The Ladder of Love: Plato's Symposium

What is love? What is beauty? Should all beauty be viewed equally? Is there a process we can take to better understand beauty? In Plato's Symposium, the character of Diotima explains to Socrates a Ladder of Love which starts with the contemplation of physical beauty in one individual and then moves up towards the form of beauty itself. The ladder of love shows Plato's thoughts regarding a progressive contemplation of beauty in which not all beauty is treated equally, although each contemplation of beauty is important as they are steps towards the contemplation of the form of beauty.
Music:
Never Ending Flirtations
royalty free Music by Giorgio Di Campo for @FreeSound Music
freesoundmusic.eu
/ freemusicfor. .
/ freesoundmusic
original video: • Never Ending Flirtatio...
Eyes on You (Prod. Matthew May)
Video Tags:
Plato, ladder, of, love, beauty, loving, beautiful, socrates, diotima, the symposium, dialogue, socratic, philosophy, philosopher, philosophize, contemplation, animation, amygdalavids, drawing, graphic, design, video essay, the republic, theory of forms, lover, romance, how, to,

[@evo1ov3]

Nice. Diotima doesn't get talked about enough when discussing Symposium. Even though it's probably the most important part of that dialogue.

[@rifatalam2075]

Hey.. a great video.Very insightful. On the fourth step of the ladder where it refers to institutional/ political beauty, in my personal opinion I think it refers to a rather psychological state of mind where a person questions themselves about how much is the person of their current interest is desired by others. It's another way of comparing if their feelings should be invested/entertained for a certain person. For example, A good public orator or a social worker is liked for their charisma/ social position by not just you but many. This comparison affirms your choice further. It also affirms that you might be less wrong for liking them till now.

[@Eternalised]

Great video. Loving the Symposium series. The most beautiful person.. Schop- I mean, I don't know. Interesting concept of physical beauty/beauty of personality. I can see why the latter triumphs over the other in the ladder!

[@PhilosophyToons]

Unfortunately it's probably the end for the Symposium videos unless I can pull something else out. Thanks!

[@breerichardson4230]

Institutional beauty = shared power that defines structure that allows us to create collective well-being. Also, solidarity! Essence of love outside of our self = pleasing, comforting, generally inspiring and affirming portrayals of life that we learn from. Ladder of love = gradual awakening to the vast extent to which we need our life to be reflected/affirmed and inspired. Something so profound that it requires several iterations of experiential knowledge in order to fully understand (we must experience it outside of ourselves before we can understand ourselves as part of it). Orrr, maybe I'm just an existentialist that's taken my fair share of psychedelics?

[@PhilosophyToons]

The top of the ladder of love is Plato's form of love, and for Plato's forms, they're usually better sought after through rationality rather than experiential knowledge. But that is a pretty unique and cool interpretation.

[@rockrulezkid123]

Great video, I hope Dokota calls you.

[@ShardsofWisdom]

Hahahha, Schopenhauer is gorgeous! I feel like you are is getting more and more better, really digging it! And that was a great topic to cover as well, great job!

[@letzte_maahsname]

You're quickly rising to become my favourite philosophy channel! Great stuff as always (or at least since you gave birth to your channel some month ago).

[@PhilosophyToons]

Thanks Pascal! I try lol

[@yourprince2433]

Bro, you are very underrated. I hope to see your channel grow more and get a lot of recognition

[@jai.joylove]

The beauty of something is just the "incredibleness" of the thing. So, yeah, for knowledge, it's the appreciation of it. Finding appreciation for the way something is in itself a beautiful act. Also, I think for the "institutions" part that was mentioned, it would also probably include educational institutions; the beauty of it (especially at that time) developing the minds of the youth.

[@laurenhiggins195]

the love in knowledge is the falling of the learning … the desire and thirst to gain more and more of it

[@jai.joylove]

It reminds me of the philosopher Spinoza when he writes about the intellectual, or intuitive, love of/for God (God as in all of Nature and beyond this world). Diotima is speaking about appreciating and love the beauty that can be find in all things and ends with speaking about an intellectual love due to the focus being on knowledge. To truly know and understand beauty as its own and to know and see beauty present in the world in all kinds of ways. Be creative about how something deserves your appreciation. Be creative with how we see beauty in the world.

