Praedrus, whose names means "shining forth", believed that love is an ancient god. He thought that virtues are from the "shame". And he thought that only by love could human being gain happiness. Everyone would feel more shame to do "bad" things in front of their lover. And a person would only sacrifice himself or herself for lover. However, he seems to believe everything is good.
Pausanias, his name means "to stop, to pause". He put love into two different categories, one is heavenly love which only involves men, and common love which involved women. For him, only heavenly love is deserved in pursuit. It is more to the soul. However, common love is more like a physical staff. He also believed that love itself is neither good or evil. All the judgement of love is based on the action, whether it happens in a good way or evil one. He also thought that love should produce virtues.
Eryximachus, the doctor, whose name means "belch fighter", and who really treat Aristopharves's belch during the speeches, believed love is everywhere. He agreed with Pausanis that two different kinds of love are existed on the world. Also, he uses the opposite body conditions, health and sick, to illustrate that.He believed love is something to make everything in harmony, which seems that he thought love is a kind of force that runs everything.
Aristophanes, whose name is "the appearance of the best", he told us a story about the human nature. His speech is my favorite one in this dialogue. Due to the human nature we have, Aristophanes believed that love is the pursuit of wholeness and the complete. We used to be part of the whole human that have two heads, four hands and legs, and seem to be round. Love is the process to find our perfect another part. So love involved lack, what we are looking for is the thing we lost before.
Agathon, whose name means "the good", is the party giver and just won the victory in his first tragedy. He gave the his understanding of the characteristic of love. He held a view that love is the youngest and "soft". Love only lives in the softest part of human, the heart. And also love owns the good and beauty in himself.
Although all of the speakers have limitation due to their own perspective, but the next speech in some kinds improved the former one. That's the reason why Socrates kept silence during the whole speech. In the end, he began to challenge Agathon's speech. In fact, he challenged all five speeches at the same time.
good summary.
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