I.
A theory of love should explain that we love a person; that a person is
in some way the paradigmatic focus of our love. Moreover, it is qua person that the
beloved is loved and not just as bearer of loveable qualities or attributes, in other
words, love is directed at the totality of the beloved and not identifiable (solely) with
certain aspects of a person. As a result such love is held to be incompatible with the
easy interchangeability of the beloved with some other with similar or ‘higher’
qualities and attributes. This is not to say that love is not transferable from one
beloved to another but only that such transferability is subject to loss of the unique and
irreplaceable individuality (personhood) of a particular beloved.(1)
This particular account of what a theory of love should provide is
deemed by numerous philosophers to amount to a knock-down case against any theory of love
which identifies what is loved as some complex of qualities/attributes or characteristics
of a beloved.(2) Plato is the central figure who is held to
have missed these features of love by supposing that what we really love in loving a
person are their qualities of Beauty and Goodness. However, the critique goes a lot
further and applies equally to any conception of agapistic love, or indeed to any theory
of disinterested compassion-love (as in Buddhism). This is so because (aside from the
theological difficulty of understanding any love relation as genuine because it is
commanded) when we consider our grounds for loving another person as posited by the fact
that he/she is a child of God, or as a divine ‘soul’ made by God, or in terms of
the universality, anonymity and ready replaceability of each and every beloved, we are not
deemed to be loving such persons as persons. Rather we are loving them because God
commanded us to do so, or because they are God’s children, or because they have
immortal souls. In each case precisely because the love is directed towards all and thus
everyone is loved, one instance of love is exactly the same as all others; each instance
is identical to, and replaceable by, any other, and thus in a sense, the love is anonymous
and universal, independent of any of the particular features which render the person
individual and unique.(3)
In this paper I will look carefully at the Platonic account of eros
in order to ascertain just how far these general criticisms hold water. We must however,
in dealing with Plato’s theory of eros, consider a further set of criticisms
specific to the Platonic project, namely, the view that Platonic eros is egocentric
and acquisitive. However, in this essay I shall not just engage in historical exegesis in
order to correct past misunderstandings of Plato, but rather I will be using Plato’s
work as an example of how we might better understand the nature of love in our own lives.
Plato’s theory of love is presented in numerous dialogues but for
the purposes of this paper I will restrict myself to considering only the Lysis and
Symposium. I will consider various interpretations of Plato’s writings and
dismiss many of the criticisms of Platonic love, and I will present a Platonic account of
love which goes a long way towards capturing something of the mysterious nature of love by
identifying two separate but overlapping ways of loving.
II. The Lysis
The subject matter of the Lysis is a discussion of philia.
Philia is the general term in Greek for friendship, but it is quite clear that in
the Lysis and generally within the Greek philosophical tradition its meaning is not
exhausted by the modern English word ‘friendship.’ It is often used
interchangeably with eros, but it also comprises the feelings of affection one has
with regard to things, as well as to familial love (storge) and even captures some
aspects of desire.
In the Lysis, Plato employs the terms, eran, philein,
agapan, epithumein and peri pollou poiesthai, sometimes
interchangeably, but certainly as loosely demarcated but closely related subsets of philia.
At 215a-d the terms agapan, philein and peri pollou poiesthai are used
interchangeably.(4) And importantly even before the
philia group of terms are introduced in the text, and the attraction of friends is
settled as the initial topic of discussion, the conversation employs for the most part the
eros group of words (204-206a). The background to the discussion is markedly erotic
and the subsequent discussion is stamped throughout by the sexual orientation of the
opening. In fact, the philia group is used exclusively only in the discussion of
familial love between 207-210 and in the attempt to spell out a meaning for what is
‘dear’ (211e-213d).(5) In the remaining sections,
from 214 through to the close, there is a mixture of all the terms mentioned above,
sometimes used interchangeably, at other times with only subtle changes of meaning. The
point to be taken from this is in substantial accord with Kenneth Dover’s claim that philia
and eros do not designate separate realms of meaning, but that there is a high
degree of ‘overlapping’ between the two terms.(6)
Thus, since I will be assuming that the doctrine of love in both the Lysis and the Symposium
is one and the same, these prefatory remarks should forestall any objections that I am
conflating two separate doctrines.
The Lysis provides us with a structural and analytic account of
loving or befriending. In this dialogue Socrates conceives of loving as comprising three
elements; a lover or subject who loves, an activity-loving-(which in the Lysis is
captured by the idea of actively engaging in making something ‘dear’ to oneself,
not just a recognition of value but the investing of [further] value in something over
time) and an object of love or beloved.
