Read: Plato's "Apology"
Answer: Study Guide Questions (Full Monty Required)
Eurolit Notes for 10/9/18
Plato’s “Symposium”
•Immortality through fame
•This section goes hand-in-hand with understanding future Plato
•Back page, right hand column, line 49, “If mortal man may,” thus
we cannot find absolutes, because we are not absolute
•Immortality has to do with ideas, and our idea of what beauty is,
because that, too, is immortal
Great ideas are
“children of the soul” which survive their “parent” into posterity
•What is beauty? How do we know? How do we know anything?
•We learn it
inductively, but only because we know it deductively beforehand
For the Sophists,
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Socrates believed
that beauty is conceived with the mind; it is conceptual.
Beauty and love are
metaphysical. They partake of the divine. Humanity naturally loves that which
is beautiful.
The only way we can
perceive beauty is because we have a conception of what beauty is.
Beauty absolute = separate, simple, everlasting. It doesn't change. It is perfect and stays perfect forever. It is removed from the world of reality. Idealized.
•”Renewed by recollection” through aposterori thinking
•All people desire to be remembered because they wish to be
remembered and, thus, immortal, because people are afraid of the unknown, and
death, and want to escape death through remaining remembered
•All people also desire wisdom and virtue. Why?
•Because you should
do the right thing
•Any attempt at utopia will result in dystopia. Why?
•You have to give up
one virtue to have a greater virtue
•Also because
“Utopia” means “Does not exist”
•Temperance (moderation) and justice and the ordering of states
and families are the most important virtues
•Leadership affects
a lot of people, and is thus influential and can be inspiring
•Or, perhaps, we are
selfish and want to lead just for fame
•Justice and
temperance are limiting
•Two examples of “Children of the soul” are Homer and Lysergius (a
great statesman)
•Homer’s “Children of the soul” are The Iliad and The Odyssey
•One may create jut
for vanity, but may also to inspire people, or to become famous
•We can attempt to attain the immortal by trying to do something
as close to perfectly as possible
Platonic love = you see in a person what you find to be beautiful.
Humanity loves anything, which they perceive to be beautiful.
We have a particular nature, and will be happy when we partake of
that nature that defines us.
•Can one fall in love at first sight, according to Plato and
platonic love?
•Yes, because you
can fall in love with their soul, and see them with your mind’s eye, and
recognize them as another soul
•What are the six steps to recognizing absolute beauty? (It is
INDUCTIVE)
1. We find one form
we find beautiful
2. We see that
beauty in other things than physical forms
3. We see beauty in
everything
4. We see that the
beauty of ideas is greater than the beauty of physical forms
5. We see beauty in
death and the unknown
6. We recognize that
there is beauty in all things
•We can’t know absolute beauty; we can only have an approximation
of it.
