Plato And Love

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popular views about love during Plato’s time. Plato intentionally portrays some as ignorant and others as valid thoughts on the phenomenon of love. Within the discourse, the speakers told of the characteristics of the gods related to love as a definition of what love is. Within each of the lectures given, Plato injected certain messages he sought to relay about love and its effect on people.
The speeches started with Phaedrus who stated many of the powers of love. He spoke about honor between someone and their beloved as a great virtue in a relationship. The major point relayed by Phaedrus’s speech was that a man of any nature would rather suffer humiliation in front of a great mass of people or all of mankind itself than to suffer the loss of respect or the loss of dignity in front of their lover. Our beloved stirs within us emotions that lead to noble actions. When interjected into modern society this idea creates two separate connotations when related to the ...

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of love can make a man dare to die for another.
Later on in the text we find a less dignified motive behind the sacrifice of one's self for another from the woman who teaches Socrates the meaning of love. We are once again faced with the idea of respect as one of the driving forces in love. The woman proposes that the main motive behind the sacrifice may be that it is a way to gain immortality. By dying for another they would be considered a hero. This may have been a valid reasoning during Plato's era because virtue and honor were seen as great characteristics of men. People were judged daily on these credentials and thus it is important in that era. Yet today our values of honor ...

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