The motivational force which as it were enables the lover to love is
grounded in the ontological endeia (lack) of the person. Because persons are not
self-sufficient, agents exhibit desire which seeks out objects and subjects to fulfill the
lacks which are integral to our natures. On the existential level lack or ‘need’
is experienced in the desire for a plurality of things, including the ‘need’ for
a lover or friend.
Corresponding to the nature of desire and lack Socrates also thinks
that the object of love (whatever object) must also be loveable. In other words, there
must be something in the nature of the object of love which elicits the loving of the
lover. This is not to deny that the lover actively invests value in the beloved but rather
is posited as a partial explanation for the grounds of attraction. Many objects are
valuable in themselves but are not ‘loved’ in the special sense of the relation.
In other words the recognition of value is not sufficient to characterise the special
relationship of love. In love recognition of value requires an activity on the part of the
lover which maintains and deepens through valuation the relation with the beloved.
It is surprising nevertheless that neither in the Lysis nor in
Diotima’s or Socrates’ speech in the Symposium do we receive any full
articulation of the activities of loving; this in part explains the unease many
commentators have had with Plato’s theory of eros.(7)
However, Plato’s preoccupation in both the Lysis and the Symposium is
with the proton philon or first (final) object of love and the phenomenon of love
is discussed only insofar as it illuminates something of the path to that object.
Throughout the two dialogues are determined by that goal.(8)
Having established the logical grammar of philia in the Lysis
– that philia is the name of a relation and that it comprises a subject
who loves, an activity of loving (couched in terms of rendering and maintaining something
as ‘dear’) and an object which is loved but which also elicits our love,
Socrates’ dialectical questioning focuses on the nature of the relation between
subject and object of love. Kosman, in what is still the most penetrating analysis of
Plato’s views on love, correctly identifies the crucial elements of the theory as
presented in the Lysis.(9) Having identified what is
loved in terms of ontological endeia Kosman writes:
"That of which one is endees is not simply
that which one does not have, nor which one wants in the sense of desires, but that which
one lacks, or wants in the sense of needing, missing and requiring for the fulfillment and
completion of some nature." (10)
When Socrates finally suggests that what persons actually lack is the
plenitude of the first (final) object of love, the proton philon, he goes on highly
suggestively to identify a relationship between the ‘soul’ and the proton
philon. He does so by tantalizingly (and without a rigorous argument) pushing the
notion that the real meaning of our ontological lack resides in what is phusei oikeion,
what belongs to us naturally. Kosman once again captures the point brilliantly:
The conclusion (of Socrates’ questioning) is clear
and interesting, for it suggests that the proton philon is that of which we may be
said to be properly endeeis, and this is our own true but fugitive nature, that
which for us is phusei oikeion, even if we are separated from it…. Erotic love
is thus primarily for Plato self-love, for it is finally our true self which is at once
native to us and lacked by us. (11)
The similarity between the position outlined here and that presented by
Aristophanes in the Symposium is especially noteworthy, in particular where he says
that Eros is a great god who leads us eis to oikeion …, eis ten
archaian phusin.
While the Lysis formally ends in aporia it has covered much
groundwork. It has established the logical grammar of philia as being the name of a
relation; it has presented the formal structure of any philia relation,(12)
in terms of a befriender, a befriending and a befriended; it has identified but not
articulated the active on-going valuation which characterises the activity of befriending;
and it has managed to suggestively tie up a nexus of ideas which intrinsically link the
ontological lack of the befriended with an organic wholeness which the befriender attempts
to overcome by loving the friend. [Moreover, the organic wholeness which is described as
our true nature is both subject and object of love.] However, the emphasis of the dialogue
lies in the vertical dimension of philia which takes the befriender in the
direction of the transcendent object of love – the proton philon. While this
is well-recognised it is complimented by the notion that there is an intrinsic relation
between this transcendent object of love and our original nature. This insight will be of
some importance later in the paper.
The importance of the Lysis in Plato’s articulation of a
theory of love cannot be overestimated. Indeed it provides a kind of prolegomena to the
account in the Symposium (rendered by Diotima via Socrates) which takes up the
aporetic close of the Lysis by continuing to illuminate further the nature of the proton
philon. That the two dialogues are intimately linked is clear when we look at the
dialectical interchange between Socrates and Agathon at Symposium 198b-201d. Here
we get an almost verbatim rendition of the arguments in the Lysis which establish
the logical grammar of eros as a relation and its structural elements, rendered now
in the language of eros, as lover, loving and beloved. It is this analytic that
provides the truth conditions for the subsequent myth of eros and afterwards the
elaboration of the lower and higher mysteries of love.
