Log #3

Deeper into Plato’s Symposium

        Dazzled at the daily news about people addressing love wrongly, I, then, searched on the Internet with an eye on delving a lot deeper into the essence of love: what is love and how to love. To my surprise, the discussion on love can be traced back to few centuries B.C.E.; that story was written down and handed down in Symposium, by Plato. It was the time that Athens was still a democratic state. But soon afterwards, the famous Peloponnesian War struck the Greek.

After the Peloponnesian War which Athens got defeated by Sparta, the power and the espousals of democracy was greatly abated. As a result, more and more people started to question Socrates – said to be the mentor of many great philosophers including Plato – for his sophism and philosophies towards the politics which was said to be the main advocate to democracy and then, abysmally, poisoned him to death. The death of Socrates was a watershed turning point in not only the thoughts of the Athenian society but also in the way people dealt with politics. Plato, however, founded Academy, the prototype of the modern society, in memory of his respected teacher, Socrates, to deliver universal knowledge to pupils.

The Peloponnesian War

(Source: http://images.slideplayer.com/39/10875416/slides/slide_23.jpg)

In the work, Symposium, which I haven’t finished it all, (probably one third only) I can still tell a large difference of the values of love between the ancient time and the modern time. In the first few speakers, who were invited to the symposium, they shed some very different viewpoints from mine towards love. For example, Phaedrus associated love with ancient god or mythology; I find it a little absurd to link everything with Greek gods, so I don’t pay much attention on this part. However, the most impressive one for me is Pausanias who claimed that there are three different statuses of Eros (sexual love): moral status, social status, and legal status. And he also said that love is spiritually supreme among people. His words of wisdom struck a great resemblance to the modern philosophy of love, making me wonder how advanced the thoughts of the ancient philosophers could be to get so closed to modern people's.

The Symposium by Plato

(Source: http://www.loyalbooks.com/image/detail/Symposium-Plato.jpg)

There seems to have someone addressing the issue of same-sex marriage as well in such a conservative society. On March 24, the grand justices of our country are set to convene a constitutional court to debate on the issue of same-sex marriage too. With the positives, I personally hope we can pass the law to amend the civil codes because the ancient philosophers had already raised the idea of same-sex union, surpassing so many years ahead of us, we should catch up with that as soon as possible. Also I would try to finish this work soon as well, so I can probably view this issue with a brand new perspective.