Love and its Relation to Good and Pleasure

Here is an essay I wrote about Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus. It might be a little rough around the edges because this was the original copy and not my final copy, so please excuse any spelling or structuring errors if there are any.


Socrates is a believer in doing what is good, not what is pleasant. In Gorgias, he clearly lays out how doing what is good is advantageous to the soul by discovering truths through philosophy and learning, and to the body by keeping it strong, healthy, and active. Socrates assertion seems to align with the idea that doing what is good is ultimately more beneficial in all facets of life while doing what is pleasurable may appear to be beneficial to the senses in the short-term, but ultimately is not beneficial, sometimes even damage-causing. In Phaedrus, Socrates makes two speeches about love, one criticizing it and the other in its defense. He and Phaedrus agree that love is some sort of insanity and/or some celestial being, and it seems to be the former that leads him to criticize love and the latter that compels him to defend/glorify it. Through his speeches, Socrates reveals what many people in the modern day have already learned through experience: Sometimes it can be hard to determine whether or not love is a good thing. Likewise, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between what is good and what is merely pleasurable.

Obviously perspectives on proper human relationships have changed from the time of Plato to the present. Pederasty, for example, is no longer considered an acceptable expression of love. However, it appears one thing that has not changed much since Plato is human. Love is often attributed to having an intoxicating effect. In fact, many people can probably think of instances when they have acted insanely because of it. Instances of it even shows up in the news repeatedly (Nancy Kerrigan, lately that astronaut lady, etc.)

In Socrates’ first speech, he finds the problem to be that desire, which is associated with love, is interconnected with pleasure. One who desires will always ultimately use the person of his or her affection to obtain pleasure. The result is that the object of affection serves his or her purpose and is cast aside, failing to gain anything for him/herself in the process. However, in his second speech, Socrates reverts to matters of the heavens to make a case in the defense of love. Socrates is forced to tell mythical stories, in the process glorifying love. However, these are stories that he, as a mere mortal, could never have witnessed, making it something he can never completely understand. He concludes that love is a sort of divinity.

Socrates conclusion seems to be contradictory. In Gorgias, and even in the first speech he gives in Phaedrus, he uses logic to come to his conclusions. However, in his final speech he seems to have succumbed to some sort of divine intoxication, or perhaps the same sort of madness that love stems from. He abandons logic and dialogue and seemingly contrary to his beliefs, he gives a long, beautiful, but intangible speech. Perhaps Plato saw that the best way to understand and present love, this strange something that seems so illogical but remains innate in all humans, was by depicting his protagonist Socrates at his weakest and most illogical moment. Plato’s point being that love is not an aspect of human life that can be understood by logic, but nonetheless remains essential. In doing so Plato was making a very profound statement, but he also raised many questions as to whether Socrates is being contradictory and whether or not his conclusion of love should be valued considering that he concludes in his first speech that love is a component of pleasure and does nothing to disprove it, but rather foregoes rational and logical processing in favor of elegant intangibles.

The most prevalent issue in determining love’s relationship to the good and the pleasurable appears to lie within the problematic definition of the word ‘love.’ Love means many different things and to different people the word carries differing connotation, relevance, and impact depending on when, how, and who it is used in reference to. There exists spiritual love, romantic love, brotherly love, neighborly love, etc. It certainly seems that certain aspects of love are pleasurable whereas others would seem to be more accurately grouped as good. Another issue with Socrates’ speeches about whether love is good or just is that he does not define the counterpart to love. With the body, Socrates states that gymnastics and medicine are good ways to take care of the body and cosmetics and pastry-baking are the pleasurable counterparts. Similarly, in regards to the soul, legislation and justice are the good ways to govern the soul and sophistry and rhetoric are the pleasurable counterparts. It would appear that to determine whether love can be considered either good or pleasurable, its counterpart also needs to be identified.