III. The Dialectical Interchange Between Socrates and Agathon
As I have pointed out the preliminary truth conditions for the proper
discussion of love had been settled in the Lysis and repeated almost verbatim in
the Symposium. I will briefly rehearse the manner in which they are dramatised in
the Symposium and show how they affect the account given there of the nature of
love and the lower and higher mysteries of love.
The purpose of encomia is to render a eulogy or ‘good word.’
In the Symposium the encomia will be to Eros, but Socrates immediately
changes the ground rules adhered to by the other speakers. For Socrates, an encomia, or
eulogy, must be true for if it were not true it would not be good. Hence, he will deliver
a eulogy which picks out the fairest of the facts about eros and praise them
(198d5-7). [He will not focus on the destructive passion of eros so vividly
portrayed in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and by Plato as the eros
turannos of the Politeia.]
Before presenting the encomia proper developed through Diotima Socrates
takes up the logical grammar of eros in his interchange with Agathon. Socrates asks
Agathon:
So come now, complete your beautiful and magnificent
description of Love, and tell me this: Are we so to view his character as to take Love to
be love of some object or of none? (Symp. 199c8-d2)
This is the same question asked in the Lysis. Formally it seems
as if Socrates is asking whether or not eros is intentional – that eros is
eros of something. But this is not quite the point as Socrates goes on to
suggest by amplifying his question. Socrates’ clarification continues:
My question is not whether he is love of a mother or a
father – how absurd it would be to ask whether Love is love of mother or father!
– but as though I were asking about our notion of ‘father’, whether
one’s father is a father of somebody or not. (Symp. 199d2-6)
Socrates is thus highlighting that Eros like the term Father is
the name for a relation. Moreover, it is the name for a relation which comprises the
lover, the activity of loving and the beloved (see 200e-210a).
The lover desires the object of his/her love and thus lacks that
object, but it is this lack that explains the very phenomenon of desire. We desire because
we lack. Moreover, this phenomenon has both a temporal and an eternal element.
Desire is not just for something lacked but for the preservation of
what good we may achieve and which might be taken away. The point Socrates is making is
fundamentally that desire has something of the infinite in its nature. The only thing that
could possibly satisfy fully and completely the nature of a desirous and thus lacking
being is the eternal satisfaction of desire or from a slightly different perspective the
complete cessation of all desire. Such could only be found in a world transcendent object
of desire which is itself a pleroma, because the satisfaction of all temporal desires is
capable of being lost; moreover, because we desire ultimately such an object, we desire to
become that object or at least to be in the presence of that object. ( On one reading at
least this might be portrayed in Sartrean terms as the desire of the pour-soi to
become a pour-soi/en-soi.)
IV. The Lower and Higher Mysteries
Having established these distinctions Socrates introduces Diotima of
Mantinaea as source for the doctrine of eros to be presented. Mythically eros
is the name of the relation which exists between the temporal and the eternal, the human
and the Divine. That Eros cannot be God is ‘proven’ by the fact that
human beings love and they establish the relation of love via desire which is grounded in
lack. Since it is axiomatic that the Divine lacks nothings, love cannot be a Divinity.
Rather love is said to be the great Daimon which unites the disparate orders of the real,
or if not unites, at least establishes the relation between them.
Because Eros is the name for a relation, it occupies the
metaxy, that is whatever is intermediate, whether that be conceived of as opinion,
lying intermediate between error and truth, or the ‘realm’ between mortals and
the Divine. Eros takes from its mother the brute fact that it is a relation between
the Divine and the human, the Heavens and the world, and, it is intimated by Plato, the
passive ‘intuition’ of this relation, and the element of lack. From its father
it derives its capacities to scheme, hunt, create and fashion. In other words it derives
its active or desirous element from the masculine side of its parentage, as is suggested
also by the various meanings of poros – path, way, passage, but also resource.
The active element provides the impetus to overcoming lack.
The dialectical interchange between Socrates and Agathon re-establishes
the logical grammar of eros together with a structural account of what eros
involves just as had been done in the Lysis. The myth relates these
‘logical’ categories of eros into the framework which establishes the
relation between the human and the Divine. As a matter of continuity Diotima will present
a vision of the manner in which Eros via desire is always attempting to satiate
lack and how such satiation requires a transcendent object of Eros.(13)
Diotima identifies the object of love as ‘having’ or
‘being in the presence of’ Beauty, following her question ‘what is the love
of the lover of beautiful things?’ (204d6 Loeb. All references to the Symposium in
this paper are to the Loeb translation.) Quickly she identifies the beautiful and the
good. However, drawing upon Aristophanes’speech it is claimed that the lover is
indeed searching for completion/fulfilment with the other half (205e) but only if that
fulfilment is deemed good.
