Philosophy As Education Of Eros

The Symposium is a very famous and significant dialogue of Plato.He took eros as the research object of the problem and made itself a unique concept.The ascent of eros from the body of beauty to the idea of beauty is a Platonic spiritual and ethical conception of nature that implies a standard,a norm that philosophy should follow.Plato’s philosophical education is the highest peak of ancient Greek education.Jaeger believes that it treats paideia,the shaping of the Greek character,as a basis for a new study of Hellenism as a whole.He intends to open a new perspective for the study of Greek culture,revealing the unique characteristics of the culture and its historical development background.Jaeger’s interpretation of The Symposium,the overall context is to start with the concept of eros,and discusses from the historical background,Plato’s method of thinking and writing,and then analyzes the type of Eros from each speech,and finally analyzes the yearning and pursuit of beauty and good from the perspective of paideia.The main part of the paper is consist of three chapters.In the first chapter,Jaeger reinterpreted of The Symposium from the perspective of eros education.He started with the concept of ‘the first beloved’ and revealed that ‘good’ is the good desired and pursued by all things.Next,from the perspective of paideia,this paper interprets and analyzes the scene of Plato’s choice of symposium,and expand the various types of Eros through the speeches of different characters,and combines them together,all of which pave the way for understanding Socrates’ speech of Diotima.In the second chapter,Jaeger revealed the relationship between eros and paideia in the process of explaining the climax of the dialogue.Through Socrates’ interrogation of Agathon,Jaeger draw forth eros as a desire for something,that is,a desire for something that oneself lacks.From the perspective of the order of characters and the setting of speeches in The Symposium,this is the sublimation of Plato’s idea of the rise of the ladder of eros,which dropped to the real paideia of Socrates in Alcibiades’ s speech.To live a good life is to achieve the unity of body and soul through eros,and the purpose of paideia is to help and guide the soul to rule oneself.In the third chapter,Jaeger explained that the meaning of the paideia of eros lies in the beauty-and-goodness life through the interpretation of the end of the dialogue.When Plato said that the object of eros is the perfection of ultimate ‘good’,he transformed a seemingly irrational impulse into a highly understandable and meaningful thing.The highest human arete was called kalokagathia,this ‘beauty’ or ‘good’ is the highest principle of all human will and action,the ultimate motive which works with its own inward necessity,and at the same time the ground for all that happens in nature.The key to stimulate eros lies in the appearance of beauty,and it is eros that urges us to create beautiful things,especially to do beautiful and arete behaviors.