Posted on March 30, 2016
During the lifetime a person is going up on the ladder of love: from the love of one body to the love of true, pure beauty. Only through pure, intellectual form of love, man is able to touch divinity. Love is an incentive to become better and to improve the world around oneself.
Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, the theme of love has been in the limelight of many philosophical discussions. Philosophers strived to explain the nature of love either as «as purely a physical phenomenon – an animalistic or genetic urge that dictates our behavior» (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)or as «an intensely spiritual affair that in its highest permits us to touch divinity» Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Plato’s Symposium is the starting point that generated further considerations about love. In Symposium love is described as a stimuli for spiritual and intellectual development, «which also is surpassed by what may be construed by a theological vision of love that transcends sensual attraction and mutuality» (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Phaedrus opens the discussion. He says that love is one of the most ancient Gods. Only love can give us the best guidance. «Guidance is given through shame when acting shamefully and pride when acting well» (Naulge, 20). Whom we love make us better. Phaedrus said: «If only there were a way to start a city or an army made up of lovers and the boys they love. Theirs would be the best possible system of society, for they would hold back from all that is shameful, and seek honor in each other’s eyes» (Plato 15). Here Phaedrus talks about courage that love gives to a person who loves. If people do something indecent, they feel real shame when in front of their beloved. Phaedrus claims that the army consisted of those who truly love would be invincible. Nobody would dare to let down the others when his beloved person stands near. Nobody would dare to drop the weapons, to escape the battle or to leave ranks. On the contrary, people who love want to be heroes in the eyes of love and would do everything possible to protect those they are in love with. This speech is focused on self-sacrifice that love brings into the world. At the beginning a person loves a body that helps to generate ideas, than a person finds beauty in many beautiful bodies.
It is also important to pay credit to Aristophanes’ definition of love. In his speech he claims that love is the pursuit of completion, that it is the aim to the wholeness. Nevertheless, people have an inborn need for reproduction and sexual act is of a great importance, the real need for love is of psychological nature, rather than physiological. We always need another person in our pursuit of the wholeness. We need to be united with a particular person to avoid loneliness, sense of isolation, and to obtain true redemption.
One of the challenges of Plato’s philosophical view is to see the world in a single principle, which is precisely the benefit that should be decided by analogy with the theme of personal love of man to man. But, according to Plato, the tragedy of personal love will always be that it often obscures the important thing: the body hides the soul of the individual and its beauty – the beauty of truth and life. The truth of love is in going by the way of love as well as by the way of philosophy, and see the soul of the body, with the transitory beauty – the beauty of enduring virtues and ideas, which in turn can not but lead to good and God. For all kinds of love: to parents, to children, to women, to men, to the motherland, to work, to poetic and legal creativity, there should be the highest form of love – love to the world of eternal and immutable ideas, to the upper world of goodness itself, beauty itself, truth itself. Thus, a person goes from love of the body up to the love of the soul, which is even more important and valuable.
Love helps to go through first steps on a philosophical way more quickly: it helps to know why a deep sense of personal experience can not be expressed in words, or, in any case, commonplace words. It teaches what it means to seek one’s favorite subject, think just about it and consider it the most important and forget about everything else. These lessons of sensual love in any event help to better understand the philosophical metaphors of Plato associated with true knowledge, aspiration, focusing on the main and removal from the unimportant.
Plato strives to unmask physical love. Heavenly love is the one that gives freedom, while common love tends to deprive of it. According to Plato, physical love narrows the outlook and aims, firstly, only for pleasure, secondly, leads to a proprietary attitude in relationship, essentially wanting to enslave rather than make free. Meanwhile freedom is absolute good that can give love in human relationship. A higher form of love implies spiritual union and the pursuit of the eminence, creation of a common good. The highest form of platonic love is the love of wisdom or philosophy, and the top of it is the cognition of a mystical image of ideas.
With the acquisition of wisdom, a man begins to appreciate the beauty of the soul above the body and «matures» to the love of a higher order, which is the essence of creation. Actually, hence the name «platonic love» is from Plato’s theory of Eros.
As soon as a person learns to appreciate soul over the body, he goes up one more step on the ladder. Here a person strives for beautiful actions.
This is love that motivates people to become better, it motivates to develop vurtue and character. «Guidance in daily life, courage in warfare, justice in cities, as well as the elimination of cowardice, dishonor, and shame are Love’s gifts. Because Love breathes might into every genuine lover, it overcomes danger, enables one to die for another, gives the greatest gifts, motivates high and noble actions, and has beneficial effects on the lives of men. Love occurs not only in the human soul, but is throughout the universe. The good which occurs is the effect of that Love which is noble, whereas the evil which transpires is the consequence of ugly and disgraceful Love» (Plato 100). A person also learns that love is universal and can be found everywhere: «love does not occur only in the human soul; it is not simply that attraction we feel toward human beauty: it is a significantly broader phenomenon. It certainly occurs within the animal kingdom, and even in the world of plants. In fact, it occurs everywhere in the universe. Love is a deity of the greatest importance: it directs everything that occurs, not only in the human domain, but also in that of the Gods» (Plato 111).
Love is expressed in the passion for beauty and human desire for immortality, achieved by the birth of children with a particular person. Plato argues that love is realized not in finding our halves, and the pursuit of good and immortality, saving ourselves for eternity through procreation. And it is not just about childbirth itself. In addition to «pregnant body» Plato specifically identifies «spiritually pregnant», that is giving birth to the virtues of discovery and creation. That is exactly what «offspring» is and it is immortal. Thus, love leads to the beauty of knowledge and motivates to generate ideas, leading to wisdom.
«But the true goal of love is to see Beauty itself» (Urstad 40). So love is the greatest incentive, stimuli, motivation. It is the universal principle that causes any activity. Love makes human life animate as it begets the desires, passions, and goals. Love brings people wherever they go and motivates them whatever they do. During the lifetime people become mature in terms of love: from the love of one person they come to the love of the universe, and from acting positively in the name of beloved they come to acting in the name of common good.
During the lifetime people become mature in terms of love: from the love of one person they come to the love of the universe, and from acting positively in the name of beloved they come to acting in the name of common good.
Works cited
Moseley Alexander. Philosophy of Love. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web. 12
Nov. 2015. <https://www.iep.utm.edu/love>.
Naulge David. The Platonic Concept of Love: the Symposium. Dallas: Dallas Baptist
University, 2009. Print.
Plato. Symposium. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2001. Print.
Urstad Kristian. Loving Socrates: The Individual and the ladder of love in Plato’s
Symposium. Odense: Res Cogitans – Journal of Philosophy, 2010. Print.
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