Collecting the analysis provided by the dialectical interchange with
Agathon and the myth Diotima suggests that the essential motivation proper to love is that
" love loves the good to be one’s own forever." (206a12-13)
Everyone qua lover is lover of the good. The method of achieving
the good by the lover "is procreation in what is beautiful with the body and
soul." (206b8-9)
It is at this point in the dialogue that a very new emphasis is placed
on eros. Whereas before eros had been identified primarily in terms of the
lover’s lack and the lover’s desires to ‘fill’ these lacks, it now
takes on a distinctively ‘poetic’ role in including desires for begetting and
bringing to birth.(14) Moreover, the two elements of love
considered as lack and as desire to produce are maintained at each level of the ladder of
love. Moreover, this is a corollary of the two aspects of eros identified in the
myth of love where on one side love lacks its object and on the other it provides a means
of achieving its object.
Primarily eros (in the lower mysteries) is creative according to
its thirst for immortality which is carried out through begetting. Just as in the animal
kingdom a vicarious immortality is preserved through the propagation of offspring, so too
at the human level, the creative desire to bring forth children, is thought to be
indicative of this desire for immortality. This is conceived of in terms of a general
principle or law of nature. However, while animals are restricted in the sense that this
is the only form of immortality open to them, humans can achieve a vicarious immortality
in other ways according to their natural powers. So humans are in love with what is
immortal (208e2-3) and achieve it according to both body and soul.
From here Diotima leads Socrates ever upward in the so-called Higher
Mysteries of love moving from love of a beautiful body to the vision of the Beautiful in
itself.
V. The Critique
The criticisms of the Platonic theory of love has a long and
distinguished pedigree, and as I have argued the criticisms are applicable to any theory
of love which identifies what is loved in loving others as situated in anything other than
the integral individual personhood of persons, whether that be conceived of in terms of a
person’s qualities, attributes, characteristics or in terms of a religious command
and its correlative account of why we ought to love persons, or indeed to the notions of
disinterested love or compassion.
In general, the following sorts of criticisms are found:
(a) Platonic love is acquisitive.
(b) Platonic love is egocentric.
(c) Platonic love is non-personal.
To these general criticisms can be added a more specific one: Platonic
love devalues persons. The list of philosophers who have argued against Plato’s
theory of love is impressive and includes Nygren, Vlastos, Nussbaum, Singer, Soble, and
Solomon.(15)
The voices which have stood out in favour of the Platonic view are few
and even when they have attempted to vindicate Plato’s theory they have for the most
part done so unconvincingly. Cornford and Markus attempted to show that Plato’s
theory of eros is compatible with the Christian ideal of love-agape (as has Brentlinger),
but even though they are convincing in their appeals, this fails to vindicate the Platonic
theory, for as I have pointed out, the Christian view of agape suffers from the
central problem that because it is commanded, universal and substitutable it cannot
account for the unique and irreplaceable love which we have for special individuals.(16)
So aside from the central merits these arguments have in establishing the compatibility of
Platonic eros with Christian agape the crucial objection still stands.
Brentlinger in arguing that Platonic eros cannot profitably be
easily distinguished from Christian agape provides a series of reflections which
adequately resist the criticisms that Platonic eros is egocentric and acquisitive
but does not convincingly show that Plato’s theory does not devalue persons. And the
most penetrating analysis to date by Kosman, while also showing that Platonic eros
is not narrowly egoistic or acquisitive and that it is compatible with love of persons qua
persons, fails to articulate an answer to the Symposium’s doctrine that
persons are to be considered a ‘small’ thing in comparison to love of the Good
and Beautiful.
Let us rehearse the arguments here.
Because Plato identifies the origins of love in ontological lack and
subsequent operative desires to fill this lack, it is claimed that eros is
essentially acquisitive. It seeks to appropriate the good for oneself and this is held to
be incompatible with loving the other for his/her own sake. This argument is most
forcefully pursued by Nygren.(17) Abstracting from Plato
here it can be argued that this is a rather futile criticism because it fails to capture
the notion that we can have different kinds of desires, some selfish and some unselfish.
