Love Is the Most Puzzling and Powerful Emotion. ?what Is Love?
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Love is the most puzzling and powerful emotion. ​What is love? What does it feel like to fall in love or to be in love or to love somebody? These questions are made by
many people for many years. There are many types of love, the love that a person has
for his parents, siblings, relatives, and pets, would be different than the love for his or
her country, which would also be different than the love towards a spouse. In The
Symposium, Plato stated definitions of what love is according to Phaedrus, Pausanias,
Eryximachus, Aristophanes, and Socrates. But what is the point that Plato is trying to
get across when presenting these definitions? To me love is whatever the person who is
seeking it believes in. Love can have a different meaning from person from person or
country to country. The ladder of love is a metaphor that occurs in​ Plato​’s ​Symposium
.The “ladder”
represents the ascent a person might make from purely physical attraction to a beautiful
body. There are six steps in the ladder of love. Step one is the starting point, love is first
aroused by the sight of individual beauty. So for example when your walking down the
street and you see someone and you say “WOW” you were aroused by the sight of
beauty according to the ladders of love step one. Step two is all beautiful bodies share
something in common, something the lover eventually comes to recognize. When he
does recognize this, he moves beyond a passion for any particular body. So to me that
means, someone recognizes that every person is the same they just look different. Step
three is the lover comes to realize that spiritual and moral beauty matters much more
than physical beauty. To me this is were “real” love occurs because they look at the
inside of someone rather than the outside. Step four is Beautiful laws and institutions.
These are created by good people and are the conditions which foster moral beauty.
Step five is The lover turns his attention to all kinds of knowledge, but particularly, in the
end to philosophical understanding. Finally step six in the ladder of love is Beauty itself,
the Form of the Beautiful. This is described as “an everlasting loveliness which neither
comes or goes. This is where you appreciate love for who it is or what it is. It does not
matter what shape size or form someone is but their inside is what counts. All together
the ladder of love are steps that proceed to how someone might see the true meaning
of love. To socrates if you get to the final step in the ladder you will never have anything
else influence you in love. You will always stick to the person or thing that you love and
will always cherish.
Plato