1. Symposium, II Philosophy of Love and Sex

2. Socrates argument against Agathon x loves y What kind of a thing is y? Beauty / something beautiful. If x loves y, the love desires y. If one desires y, then one does not have it. Therefore, love is not beautiful, contrary to Agathon Problem: It is not love that desires y, but x. Response: Still, if in loving one desires to possess beauty, and one has the love, then one already has beauty. Problem: If I have health or money, I can still desire health or money. Response: I desire more or future health or money.

3. Diotimas myth about love Love was conceived by Poverty and Resourcefulness on the day Aphrodite was born. Love is poor, as it lacks what it loves. Love is resourceful, as it strives to get it. Love follows Aphrodite (sexuality), but the connection is not deep. Love is between poverty and resourcefulness. There is something between ignorance and wisdom: philosophia, love of wisdom. Love lacks beauty, is tough and shriveledlike Socrates.

4. Can you love something ugly and bad? kalos = beautiful, fine, noble (connotes evident goodness) Worry: But dont some people love bad and ugly people? Some people loved Hitler. Response 1: One may love something ugly for its beauty if one thinks it is beautiful. Response 2: Something can be ugly in one way and beautiful in another. Porträt Paul Hausser in der Uniform eines SS- Gruppenführers mit Ritterkreuz (verliehen am 8. August 1941. © Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Lecture notes and photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 German license.Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 German

5. Object vs. point of love The lover of money, lover of pizza, lover of knowledge and lover of Mark all want to possess money, pizza, knowledge and Mark, respectively. Kelly loves money. What does that mean? Object of Kellys love: money. But what does she want to do with it? What is the point? Two options: –Collect a variety of forms of it (collector) –Have a lot of it in the bank (greedy) The object of eros is beauty and the good, being possessed forever. But what is the point?

6. Giving birth in beauty, whether in body or in soul (206B) Eternity is achieved through reproduction. Animals, manuscripts. Bodily level: –Allegedly its easier for a woman to give birth in beautiful surroundings. –Man gives birth to his sperm literally within a beautiful woman. Spiritual/mental level: –Giving birth to ideas in the heart of another.

7. Diotimas Ladder this very Beauty (211C). Beauty Itself. The Form of Beauty. Knowledge: mathematics, astronomy, etc. [T]he lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom, until… (210D) Beauty of souls, activities and laws Many people with beautiful bodies A person with a beautiful body (and beget ideas with him)

8. What is Beauty Itself? The Form of X is what makes things that are X be X. The Form of the Human Being is what makes human beings be human. The Form of Beauty is what makes beautiful things be beautiful. The Forms do not change. The Forms are not culturally relative. The Forms are really real not merely in mind or merely abstract.

9. Why believe in the Forms? Learning conceptsstandards, etc. Explanation of commonalities.

10. Too impersonal? Shouldnt the highest love be love of persons? But after achieving the highest, one is better at the lower kinds of love, for one truly understands what it is that is lovable about persons, laws, mathematics, etc.

11. Lysis Philia not eros Aporetic