For example, I can legitimately desire a better world not just for myself but for others
and even for future generations. I can also desire the well-being of another person
without that well-being being the source of any specific positive outcome for myself, and
so for many benevolent other-concerned desires. Desire, therefore, is not essentially
acquisitive.
But perhaps the objection is not so much general as specific to Plato.
Thus, the claim will be that the Platonic theory of eros as articulated in the
Dialogues is such that it is presented in a way which does not allow for this general
response. Nygren writes:
Even where Eros seems to be a desire to give it is still
in the last resort a "will-to-possess"; for Plato was fundamentally unaware of
any other form of love than acquisitive love. (18)
Similarly, Singer suggests:
For desire is always acquisitive and its object a mere
commodity designed to satisfy .(19)
These sorts of objections are, however, not fair to Plato. One of the
problems which issues in these kinds of criticisms is grounded in a point of scholarship.
It is often supposed that Socrates talks about the object of love being
‘possessed’ by the lover (200d 10-11). However, the English term
‘possess’ is an inadequate rendition of the more neutral Greek echein. Echein
and its derivatives refer to ‘having’ without the emphasis of
‘owning’ and ‘possessiveness’, and thus exclusivity. We, for example,
talk of having a friend, even a best friend, without implying in any way that we own or
possess the friend. Indeed in the Symposium Plato describes the relationship
between desire and the good not just in terms of having (echein) but often in terms
of the word parontas (being in the presence of). This latter term captures the
transcendent quality of the good without implying that it is subject to
‘possession’ by a lover. Moreover, it leaves open the alternative sketch of
desire presented above whereby we can desire the good for another without any stigma of
acquisitiveness.
A similar ambiguity attaches itself to the idea that what is loved are
‘good or beautiful things". Here the acquisitive aspects of Platonic love are
highlighted by the idea that the lover desires good or beautiful things for him/herself.
Given that Diotima appeals to the notion of participation it is perhaps not useful to
maintain this translation. To better capture the force of the Platonic argument, the
translation should be the good or beautiful as it inheres in things. Once again this
suggests that there is not a relationship of possessiveness attached to the relationship
with the good and beautiful thus leaving open the notion that a more disinterested element
can be present in desire. [The ambiguity is difficult to dispel, however, as Plato in
discussing the genesis of love and its transcending strains does indeed suggest that at
one stage desire is for or of beautiful things. However, this refers to the genesis of
love in finding objects and qualities which fill lacks. At later stages, love is clearly
identified as of or for the qualities that inhere in things and not just to the things
themselves. In what sense this can be seen as acquisitive possessiveness is at the least
very unclear.
Plato’s theory of eros is also held to be egocentric. This
objection also fails on grounds analogous to the acquisitiveness criticism. Whereas the
acquisitive objection holds that Plato’s account of love is determined by possession
of the object of love and thus incompatible with loving another for his/her own sake, the
egocentric objection pushes this criticism somewhat further by claiming that the
motivation and activities of all Platonic love is focused on the self. Again the criticism
focuses on the relationship between lack, desire, and the good/beautiful. However, it has
rightly been pointed out by Brentlinger that Plato does not make desire and love
synonymous:
Love, [Socrates] says, desires its object (200a). He
does not say that love is a desire, much less that love and desire are the same. (20)
Indeed this seems fairly obvious. I can clearly desire many objects
without thereby loving them. Love, however, includes desire both in terms of setting on an
object to be loved and in terms of desiring to "give" or "procreate" in
the presence of the Good/Beautiful. Love is the name of a relation which is
characterised partly in terms of desire, but includes active valuation and recognition.
Moreover, it is precisely the egocentric interpretation of the lack/desire model which
renders incomprehensible the crucial move in the Symposium between the lack/desire
conception of the genesis of eros and the alternative vision that because all
persons are pregnant in body and soul they desire to give/procreate in goodness and
beauty. Once again this opens up the perspective which enables love to be considered in
terms of non-egocentric desires.
Platonic love is said to be non-personal. By this most commentators
have meant that because eros is focused on the good/beautiful and thus to qualities
which inhere in individuals, it is therefore only accidental that we love persons. In
other words, persons qua persons are not the objects of love. In loving a person
for his/her qualities we are loving, as Vlastos put it: "that abstract version of
persons which consists of the complex of their best qualities."(21)
to which he adds:
‘Since persons in their concreteness are thinking, feeling,
wishing, hoping, fearing beings, to think of love for them as love of objectifications of
excellence is to fail to make the thought of them as subjects central to what is felt for
them in love.(22)
The intuition that somehow the person loved is irreplaceable and unique
and loved as such is deemed to be missing from the Platonic theory.
