Week 14 Reflection

The Symposium
1. Diotima plays the role of reason and reality in this story.  She is introduced to the audience to show that event though she is not widely known, she was in many ways, a philosopher.
2. Socrates represents the idealized version of the lover as given in Diotima's account because he is always trying to show how everything really can be perfect.  He also has many questions, which represents the fact that idealized version of lovers are often unaware of what is going on and are somewhat confused.  Diotima gives him reality checks to show that love is not always perfect.
Other Passion Readings
1. Some concepts/rules in the reading that are still basic to romantic love are: Love is always growing or diminishing, it is not proper to love one whom one would be ashamed to marry, and a lover is always fearful of losing a loved one.
2. He believes they should be respected, especially if they are of a higher class.
3. "Vaster than empires, and more slow" is how he said his love would grow.  This is the most valuable instruction in a good marriage because fully loving and appreciating someone for who they really are takes time, but in the end, their love for each other will be huge.
4. They did not acquiesce.  It talked about how she would die a virgin.
5. Some symptoms of love are that it is "a universal migraine" and it "blots out reason."  This means that everyone has experienced love at some point or another and it blots out reason means that love makes people to crazy, irrational things.