Troy Terwilliger’s Reviews > Symposium > Status Update
Troy Terwilliger
is 17% done
Healthy Eros (Harmonious Love): the desire of the healthy parts of the body to maintain balance and moderation. A skilled physician knows how to encourage the body's healthy desires so that its constituent elements work in harmony. (Unhealthy Desire): occurs when diseased or corrupt parts of the body crave things that harm it (like addiction or excess). A bad craving leads to discord, bodily imbalance, and illness.
— 5 hours, 43 min ago
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Troy’s Previous Updates
Troy Terwilliger
is 46% done
The Form of Beauty Itself (Auto to Kalon): Finally, at the top of the ladder, you catch a sudden vision of absolute, everlasting Beauty—pure, unmixed, unchanging, and divine.
— 5 hours, 17 min ago
Troy Terwilliger
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For Plato, when you are captivated by a beautiful person, face, or work of art, you aren't just experiencing a random physical sensation. Your soul is recognizing a spark of something eternal.
"Love of what is beautiful" is the thread that pulls us out of our immediate, earthly existence and guides us toward wisdom, creativity, and the highest version of ourselves.
— 5 hours, 18 min ago
"Love of what is beautiful" is the thread that pulls us out of our immediate, earthly existence and guides us toward wisdom, creativity, and the highest version of ourselves.
Troy Terwilliger
is 44% done
People whose souls are pregnant carry ideas, virtue, wisdom, art, and justice. When they encounter a beautiful soul, they give birth to "conceptions of the soul"—great works of literature, philosophy, laws, and moral guidance (like Homer).
— 5 hours, 18 min ago
Troy Terwilliger
is 43% done
Diotima explains that all human beings are "pregnant"—some in body, and some in soul.
Why Beauty Matters: We cannot give birth in the presence of ugliness; ugliness repulses us and makes us shrink back. Beauty acts as the midwife. When we encounter something or someone beautiful, it inspires us to release what we have been carrying inside and give birth.
— 5 hours, 19 min ago
Why Beauty Matters: We cannot give birth in the presence of ugliness; ugliness repulses us and makes us shrink back. Beauty acts as the midwife. When we encounter something or someone beautiful, it inspires us to release what we have been carrying inside and give birth.
Troy Terwilliger
is 42% done
When Socrates stumbles over the answer, Diotima simplifies it: if you replace the word "beauty" with "goodness," the answer becomes obvious. Loving what is good means wanting to possess the good forever so that you may be happy (eudaimon).
This leads directly into Diotima’s most famous revelation: how "love of what is beautiful" acts as an engine for human mortality striving toward immortality.
— 5 hours, 19 min ago
This leads directly into Diotima’s most famous revelation: how "love of what is beautiful" acts as an engine for human mortality striving toward immortality.
Troy Terwilliger
is 41% done
Up to this point, everyone agreed that Love seeks what is good and beautiful. But Diotima asks the crucial follow-up question that no one else thought to ask: Why? What does a person actually gain by possessing beautiful things?
— 5 hours, 19 min ago
Troy Terwilliger
is 40% done
“You can not desire what you don’t realize you lack.”
— 5 hours, 21 min ago
Troy Terwilliger
is 39% done
When you combine Agathon’s idealist view with Socrates’ philosophical view:
Agathon’s view: Love creates justice through harmony, gentleness, and mutual consent.
Socrates/Diotima’s view: Love drives the soul upward toward the "Form of the Good." For Plato, true Justice in a person’s soul—and in a society—can only happen when a person's desires are ordered toward this ultimate Good.
— 5 hours, 23 min ago
Agathon’s view: Love creates justice through harmony, gentleness, and mutual consent.
Socrates/Diotima’s view: Love drives the soul upward toward the "Form of the Good." For Plato, true Justice in a person’s soul—and in a society—can only happen when a person's desires are ordered toward this ultimate Good.
Troy Terwilliger
is 38% done
To be an "expert on love," then, is not to write beautiful poetry praising it as perfect and just. It is to recognize that love is a perpetual state of longing—a drive that pushes us from our state of lacking toward the eternal pursuit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
— 5 hours, 24 min ago
Troy Terwilliger
is 37% done
Love is a "Medium" or "Daemon": Socrates reveals that his expertise doesn't come from his own intellect, but from a priestess named Diotima of Mantinea. She taught him that Love is an intermediate spirit (daemon) bridging the gap between what is mortal and what is divine, between ignorance and wisdom.
— 5 hours, 24 min ago