This is a serious objection if our intuitions and experiences of love
are to be vindicated. One reply might be to show that there is an integral relation
between persons and their qualities and thus to exhibit the notion that the qualities are,
at least in terms of the beloved, not separable. Thus to adulterate something of
Brentlinger’s analysis(23) we might argue that I love a
pint of Guinness and in attempting to say what it is about Guinness that I love, I can
point to certain qualities of the pint. I enjoy and love the manner in which it is pulled,
its taste, its aroma and its colourful blend of dark and cream. When describing my love of
a pint of Guinness this way it is not at all clear that I am saying that I love these
properties/attributes/qualities, and that the pint of Guinness is a means to achieving
these ends.
But in making these claims about what I love I am doing no such thing;
these are things about the pint of Guinness that I love, they are not separable from the
pint of Guinness. While I might also love a pint of bitter, also for its taste, its
colour, its aroma, these qualities as instantiated are different to those in the pint of
Guinness and thus in no way substitutable. In part my love for the pint of Guinness is
attributable to historic/cultural circumstances peculiar to my own identity.(24)
Roger Scruton suggests that there is a difference between an emotional
reaction to universals and one to particulars.(25) He is no
doubt correct. One can, for example, love a universal like justice, caring about it
passionately, as an ideal and working tirelessly to achieve justice in one’s own life
and in the world around one. One also loves a particular person and the kind of attachment
one has to that person does indeed seem different. Robert Brown appeals to this
distinction in his platonizing conception of love in his book Analysing Love.(26)
Brown thinks that love of individuals is to be understood in terms of characteristics or
qualities. He argues that we love a particular person because that person exhibits certain
qualities in a unique manner. Moreover, this concatenation of qualities, including
potential ones, is part of an open-ended commitment to the bearer of these qualities, and
thus leaves open the possibility that there may be development of new of different
qualities. The universals (the qualities) are loved then as they are exhibited by the
subject. In other words there is a symbiotic relationship between the universal qualities
which both attract and are loved and the subject within which these qualities inhere.
Now this sort of appeal seems to work quite well for the Platonic
theory of eros. By arguing that what is loved in another person is not just
qualities but the qualities as exhibited and instantiated in the beloved, one appears to
avoid the difficulty that love is non-personal. If the symbiotic relationship between
qualities and the subject which instantiates them is maintained one thereby explains the
fact that one does love qualities but also persons. Moreover, it also, by appealing to the
manner of instantiation, accounts for the historical features which contribute to the
development of a love relationship as well as highlighting the uniqueness and
irreplaceability of the particular instantiation.
It might nevertheless be thought that the sort of symbiosis appealed to
here is still not a love of the whole person.(27) However,
aside from the difficulty of saying, let alone knowing, what constitutes a whole person,
given that we can scarcely say that about our own self, the symbiotic argument is
sufficiently open-ended, because of its appeal to the manner of instantiation, to sway the
decision.
However, there is still a more damaging objection to Plato’s
theory of love which does not seem to be capable of being resolved by the above arguments.
The previous arguments, which in principle the Platonic theory can address, were arguments
which attacked Plato’s view of love because it was deemed to be impersonal, not of
the whole person, replaceable, egocentric and acquisitive. These objections, I believe,
have been answered. But in the Symposium Plato seems to say that love of persons is
of less value than love of qualities as instantiated in other things and ultimately to the
Idea of Beauty/Good.
The issue arises in the context of the transcendent mysteries of love
proclaimed by Diotima. Here Diotima after having suggested that the Higher mysteries
require both a daimonic nature and a ‘guide’ argues that certain minimal
conditions of beauty must exist in the environment of the initiate before he/she can
progress on the ladder of love. I take this to be a consequence of Diotima’s
requirement that the initiate from youth must encounter beautiful bodies (and because
elsewhere Plato insists that a sound environment is a prerequisite to right reasoning
– see Politeia 491c).
