Plato, Desire and its Unrelenting Love.

Love is often argued to be the most powerful and moving emotion. It drives us. Whether for sex, wealth, greed, power and/or for any other selfish need, we rely on this false ideology of love as being beautiful, untouched and selfless to claim our actions as permissible and out of the best interest of our hearts desire. It is this obsession with love which has intrigued philosophers for hundreds of years, and as a result, the reason such deliberation and rationality has been extended to it. Plato, a Greek philosopher, mathematician and writer, is often considered to be one of the most influential figures of western culture in relation to loves desire. His work on “Eros” or passionate love, is recorded in the play The Symposium, in which, Plato delves into the mystery and philosophy of love, sexual drive, homoeroticism and the duality of love. The following essay will express the importance of desire and truth according to The Symposium and Plato’s work.

Plato was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. A student of Socrates, he was widely influenced by politics but decided against a political career to teach philosophy at an academy he formed. It was this learning environment that helped Plato form his understanding of homoerotic passion, his model was that of a sexual relationship between a mature man and his pupil, and only through this relationship was the ability to pass on knowledge accomplishable. Accordingly, the general theory of desire and the relation to its beauty, especially its everlasting nature and its inability to change, are all integral components of the unequivocal appearance in Plato’s œuvre .

Love and desire are established early in the play. During the Greek period, when the text was constructed, homoeroticism was widely practiced. The term homoerotic means the pursuance of a younger male between the age of puberty and that of a fully-grown man, and was not considered an affair, but rather a pleasure and a form of gratification. The ‘lover’ (erastai) would pursue the younger man, with the hope of being sexually gratified. The term itself refers neither to homosexuality, nor heterosexuality, but rather somewhere between the two . The desire to form these relationships was a construction of self gratification opposed to the virtuous representation of love .

Phaedrus, who speaks literally throughout The Symposium, demonstrates the normality of homoeroticism when he announces “I mean, the greatest benefit, to my mind, that a young man can come by in his youth is a virtuous lover – and a virtuous boyfriend is just as good for a lover too.”. In the literal sense his observation constitutes this instinctive desire to attain this knowledge. He states that a love affair between man and woman is an outcome of the moral ambivalence to love . It is this ambivalence that inspires collusive and knowledgeable reasoning to the idea of moral gratification between a male and female. If a male has sex with a female it is only for the gratification of himself, where as, if the sexual relationship involves two men who equally seek the requirement of knowledge, both benefit from the experience .

Similarly, Eryximachus delivers his speech under the example of medicine, creativity and music, as opposed to the literal metaphysic approach previously. Stating that when we have harmonies in life it is conversely dissimilar to the harmony expressed in love . The ‘good’ love or ‘celestial love’ is that which develops moderation in our lives, the love least driven by impulsive pleasure, which we should strive to attain at all costs. The desire to attain requires “one to be careful that the recipients of this love enjoy the pleasure he has to offer without being made self-indulgent”, the common understanding negates this forceful love as a desire of ones own predetermined magnitude, and should be avoided to cast the risk of erudition.

The desire to attain ‘true happiness’, as aforementioned by Aristophanes, predetermines this underlying theme of romance. It is his understanding that sexual preferences are innate and impractical, rather than a condition set by society, and that we each have a perfect mate somewhere to complete us. He furthered his statements about desire and sex as perceiving ‘meaningless sex’ inessential until finding a true desire. This desire can only be fulfilled by finding our ‘soul mate’, “It was [our] very essence that had been split in two, so each half missed its other half…and longed to be grafted together” (p27), until the time of completion of the two parts, the soul lingers and requires the completion of the puzzle, furthering the requirement to stay pure and chaste until the time of retrieval of the other half. Love “draws our original nature back together” (p 27) which could possibly be a reason as to why the male sexual tendencies were driven to within same circles of intercourse. The desire to posses the knowledge and in a sense feed off the more learned master is only accomplishable with the connection of the bodies.
Plato states that the people who form unbroken lifelong relationships find it hard to sustain these outside their sex-life, which is the reason why they’re each so eager and happy to be in the other’s company . This desire to satisfy primitive primal urges rather than a willingness to gain knowledge, Plato implies, is a frivolous contentious waste of life. He even goes as far as to say that “they obviously have some other objective, which their minds can’t formulate” (p29) suggesting that if they seek only to fulfil their own lust, they benefit society and the furtherance of knowledge in no way . Plato excepts celestial love and union through male and female intercourse, but fails to recognise any gains other than the creation of life.