[@Dacademeca]

Very interesting topic! Great video amygdalavids!

[@PhilosophyToons]

Thanks man, appreciate it!

[@drezventure8888]

Great video.

[@BorisNVM]

very divine

[@letzte_maahsname]

Regarding the possible beauty of knowledge: Doesn't the perception of beauty in things or people always include a feeling of 'I get never get enough of it'? In the case of knowledge: You gain knowledge in a particular field, but you always find more knowledge to be gained. This perception does not bother you though, but satisfies your immediate craving for meaning. Which makes me wonder ... Speaking in existentialist tongues, can the pursuit of beauty be a motive for life? On a different note ... Is the perception of aesthetics interchangable with the perception of beauty?

[@PhilosophyToons]

True, the infinitude of knowledge and the ability to get more is quite addicting. Idk about your second question because I don't know too much about aesthetics

[@breerichardson4230]

I landed in a similar place... that love could be defined here as the pursuit and continuation of life; pursuit of living a "good" life and attempts at the continuation of that life - or the essence of it - after death (immortality touched on previously). Since death is the antithesis of life and therefore the foundation of how we understanding it, love could also be defined in our our fondness of creating, in that we create an adoration of life based on collective acts of defiance against death. I'm confused myself at this point, basically what I'm saying is that perhaps Plato created a definition of love based on the dialectical relationship of life and death... which is so very Socratic of him :) As far as 'I never get enough of it' regarding beauty, I feel that the reason that Plato placed physical and intimate beauty lower on the ladder is in part due to the possessive nature of these forms. Where beauty found in institutions and knowledge is presented as transcendence over the trappings of personal attachment regarding beauty potentially. "Is the perception of aesthetics interchangable with the perception of beauty?" I would say that Plato seems to be attempting to reach an objective truth. This would seemingly align with a form of"rightness" of perception that would extend to beauty as well. I would argue that although an appreciation of beauty can and often is widely held, the relationship to it is always personal and experiential. Therefore the external definition of aesthetics that asserts "rightness" as found within the object, is not logically sound. I haven't read extensively about aesthetics, mostly because the arguments of "rightness" which has the stench of morally superior academic intellectualism is so prevalent in what I've read - and I reject this completely. I researched a little after reading your question and found an interesting take: "Adopting a naturalistic perspective, we here view aesthetic perception as a normative process that enables agents to enhance their interactions with physical and socio-cultural environments. Considering perception as an anticipatory and preparatory process of detection and evaluation of indications of potential interactions (what we call “interactive affordances”), we argue that the minimal content of aesthetic perception is an emotionally valued indication of interaction potentiality. Aesthetic perception allows an agent to normatively anticipate interaction potentialities, thus increasing sense making and reducing the uncertainty of interaction." YUP The article section I read explains: "The problem of rightness was introduced when scholars in the humanities attempted to explain our interest in some objects (rather than others) in terms of aesthetic values and properties that are connected to “ideals” about beauty and ugliness, which provoke pleasure and displeasure, respectively, in a perceiver. These special objects are connected to a superior reality, one that demands exceptional cognitive skills in order to be properly grasped. This is a tradition that persists from Plato to the contemporary literature on aesthetics, and was re-enforced when Kant intoduced the term of “disinterestedness” so as to express the state under which this exceptional form of perception is possible. For Kant (1998, 2000) and his followers, the experience of the transcendental aesthetic is possible only when, during perception, someone can remove any conceptual (e.g., purposive intention, an interest that may serve an instrumental or ulterior purpose) and sensual processes, so that one has only a pure intuition and the mere form of appearance. When the above conditions are not met, the object cannot be perceived aesthetically, which suggests that it was not an aesthetic object." NOPE Aesthetic perception and its minimal content: a naturalistic perspective Ioannis Xenakis and Argyris Arnellos www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168683/

[@freethinker79]

Discover the love within yourself first before chasing after it elsewhere!

[@kenmacfarlane8744]

Sadly that's what failed me, by the time I found it I'd lost the woman I loved/love and now over forty years later I still grieve.