If the environment is suitable the person who is directed correctly
must love a particular body and engender beautiful discourse (209a9 – b1). This
follows from the model that desire has a moment of lack and moment of giving, creativity
or bringing to birth. The next stage in the ascent comes when the lover acknowledges that
what is beautiful in one body is adelphon or closely related to that in any other
body. Moreover, if he seeks beauty in form ( eidei ) he must recognise that the
beauty of each individual body is an example of beautiful bodies in general, and unless he
is to be guilty of anoia he must come to love all beautiful bodies; and in doing so
must also "loosen" his attachment to one particular body considering it to be
smikron. This is the first intimation that the transcending strains of eros
involve a diminution in attachment to particulars, where the general take precedence over
the particular, here specifically the beauty in all bodies over the beauty in one. But
Plato will go further. Attention moves from the love of the beauty as it inheres in bodies
to love of beauty in a single person, and then to the beauty exhibited generally in all
souls. From here the vertical movement goes towards love of learning in general (the
sciences), up to the final stage of the ascent which involves the ‘graciously’
given vision of the Beautiful/Good itself, the transcendent object of love.
The problem becomes particularly acute because at each level of the
ascent Plato suggests that certain negative attitudes (kataphronesanta b5-6) must
be taken up in respect to the lower instantiations of the beautiful. This means, it would
seem, that anything other than the Beautiful itself must be viewed negatively and thus
also persons. This is strangely counter-intuitive.
Price has pointed out that the attitudes of disdain or looking upon the
lower instantiations of beauty does not thereby render them not beautiful. As he puts it:
Diotima’s theme is that Beauty itself is supremely
beautiful, and not that the lesser beauties are no beauties at all. (28)
Moreover, Price goes on to argue that what Diotima rejects "is an
exclusive devotion to some particular instances of beauty and not a liberal attachment to
all kinds and instances of beauty."(29) But even if
this is true it doesn’t seem to do justice to the special nature of one’s love
for another unique individual.
Price thinks that the ascent can be interpreted
as an account of how lover and beloved mutually develop
their interest in beauties that are more universal (by advancing horizontally) and more
high-flown (by advancing vertically). (30)
But this seems to run counter to the expressed view of Diotima that one
must divest oneself (at least to some extent) of attachment to the particular in favour of
the path to transcendent beauty.
The move from the recognition of beauty of soul to that of beauty of
laws, institutions, branches of knowledge, philosophy and finally transcendent beauty
involves, according to Diotima, a ‘lessening’ of value for particular
instantiation. Price certainly presents an interpretation which gives some weight to the
notion that in a certain manner the love of the individual beloved may be preserved
throughout the ascent but this is not enough to suggest that the beloved is loved as a
unique individual whole person. Price cites as evidence for his view 211b5-7 where Diotima
says: "Whenever someone, ascending from these things through loving boys nightly (dia
to orthos paiderastein) begins to see that Beauty, he would almost be touching
the goal." And he thinks that this "implies that right up at least to beginning
of the end of his ascent the lover is still, in a manner, loving a boy."(31)
Moreover, Price finds the strongest evidence for interpreting the
ascent as an exercise of personal love in the fact that Diotima’s original definition
of love involved aiming at:
immortality through generation in beauty and in
particular the educative pederasty, described in the so-called lesser mysteries of 200.
Though it is only the discourse of 210c1 that is specified as being educative (c2-3), the
emphasis upon discourse at every level (a7-8, c1-5, d4-6) confirms that communication is
always the goal (209 b7-c2).
While I think there is clearly merit in Price’s view, it still
seems to strain the text because; 1) it does not give sufficient weight to the notion that
Diotima thinks there must be negative attitudes taken up in respect to the lower
instantations, 2) even if education and communication are still fundamental goals of the
ascent it is unclear in what sense the beloved is loved as person, and 3) as I have
already pointed out, there are strong reasons for thinking that Plato holds that without
having ‘seen’ Transcendent Beauty, all objects of love cannot be loved
‘truly’. Diotima tells us that once the lover has seen transcendent beauty, he
will then bring to birth upon the visible manifestations of Beauty not illusions but true
examples of virtue 212a5-7. Such ‘truth’ is clearly supposed to be contrasted
with the ‘semblances’ mentioned earlier in the speech when Diotima is talking
about vicarious immortality. It might further be thought that just as it is only after
having apprehended transcendent beauty that the lover can beget true virtue (212a7-9). It
may be that only then may he be capable of truly loving the particular.
So it would seem that the final objection really does capture what
Plato holds to be central to an account of love, and that therefore his theory does fail
to accommodate some of our deepest intuitions about love of persons. However, while there
is, I think, this inevitable tension in Plato between the concern for the transcendent
object of love and love of persons, there may still be a further response which captures
yet other intuitions about love.
There is surely a difference between recognising the transcendent
object of love as the ultimate source of value and still holding that certain beloveds are
still loved as unique individual whole persons.
