Plato's Symposium (Valentine's Day lunch)
Details
In the spirit of Valentine's Day we are doing a luncheon to discuss Plato's dialogue The Symposium, which contains a series of speeches on the topic of.... love! We will discus not only Plato's treatment of love, but your own and more contemporary conceptions of love.
I have booked the quiet back table room of Milestone's for a group of 12 people (this requires us to agree to mandatory 20% tip on our meals, so please note that), and it is expected you will also read the dialogue in advance of the group meeting.
You can download an online copy of The Symposium here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm
And here is a short intro video on this dialogue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2Gb-G0yoU
Seating is limited for this event, so please click "attending" if you intend to both read the dialogue and show up for lunch on Feb. 14th.
Hope to see some of you there.
Cheers,
Colin
**UPDATE**
Looking forward to our discussion about love and Plato’s Symposium over lunch. A brief summary of some points/questions we may focus on.
In addition to the question “what is love?” (e.g. a feeling or an eternal idea as suggested by Diotima, or a god), what is the purpose or function of love? Do we love because such feelings serve our species’ reproductive success? Recall an earlier meetup discussion of Schopenhauer’s THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE. He argued
“Every kind of love, however ethereal it may seem to be, springs entirely from the instinct of sex; indeed, it is absolutely this instinct, only in a more definite, specialised, and perhaps, strictly speaking, more individualised form”.
In Plato’s Symposium we see instrumental accounts of love advanced- that love profits the beloveds, that love serves as a moral virtue, and that love promotes health. Reflecting on your own life experience, how would you describe how love has impacted your wellbeing? Has it been an instrument of your own moral development? If so, how so? And how has love impacted your own physical and mental health? How does “heart-break” figure into the picture on these same points?
Or perhaps you consider love a non-instrumental value, something pursued for its own sake because it “completes our other half”, or is beautiful, courageous and just. Is there a “ladder of love”- when young we love beautiful bodies, then souls, beauty in different branches of knowledge, Perhaps to love is to gaze upon an eternal idea. What do you think?
Come along and enjoy some delicious food, conversation and comradery!