I’m not Socrates or Plato, but it seems to me that Socrates first speech which he gives is an attack against lust more than it is of love. Seeing beauty and desiring to possess it in order to quench a deep, insatiable sexual urge relates more closely to his assertions in his first speech and its relation to what is pleasurable. In his second speech, Socrates presents an intangible speech for love, which is something that humans will probably never completely understand, but for whatever reasons still believe to be a good thing.

Everything Past Possesses the Present

Last night was the Oscars. It made me think the presence of the past in film. Throughout the ceremony they were doing tributes to all the great film contributors that have died and the great movies of the past (at one time they did a montage of great foreign films of the past and later they did a montage of great American films of the past.) Many of the filmmakers who receive critical and public acclaim profess to being inspired and to even setting scenes up as "throwbacks" to the great films that came before their time. The Oscars stand as an example of how the past affects everything and that even in the short history of film it is obvious. I wanted to make some more direct connections to what we are reading now, the symposium, but all I could think of at the moment was that there is many different movies which portray love in many different ways and there have even been a few movies dealing with the issue of pederasty, though The Woodsman is all I can think of now right now;)

Test Day

Well here we are on the first day of the test and I just found out how to add people as links on my blog. I don't even really know how I did it, but somehow I managed to stumble into the right area. Good luck to everyone.

Men vs. Women

George Steiner describes one of the five most inherent conflicts as being men versus women (the others being age vs. youth, the individual vs. society, the living vs. the dead, and man vs. the gods.) In my life these conflicts certainly seem to hold true. Lately I have had some interesting conversations with some members of the opposite sex. Most of these conversations are a little personal, which is why I won't detail what exactly was said. Basically they have included conversations between me and a former high school sweetheart, an old flame, a flame that never was, and a new flame. In each of these conversations there was conflict, some to a greater degree than others. My high school sweetheart is now pregnant and living with a guy but made the assumption the I wanted to get back together with her, the old flame basically told me that if I still wanted her that she would be mine, the flame that never was is now engaged but told me she missed me, and the new flame and I had a complete miscommunication that led to a rather unpleasant result (by the way, the only one that also lives in the same town as me is the flame that never was, go figure.) Sometimes it is strange how these things work considering that I had hardly spoken to any members of the opposite sex for a while and then all these things happened within a week or two. Regardless, the eternal and inherent conflict between the sexes became a very tangible reality to me over the past two weeks.

George Steiner and Antigone

I find it interesting that George Steiner (Antigones) can write such a long and complicated book over what is a fairly easy to read and not overly long play. It shows at least that Antigone, while it may be easy to read, is not simple. However, I disagree with the assertion that Antigone is the finest of Greek tragedy plays. While it is undoubtedly great, it wouldn't be possible without the existence of Oedipus Rex, which to me is the consummate Greek tragedy. Both contain similar themes and issues, with pride standing out as the major one, but while Antigone may be more complex, it is the simplicity of Oedipus Rex that I find makes it ultimately more effective. Both Oedipus and Antigone are characters that suffer from pride, but Oedipus's history clearly makes him the more heroic, and thus the character the audience sympathizes the most with. Steiner states that pride was a complex attribute in Ancient Greek, one they believed was both bad (because the gods hate prideful people) but also necessary for one to be great. In Antigone, both Antigone and Creon suffer from this problem, but without Oedipus's great rise and fall, the drama of Antigone could not have existed.

Rhetoric

In another class that I am taking this semester, History and Theory of Rhetoric/Composition, we spend a lot of time reading and discussing rhetorical theory from ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Gorgias, etc. These two classes supplement each other very well. In Classical Foundations of Literature I get a good idea of of the literature of the time and my Rhetoric/Compostition class helps me to get a better understanding of the theory behind writing, and although it is more focused on persuasive discourse, we have looked into examples of persuasive speeches found within such literary works like The Iliad. Both classes help me get a greater picture of the history of Ancient Greece and I have found myself using certain things we have talked about to help explain questions from my Rhetoric class. If anyone is interested they should look into taking the class next time it is offered as these two work very well together. I wish I would have taken Classical Foundations earlier so I would have had a greater base knowledge of Greek culture and literature.