Symposium

What is love?  A few different answers are provided in this text.

There is the story of love - seeking love, one's soulmate or other half and an explanation for one's orientation coupled with a fantastic creation myth!

There is the story of love - sexual love or lust.

There is the story of love - guidance to a life of virtue, the importance of the role of a mentor to another.

There is the story of love - framed as the pursuit of happiness and/or abstract knowledge/wisdom (Socrates and Diotima) and as means to achieve immortality.  (1) Physical immortality = you are never the same and you are mortal.  Perpetual procreation by offsprings after offpsrings will ensure that you (your genes) live on forever.  (2) Mental/Spiritual immortality = guidance through mentorship, passing down or "reproducing/giving birth" knowledge to a life of virtue (43-45).  What struck me on page 45 is the similarities to ideas expounded in the Bhagavad Gita on fleeting moments or the ephemeral nature of life.  There is also a quality mentioned that is reminiscent of non-attachment on page 48, in that something or an idea (e.g. beauty) just is.  The slow process in the search for wisdom is also reminiscent of Siddhartha Gautama's slow search eventually leading to enlightenment or Buddhahood.

After class thoughts: The Form of Beauty and more generally, Plato's theory of forms, again reminds me of Buddhist ideas.  When one achieves oneness with one's form (e.g. a dog that is most doglike in its abstraction) is to be the ultimate being, godlike, reaching Budhhahood.