Plato argues that knowledge of the good implies a kind of
identification with that object. Now if we follow this account it might be said that this
process of identification marks out what is truly loveable in the other, such that in
loving the person we are in some mysterious way loving what that person most essentially
is. This was the doctrine espoused in the Lysis that the object of love is immanent
in the soul of the persons. As Kosman puts it:
To love the beautiful in me is thus to love my essential
being, my ‘realest’ self. Provisionally and within the context of self-love, I
suggest then that talk of beauty as the proper object of eros is talk of eros as directed
toward what is truly native to us and that in turn (i.e. circularly) may be thought of as
the self which manifests our good and beautiful nature: i.e: the nature which we
love….In self-love, lover and beloved are one; but such love is always love of the
‘ecstatic’ self. (32)
Applying this insight to the love of others, Kosman continues:
If I love A because of j or
love the j in A, I should not be said to love something other
than A if j is what A is. Thus to love A for its beauty is to
love A for itself. But loving A for himself is not totally unconditional agapic love,
because in loving A for himself, I don’t love what A happens to be, but A qua
beautiful and this means loving A for what he is, in spite of what he may happen to be, or
for the mode of his being what he is. (33)
The views just expressed do seem to capture something of the mysterious
element which many people commonly hold and which in part explains the difficulties even
reflective lovers have in saying what it is that they love about the beloved. As presented
here it is only a sketch but it goes some way to explain this mysterious element.
Plato scarcely anywhere (except in his description of Alcibiades in the
Symposium so brilliantly portrayed by Nussbaum, and in the Phaedrus(34))
discusses in any systematic way the special bond of love between individuals, his focus is
always upon the transcendent object of love, but this does not mean that his theory cannot
accommodate an account of loving persons qua persons.
VI. An Exhortation
To tie up the various reflections on loving persons in this essay, I
would like to present a two-fold conception.
On the one hand love of a particular person is grounded in the
historic/existential nature of a couple’s facticity. By this I mean that the reason I
love Fionnuala rather than Siobhan who has the same qualities to a higher level than
Fionnuala is explicable partly in terms of the history of my, and her, life. A range of
factors partially explain my love including all those factors, sociological, cultural,
genetic and historical that go into me being the kind of person I am and the kind of
person she is. While it is true to say that I love her qualities, it is better to say that
I love the qualities as instantiated in her, in other words, I love her as bearer of these
qualities; and it is precisely Fionnuala as bearer of these qualities who is
irreplaceable, unique and individual. While I might admire and even love such qualities or
others in another person, my attachment of love is to the historical person Fionnuala, and
is sustained by among other things commitment and care for her built up over many years of
shared fortunes.
But there are other senses somewhat more mysterious. Fionnuala, despite
all the things about her that I love, often fails to live up to her own ideals. She is
like myself all too human. But part of what I love about her are her commitments to ideals
some of which I may not share. But it is not just that I love her commitment to certain
ideals but rather that these are partly constitutive of her identity. The failure to love
up to them, in no way abrogates that part of her self which identifies with them. She is
in part her ideals even if they are so rarely achieved if indeed ever. In a sense I love
her fugitive self. This follows one line of Plato’s reasoning.
Moreover, there is also an important sense in which I love Fionnuala
for her very being. Let us imagine, God forbid, that Fionnuala were to be involved in a
car accident which left her comatose. She can no longer communicate with me, nor let us
suppose, me with her. I still love her. Yet my love is clearly not directed towards her
qualities or indeed presently any element of our historical vicissitudes. How is this
explicable? It might be thought that I am loving a memory or series of memories of her.
But this does not ring true to my experience nor indeed the experiences of people who have
actually been in this kind of situation. So it might be that I love her in some form of
expectation of her recovery. While this may be true it does not quite capture what it is
that I love while she is comatose, and besides the doctors and surgeons have advised me
that she will not recover. Further unthinkable decisions for me may have to be
made. Part of my own identity lies there with her in the hospital bed. Much of what is
meaningful and good for me is also placed in jeopardy by this tragedy.
There is a story told that each person has an immortal soul which is
‘akin’ to the Divine, and while it is certainly the case that I love Fionnuala
as embodied, there seems to be some kind of intuitive ‘rightness’ to the notion
that ultimately what I love in Fionnuala (at least on one level) is her very being, her
soul, her spirit. These provide some of the grounds for faith in this matter, though
doubtless this element is largely abstracted from her concrete individuality, and may not
even be individual. But it may be moreover that while logos fails and mythos takes over
there is an experiential appeal to the notion that it is only from the depth of the
experience of the loving person that we begin to understand what is involved in loving
persons.
|
