Do elogio à verdade: um estudo sobre a noção de Eros como intermediário no "Banquete" de Platão

Abstract

This thesis is comprised mainly of an analysis of Plato s Symposium, a dialog devoted to love, with its images, landscapes, lessons, metaphors and concepts that become a comprehensive model of our modern idea of love and that, somehow, were adopted by the Western, becomming part of our cultural universe. This investigation is carried out in the Banquet debate scene, referring to the link between Eros and Logos, the erotic army and the philosophical army, established by Plato,defining its frontiers and basis in the famous speech Diotima of Mantineia, in which were founded the relations between the erotic pursuit and the dialectic movement. It is here that Plato tells us his theory about participation, as well as his theory about Love, intermediary between sensible and intelligible, men and gods, Forms and its manifestations. This present study has the following structure: 1) an analysis of Love exaltation in the Agathon banquet; 2) an study of the conversation between Socrates and Diotima, in that Eros is introduced as an intermediary being; 3) an study of Alcibiades as a decisive character that displaces Eros exaltation to Socrates exaltation. This thesis is mostly centered in the love initiation proposed by Socrates-Diotima, presenting the relation between masculine love and the erotic army as a pedagogical activity and as a lifestyle, in some aspects, or as a connection between love and philosophy, on some other aspects