Refelct and Connect: Week 14

Connect:

Reflect:

This week we read the symposium and dealt with it all week. The first thing that popped out to me in this was when Diotima said, “Do not then insist that what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil; for he is in a mean between them.” (pg 284) I like this because it connects back to the beginning of the year when we were talking about arguments and the general opinion of the authors was that we see issues as black and white, there is no gray area in between but she is saying that just because something isn’t one thing, it doesn’t necessarily make it the other thing. There can be something that is a mix of both black and white. Tying into that, I like that she keeps stressing the fact that there is a mean, or a middle, in things. She uses the example that love is not divine but is not mortal either. Something else I really liked was from The Art of Courtly Love was in the section titled the Rules of Love. The quote is,

“No one can be bound by two lovers.” (pg. 301) This sounds simple enough and I used to think that this is false. I thought yes, you can love more than one person at a time; they both might have qualities that you like (which is still true… kind of). Then I came across a quote by Johnny Depp saying, “If you love two people at the same time, pick the second one. If you really loved the first one, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second.” This quote blew open the doors in my mind and made me see it from a different point of view because I totally agree with this. I connect this with the Symposium where Diotima says that not only your body, but your mind is always changing as well because maybe you did love the first but then you changed a little and the second became more appealing. The quote that ties in with this is rule number 17, “A new love expels an old one.” (pg.  301) It’s weird that I don’t agree with it, because I believe you can hold on to someone, but it fits with choosing the second lover over the first because you must not like the first one as much.