The theme of truth is also vital within The Symposium. Plato uses Diotema to capitulate his ideology of truths role in homoerotic relationships. The “permanent possession of goodness for oneself” (p48) leans towards the reasoning of truth and lack of permeability of non celestial relationship. The will to learn while passing knowledge through homoerotic ‘love’ requires the ultimate trust. Passing knowledge from the scholar to the pupil requires the attainment of mutual formation and trust through all acts. It therefore made logical creditability for a teacher to teach loves pure desire. This was as long as neither teacher nor student took advantage or gained more than each other through the experience.

The universality of love, as expressed through metronic reasoning, meant Plato was able to define a virtuous understanding of the truth of loves inferiority complex and dissolution of it contents. The comprehension of love as a form merely of pleasure between a male and a female disillusions ones own knowledge. Plato, as accustomed to the relevance of the day, commissions females as mere inferiors, destitute and callous in their response to love . Where a woman craves love and admiration at her own beauty, men seek only the attainment of the connection bridged through their own forms. This is a constant love, but not insidious of sexual impurity or self-gratification.

The Symposium delves deeply into regions such as the immorality of ones’ self. To lie to the well-being of the soul diminishes the Eros of ones self, and pollinates the idea of eschatology in human perception . The immortality of the body through the virtuous uniting of the two male bodies, “I saw them once, and they struck me as so divine, so glorious, so gorgeous and wonderful that- to cut a long story short- I felt I should obey him in everything.” (pg 58), develops this true and glorious event as not a philandering of self attainment, rather the beneficial occurrence of celestial love in its grandest form.

The term love is often argued to be the most moving and important emotion. Whether for sex, wealth, greed, power and/or for any other selfish need, we rely on this false ideology of love as being beautiful, untouched and selfless to claim our actions as permissible and out of the best interest of our hearts desire. It is this obsession with love which has intrigued philosophers for hundreds of years, and as a result, why such deliberation and rationality has been extended to it. The Symposium describes the philosophy of love, sexual drive, homoeroticism and the duality of love, which are all fundamental questions of truth and desire. The acquisition of pure celestial love, and the attainment of knowledge through such virtuous means such as homoeroticism, determines the understanding of loves divinity as a God, and in turn, gives a balanced and prenuptial understanding of Plato’s arrival at what desire, truth and love truly are.

Bibliography

Plato The Symposium Trans. by R. Waterfield (Oxford classics)

SCHOFIELD, MALCOLM (1998, 2002). Plato. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A088SECT12

SCHOFIELD, MALCOLM (1998, 2002). Plato. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A088SECT12

ALLISON, HENRY E. (1998). Spinoza, Benedict de. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DA070SECT9

BRENNAN, TAD (2002). Forms, Platonic. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A131

SCOTT, DOMINIC (2002). Innateness in ancient philosophy. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A136

SCHOFIELD, MALCOLM (1998, 2002). Plato. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A088SECT18

SCHOFIELD, MALCOLM (1998, 2002). Plato. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 05, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A088SECT14
PLATO’S VIEW OF COURAGE (1999, 2006). Plato. The Review of Politics, Volume 69, Issue 04, Sep 2007, pp wat687-689, Retrieved June 05, 2008.
SOBER, ELLIOTT (1998). Innate knowledge. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 06, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/P027
Solomon, R & Higgins, K (eds) The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love

Leites, E. The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality

BRENNAN, TAD (2002). Immortality in ancient philosophy. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved June 06, 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A133