Plato

"Love needs beauty." These three words said by Plato in his Symposium are the most influential and meaningful words in the book. It sums up what all the great philosophers argue and conversate about the words Love and Beauty. The knowledge and understanding of these two words are disputed and broken down, only at the end to be pieced back together for a complete understanding of how they tie together.

A conversation in the Symposium relates "beauty" and "good" together to explain what people are after when there is love. "Ð'.....love is of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima? - or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?" I answered her "That the beautiful may be his." In this conversation love and beauty are being examined. "Let me put the word 'good' in the place of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he . . . loves good, what is it then that he loves?......."Happiness." Beauty is not always seen in just the physical form, it is seen in a different perspective as personality and knowledge.

Plato believed in a love that had no sexual desire, just like a sexual abstinence. Everything is there in the relationship that makes it normal except the sexual side of it. Plato believed that this was the highest form of love and a person's character was a beauty within itself. A person with better character is easier to love that a person with no character and much beauty.

Plato's early discoveries about love are opinionated to say the least. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and if the person prefers lust over character that does not make them any less of a person. Plato's theory that there should be more that just a physical attraction is not disputed. It is even agreed with over a broad range of cultures. Love would be blind if people only cared about character or vise versa with physical attractiveness.

Plato has a great concept on how love works and what people actually desire. The conversation above simply states that all beings in search of love are in essence in search of a particular beauty in people, and that