[@ColbyBarradas]

Great video man

[@freethinker79]

"Knowledge" = Knowledge of the True Self (Gnosis)..which is pure beauty.

[@sophiacroft8628]

the beauty of knowledge is itself "philosophy" if love is beauty, philosophy is the love of knowledge

[@jamesreid8638]

I think the beauty in knowledge inheres greatly in the symmetries we can see both within and between the available fields of knowledge. There's also the love inspired by the unattainable, as our lives have limits, and knowledge has no known limit. How romantic that we spend the entire balance of our limited resources in pursuit of an unlimited agenda! 😂

[@nancytoulouse6973]

The most beautiful person has "beauty on the inside" (holds virtues, spiritual love and wisdom as valuable). (Am I close?)

[@nancytoulouse6973]

Knowledge has beauty when it resonates with us as a healthy thinking human being (am I right?).

[@dan4271]

The Catholic description of haven is the eternal contemplation of God Who would be this eternal changeless Beauty itself. It’s amazing how close to classical theology Catholicism is.

[@giannavarro5580]

What if Absolute Beauty is the love of the dead itself? Something unchanging and bound forever is the love for someone who has already passed. And we see it so much within people who have experienced any kind of loss with someone they love. They speak of them as if they are beautiful even despite flaws and imperfections.

[@nancytoulouse6973]

Are activity and institutions related?

[@Otaconsps]

I like these videos, but I didn't really understand why after explaining Diotima's argument you went back to the start of the ladder to debate about whether Socrates is correct about physical features and being able to love other bodies because they share similar physical features. Doesn't the argument boil down to essentially that love is about the pursuit of something that you don't have which is eternal/immortal and beautiful? The highest step on the ladder being the pursuit of true beauty/wisdom/knowledge.

[@evo1ov3]

But yeah back to Diotima. That part where she flips the argument around on Socrates is bloody interesting. Cause you see Socrates do it to people all over the place. And he (Socrates) credits Diotima for teaching him the trick. Which leads me to suspect that a lot of what Plato writes about. Is him (Plato) trying to understand Socrates's Method. Like when in the Phaedo. Plato says something that sounds like Plato is directly quoting Socrates. "I don't want to be like those that stare directly at the Sun. So I invented my own jumbled method." That's REALLY interesting. Because that is not something Plato would say. That has to be the actual words of Socrates. And not Plato talking through Socrates.

[@chuky900]

Levin from Anna karenina book brought me here =)

[@Crayonsonawall]

Activities and Institutions. I immediately think of Aristotle Virtue theory. Is it Goods and... nope... I forget. I'd have to reread it. But i think it is that, you know that mean thing his son wrote about. 😄

[@sashakhan1262]

Identically twins could have all physical features alike though.

[@rebeccamilligan3992]

adam driver

[@lyszt]

Oh, jake from adventure time said this lol

[@kristianabrahamson2126]

fuck a nice video !

[@danielmunguia4301]

Johanna 🤔

[@Johanna-lp1qj]

Yes?

[@bluecandy6575]

Whut's happenin heer?

[@evo1ov3]

Also didn't the Greeks have like 24 dozen different words for love? So yeah it's like in what sense of love is Plato talking about? It's like kinda one of those things I'd imagine that gets lost in translation. Clearly 'platonic love' is something different. Than say love for one's country, family, girlfriend, friends or pet mongoose. Idk

[@evo1ov3]

But yeah. Diotima and Socrates. I read somewhere that scholars suspected. That Ditoma and Socrates might have dated as teenagers or something. 😂 And that this whole "philosophy" enterprise is just a long winded mystery about Socrates getting a case of the feels for an Oracle of Delphi. Which is Diotima. She's an Oracle. That was her job. I could totally see Socrates falling for an Oracle. Then spending the rest of his life trying to figure out wth happened. 🤣 That'd be awesome if that were the case.

[@rosemacaskie]

Adam and Eve ate from the ree of knowledge. How old is the idea of Knowledge as important in love very old maybe.

[@evo1ov3]

Yeah dude. Plato is really fuzzy when he starts preaching about love and beauty. Those two ideas kinda get conflated. Except when Plato actually gives an example of what "beauty" is in Republic bk 4. With the painting the eyes of the statue analogy. He's says that eyes ought to be painted black and not the most beautiful color purple. Because beauty itself is a property that is proportional to the whole. Makes sense for once.

