Who did Plato (not) Love? Oxford Abridged Short Talks

From the goddess Aphrodite to CS Lewis' analysis of the four loves and their Christian manifestations, Greek's multiple ways of looking at the topic of love has always interested people. In this talk I look at the origins of the term Platonic love. To what extent is this grounded in the writings of Plato as we have them? The main text on love, the Symposium, takes a broad look at what love means from a variety of viewpoints, offering a serious yet humorous, poignant and flippant, literary philosophical discussion of the topic, with some famous but also surprising outcomes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• oxford university
• cressida ryan
• love
• plato
• classics
• lecture
• short
• valentine
• eros
• symposium

[MrBrucebracey]

love the video man

[SuperDogbrown]

some sweet info here

[acatcalledronald]

As an inexperienced fourteen-year-old aspiring classicist, I found this talk entertaining and stimulating, I thoroughly enjoyed her sense of humour and the ideas on platonic love.

[elmaya4eva]

An excellent talk by Dr. Ryan. I found the presentation was lively, very interesting and actually informed me of a great deal of the ancient and the modern. I look forward to watching many more.

[PadraigBelton]

Brilliant things, what a wonderful sense of humour to put on a lecture on platonic, Greek love for Valentine's Day, and I'm very pleased the University has taken to placing these short talks on YouTube! This was the first I'd seen, and I've got to admit I've now watched several in quick succession. More please!

[Naturalist1979]

Mildly entertaining to the mind if you're into it (I am actually), but I don't see it having any relevance to our society whatsoever. Let alone urgency. De humaniora really need some socratic self-examination, and probably cling on to science (i.e. the scientific picture of human nature) in order to remain truly and enduringly meaningful.