine the causes of the appearances
2)      Draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances
3)      Discovery the causality by which they are related.

Once you have these three things figured out, you can be pretty sure of your knowledge!

Anaxagoras and Metaphysics

Anaxagoras, evidently influenced by Parmenides' theories about the "what-is", proposed a metaphysical theory that said the entire cosmos was driven by the "nous," which refers to the intellect or the mind. His physical theories state that, basically, everything is in everything. Here he draws from the Milesians as to the ingredients of the cosmos, and says that whatever these ingredients are, they are all mixed up together. They cannot be separated, but the mixture is not homogenous. Thus, there is a bit of everything in everything, even if one thing is distinguishable from another. These distinguishable things are formed when the nous starts the mass swirling. So basically, the universe is like a giant oreo milkshake. The oreos are part of the milkshake, but distinguishable from the milkshake stuff, and the blender is the nous.

In his aphorisms, we can see that there are 3 undergirding principles to Anaxagoras's metaphysical theory:
1) There is no becoming or passing away.
2) Everything is in everything.
3) There is no smaller or larger.

In aphorism 17, Anaxagoras says that there is no coming to be or passing away, but that everything is either mixed together or dissociated. So apparently the laws of the conservation of mass and energy have been around since 500BCE (Sorry Antoine Lavoisier, he beatcha to it). I guess if he thinks that everything is one ginormous swirling vortex, it would be hard for something to separate out of it, and it would also not make sense for things to be able to be created or discarded, because everything that exists is IN that giant swirling vortex.

From this, it naturally follows that everything is in everything. He strangely distinguishes, in aphorism 11 that nous is not only the driving force behind everything, but is also IN some things (yet not in others).  Perhaps he means that not all objects are sentient or intellectual beings, thus, nous would not be present in things that are not humans, animals, or plants (he thinks plants have intellects too).

He has an interesting discourse on the topic of the smaller or the larger. I think what he's getting at is that the cosmos is so big that everything in relation to the cosmos looks to be equally miniscule. In aphorism 3, he explains this and says "...there is a smaller for what-is cannot not be, but also for the large there is always a larger. And the large is equal to the small in extent, but in relation to itself each thing is both large and small." This is where he's reminiscent of Parmenides because he realizes that the what-is can never not be, which directly influences statement #1 in the list above.

Zeno

After reading Zeno, I am sure of only one thing: I am not a metaphysics person. That being said, the following is an attempt to talk about Zeno without talking about metaphysics.

Zeno says that his many metaphysical arguments are purely efforts to defend Parmenides' argument that the what-is is one. In this spirit, he advances many different metaphysical arguments countering things like plurality and movement. Through them, he shows that there is only one thing in the universe, which runs counter to what we are able to perceive. In a roundabout way, Zeno is not only focused on metaphysics but also on epistemology. Just because we can perceive something doesn't mean we can know it - we must think logically about things in a metaphysical manner to be able to know things.

However, I'm not so sure that Zeno accomplishes what he sounds like he's trying to prove. Parmenides, when speaking about the what-is, was speaking about Truth. Parmenides is a monist and was saying that there is only one, objective Truth, NOT that there was only one single entity in the entire universe.

That being said, I don't think that Zeno misunderstand Parmenides and what he was trying to say (how could he, if they were so close?). I think that those who heard Parmenides' monism may have misunderstood him to be saying that there is only one actual thing in the whole universe (let's be honest, the whole "what-is" thing is just a tad confusing), and that Zeno was actually defending Parmenides' thesis by making counter-arguments to what common people thought Parmenides was saying. Thus, in order to be Parmenides' defender, he didn't  have to defend Parmenides ACTUAL thesis, he just had to counter what others interpreted that thesis to mean (which was also easier).

In doing this, Zeno challenges common perceptions of the physical world, and shows that there is much more than meets the eye (and the ear).