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    Plato recognized that Erôs can act as a force that retard... — Carmelics
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    Plato recognized that Erôs can act as a force that retards rather than promotes philosophical development.

    Aesthetics
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Alcibiades is presented as a case where love does not lead to love of the beautiful itself.
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    • 2.Diotima's account omits the retarding function of Erôs not because Plato denied it, but because her story focuses only on successful love.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Diotima's ladder in the Symposium presents Erôs as structurally necessary for philosophical ascent, not merely incidentally helpful.
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    • 2.If Erôs were capable of retarding development by its own nature, Plato would need a separate faculty to initiate the ascent, which he never posits.
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    • 3.The absence of such a faculty suggests Plato viewed Erôs as univocally directed toward the Beautiful, with failure located in the lover's character, not in Erôs itself.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Alcibiades' failure in the Symposium is framed by Plato as a failure of self-mastery (akrasia), not evidence of a retarding function intrinsic to Erôs.
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    • 2.Martha Nussbaum's reading in 'The Fragility of Goodness' argues Plato uses Alcibiades to indict attachment to particular persons, not to qualify the directional force of Erôs itself.
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    • 3.Attributing retardation to Erôs conflates a contingent biographical failure with a structural feature of the passion, which the text does not license.
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    AestheticsVirtue Ethics

    Related

    Alcibiades is presented as a case where love does not lead to love of the beauti...Alcibiades' failure in the Symposium is framed by Plato as a failure of self-mas...Attributing retardation to Erôs conflates a contingent biographical failure with...Diotima's account omits the retarding function of Erôs not because Plato denied ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Diotima's ladder in the Symposium presents Erôs as structurally necessary for ph...If Erôs were capable of retarding development by its own nature, Plato would nee...Martha Nussbaum's reading in 'The Fragility of Goodness' argues Plato uses Alcib...The absence of such a faculty suggests Plato viewed Erôs as univocally directed ...

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: plato-friendship
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    If what Socrates learned from Diotima was about all love, however, it would be refuted by the very fact of Alcibiades, whose love for Socrates has not led him to love the beautiful itself. It would be equally refuted, indeed, by all the other symposiasts, none of whom has been led there by his love. But Diotima’s love story is not so general. It is self-advertised as a story about “loving boys correctly (to orthôs paiderastein)” (211b5–6)—as a lesson in “the correct way to go or to be led by ano
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit