The Symposium or Love, one of Plato’s richest dialogues, is a narrative, where several speeches of praise and celebration of Love are presented.
Phaedrus, the first to speak, speaks of the inspiration of love for virtue, which is a gift and springs from itself. And from there comes happiness among men. For the idea of love is an idea in itself, and participates in the idea of Good, and in this participation becomes one with it. Pausanias speaks of the duplicity of love, which can correspond to the idea of Other than the Good, and which can manifest itself in the lover. This is the popular lover, who loves the body more than the soul, is not constant, and is attached to interests that are not high.
Next in Eryximachus’ speech, Eros, love, unified with Good, is the essence of all things, because through the art of medicine, he finds that love is present in all beings. Being is the unity of all multiplicity gathered together, it moves from disorder to order, establishing harmony between the parts. In fact, they are part of a composition, of a connected and interconnected whole. And love makes the synthesis, the unity of contradictions. Aristophanes, in turn, narrates about the three genders of humanity. We were a whole, and this totality is called love, that was our ancient nature. Once the division was made, love became a desire, a desire to complete itself, it is always in search of something it knows it lacks. Unity is healing, bliss and happiness. Therefore, since men have love in essence, they seek it in each other.
Next, Agatão gives an explanation about the nature of love, where so many gifts come from. And his home, according to him, is in the customs and souls of men. Love is virtuous, as it is fair, temperate and courageous. He has dominion over himself and all kinds of good arise from him, the most beautiful and best possible. But, it is in Socrates’ speech, narrated with a myth, that the essence of love, its being, its idea is demonstrated. Given the myth narrated, one must understand why Eros, Love, was born forgetting his true origin. Because, in the state of lack and sleep it was generated. His resource-poor mother (Pênia), and his father Poros, completely drunk, asleep, consequently unconscious. And Eros lacks what he doesn’t remember. But, the search for oneself, for love, is the search for truth. For what is forgotten. Remembering means filling the lack, supplying the lack. Making what is missing complete: the moment of generating love. This is the moment of truth that was hidden, in the veil of sleep of oblivion. By removing the veil, the Good is consummated, and the truth appears.
The birth of love generates pain and suffering, because one does not know oneself, it is between knowing and not knowing, being and not being, order and disorder, good and evil. Between ugly and beautiful, rich and poor, mortal and immortal. In the sensitive world we see ourselves divided, hence the constant desire to complete ourselves. Eros is the link between the two worlds (Intelligible-Sensible); he is intermediate, he is between knowledge and ignorance; between memory and oblivion. Eros wants to discover his true nature. He has a thirst for knowledge, and his motivation is fixed on this idea of discovering himself, finding himself, knowing what he is in himself. To forget is to be trapped by the body’s chains, it is to lose your freedom. Eros is divided, has a desire for unity. Eros wants to appropriate the Good, in union with the Beloved.
Love has extremes, and it needs to travel the paths between them, so that it can recognize its true origin, and find itself. Eros through carnal love, seeks to achieve immortality in bodies, for the continuation of the species. The beauty that love seeks at this stage is not elevated, it is fleeting, fickle and perishable with the body. The body is will, in the search for pleasure and escape from pain. This is the level of bodily love, where Eros deeply hurts the soul. That’s when love is not noble. At this level, it can be said that love is pure selfishness, individualistic, blind and unfair, because the beauty of such a body has not touched the feeling of the soul. It is where apparent nature is at the service of itself, and does not allow the visualization of the original idea, which is the idea of beauty. In this way, the soul of man lives solely for the preservation of the body, fallen into need.
What Love aims for is immortality (as it is neither mortal nor immortal), but being trapped in the sensitive world, what it does is reproduce mortal children, that is, this immortality is illusory. What Eros seeks is the idea of (eternal) beauty, which is in the form, in the harmony of bodily things, which is why it is one and the same in all bodies. The soul misses you. A longing to return to his home, but he doesn’t know how to explain it. It is a loving longing, a thought that persuades you, admonishes you. And this thought is equivalent to a light in consciousness. Well, the soul still has hope of being free from its afflictions, from all its torments, that is what it wants most. In this passage we can see the reference made to the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, as possessing such hope. And Eros is intermediate between knowledge and ignorance, seeks knowledge, and loves what he seeks, Eros is a philosopher. Beauty becomes the means of elevating love, transforming sexual desire into pure and disinterested contemplation, allowing Eros to unite with the original idea of which it is constituted.
Eros seeks the Good, through the expression of beauty, and uses the most irrational acts. What controls his will, his desire is the Good, but his actions take place in the sensitive world, governed by the principle of causality, which correspond to the laws of becoming. In this way, he commits the most varied nonsense and deviations. Hence their dissatisfaction and suffering. Because what each one seeks in the other is something higher than corporeality, because “only those who love your soul love you” (Plato, 1975, p. 241). The action of Love in men is equivalent to a birth in beauty, both in the body and in the soul. The divisions of feelings of the soul harmonize, unify in a single state, in its original, good, beautiful, fair and true state.
Delirium comprises the moment of the supreme, that is, spiritual, birth of the soul. The soul, through love, sees itself reflected in the beautiful mirrored in the sensitive. It is agitated, it wants to take flight, and rise to the place of its nature, the plane of ideas. Delirium comprises an intermediary between emotion and intelligence. The man in this state forgets everything, all the worries and situations in his life, looking up, wanting to fly. There is an enchantment over his senses, and an openness to spiritual delight.
It is understood that everything is Good, everything came from Good, was born from it and tends to return infinitely to it. Any and all contradictions to the idea of Good are lack, lack, longing to find it, from which in essence it never came. Illusion, ignorance, covers up this reality and Plato, in the Symposium, uses love to illustrate the paths that the soul takes to find itself. Because, love could not teach the soul, in the sense of showing how it is, but in the sense of stirring it, propelling it through desire, to seek, to seek to know what it is for itself. Resignation in general or renunciation corresponds to freeing oneself from labor pains. All our suffering, caused by our needs or needs, are like birth pains. They are always announcing your birth. Freeing oneself from labor pains is giving birth to the soul. It is the detachment of the soul from our physical body. And the whole process of letting go is painful, like childbirth. Giving birth corresponds to annihilating and despising all our illusions, giving way so that the soul can rise.
In the Symposium, virtue is identified as knowledge. And Eros has a love of knowledge, he was born between knowledge and ignorance. Eros seeks the beautiful, and the beautiful is in the Good, and the Good produces the truth, our ability to know. And intelligence is the one who can separate virtues and vices, purifying our soul. Love is sublime. The lover is idolized, filling his soul with love, and when he sees himself in the other as in a mirror, he doubts whether it is love, and takes it for friendship, and from there virtue is born.
Love is a preparation for death. In the dialogue, we see that man is only the soul, as it is the soul that controls the body. The body is seen as an obstacle to the elevation of the soul, to achieving knowledge. Purification is a need of the soul. And reaching the state of purity is equivalent to preparation for death. The self-centered soul frees itself from the influence of the senses. Love reaches the top of the ladder, reaches the last step, in the heart of death. Only there is true and pure love, which leads the soul to absolute freedom. Love recognizes itself, its nature is revealed. To know is to die in oneself, and love is transfigured into virtue. And all virtues come from Good, and love is an idea that participates in Good, makes up its unity.
From what Socrates said, Alcibiades, who arrives drunk at the Banquet, ends the speech. And he refers to Socrates, paraphrasing love. He weaves the entire trajectory or path of the philosopher, to become virtuous, describing the degrees that love has to go through, to achieve self-mastery, that is, beauty in itself, and starting to produce true virtue.