[@tsunningwah3471]

edo

[@Blazing_Hotmagma]

Pokimane!

[@A_Random_Rat]

What the fuck

[@rosemacaskie]

Sire men let women spend nights just talking to them.

[@santiagorodriguezvillegas8663]

Fasting is the only solution for life-Schopenhauer

[@rosemacaskie]

Give me Jesus before Plato anyday. He says love your neighbor as yourself. Get yourself a boyfriend who will try to love you as himself and you will be all right. Why do people study Greek or any philosophers instead of Judaism and in the place of Judaism which I have found to be so much better than the philosophers in pschology? Our scholars dont seem to study Judaism at all. It was just soooo... so embarrassing to have a hairy Jew as a saviour, One who wore a stupid coloured gown made without seems, instead of an, oh, so elegant toga and a shaved head. A Saviour who was a man from a small country, which did not, as far as we know, have any awfull building copied to boredom, full of great pillars, always of the same sort. The buildings were OK but do we have to have so many of them? Read about Judaism and Hinduism and you really get into main stream and complicated religious ideas. the Roman and Greek ones are such as you find in fairly awful religions. The Chinese Gods live in a heaven that seems like a Chinese Emperors court, ditto those of the Asgard who dont seem quite so lowly and far from inspiring justice and kindness as the Greek and Roman Gods but still, are not up with the greats. Jews continually preach against loving people for physical beauty, from a childs birth I suppose, instead of suggesting that you start with physical beauty. Most people equate phisical beauty with their own family type. Also, a teacher of mine, a modern woman, intelligently I thought, said people get attracted to people who remind them of someone they knew as children or in response to some childhood experience. To say love your neighbour as yourself is more psychologically sound than to say, love the person with greatest spirit. Catholic´s Pope´s get round Jesuses injunction by saying that women are different from men, so who knows what they like? They seem decide that women to be kept in the kitchen cooking, even kept from unduly influencing their own children. Just shut their mouths seems to be the idea. That Plato talks of loving great spirits is a bit off. Platos idea of people becoming great as they came out of the cave and saw ever so much more clearly than others, is said to have inspired such as, Hitlers lot, to decide that they were the chosen ones and that everyone else needed to be done for. To mention interesting ideas from Judaism. Jews it seems always believed in the subconcious; I have read that they say that maybe some part of a persons mind might possibly be in a good place even as they sin. Only God can see into the heart of men, say I and others. That is to say that they believed in the subconcious long before Freud talked about it. They were long ago more complex than the Greeks in some feilds. Why dont we study them too? How stupid does it make us look that we dont know anything about them? Why dont we study other Ancient Civilisations much. Chinese, Indian, Buddism? We live in the twentieth century and still are so ignorant about such. We are children, our scholars even are, who dont want to find anything that might make another person or culture look good in some way. How we Christians like to teach another religion. like the Greek and Roman Gods and only one other, as if all others were as stupid as this one, so that we look like the best, all while our religions try to look as Greek and Roman as possible because while we despise greek and Roman Gods we are crazy about their philosophers. DId PHilosophers reall come from greece or the far east I wonder? The Greeks and romans were so successful politically tha twe went goo, goo, ga, ga about them. The religious both want reflected glory from the classical world and want to give an example of another religions stupidity by given only the religion of the classical world as an example of other religions. I as a child supposed that Geek and Roman religion was an example of what other religions were about, for people to see things this way makes other cultures look so silly for usa for ohters it must make us look so silly , look like, emperors without our clothes on, thinking we wear a cloak of invisibility while others who know their ow truths see through us. Christians used the lowest of Greek and Roman world to their advantage while worshiping the philosophers of the ancient world or rther of europes ancient world. Greeks and Roman Gods behaviour make Christianity look so much kinder than other religions. What a distraction beign wild about philospophers is from any serious stuy of the religions of the world.

[@MSHNKTRL]

tbh, Dakota is kinda mid. I'm more of a Cinamon Hadley type-a dude.

[@jasielsethling5850]

Why are you doing philosophy if you aren’t able to do philosophy my friend?