OCR A-Level Classics Plato on Love and Desire

427 BC - 347 BC

Born into a rich Athenian family. He was inspired by Socrates, and after Socrates’ execution, travelled around the Mediterranean. He later returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school for philosophers of which the most famous student was Aristotle. He remained in Athens until his death

469 BC - 399 BC

Was not born into a wealthy family. He served in the Athenian army in the Peloponnesian War. Socrates was famously ugly and he is shown with bulging eyes, a large forehead and a pot-belly. However, he quickly gained a following of aristocrats, who were keen to learn from him. He did not write any of his ideas down, so his later reputation is mainly down to the representation of his ideas in Plato.

Origins of Love - “Love’s great antiquity is widely accepted.”

“there is no greater benefit for a young man than a good lover”

“he feels most ashamed in front of his lovers when he is caught doing something disgraceful”

Army of lovers - “there could be no better form of social organisation than this… they could defeat virtually the whole human race.”

“It’s only lovers who are willing to die for someone else” - story of Alcestis, who was the only one willing to die for her husband, and was rewarded by being brought back to life - “the gods value the commitment and courage that comes from love”

Achilles - not only died for Patroclus but died as well as him, says Achilles was the eromenos and Patroclus the erastes

Two types of love (Pandemian and Uranian)

Common love (Pandemian) - “the type of love that inferior people feel” ; “attracted to women as much as boys, and to bodies rather than minds”

“effect of love on them is that they act without discrimination: it is all the same whether they behave well or not.”

“There should even be a law against affairs with young boys” - controlled

Heavenly love - “those inspired by this love are drawn towards the male, feeling affection for what is naturally more vigorous and intelligent.”

Critiques Elis and Persia’s laws on love - too straight-forward - restricting

“the lover receives an extraordinary amount of encouragement from everyone, which suggests that he isn’t doing anything disgraceful”

“a love affair itself is neither right nor wrong but right when it is conducted rightly and wrong when conducted wrongly”

Love in moderation

“love is different in the case of a healthy and diseased body”

“you should gratify and promote the love of well-ordered people, or people who are not yet well ordered but may in this way improve”

“it is the Love whose nature is expressed in good actions, marked by self-control and justice, … that has the greatest power and is the source of all our happiness.”

“people have wholly failed to recognise the power of Love” - deserves temples and altars and great sacrifices

Soulmates story - “they died from hunger and from general inactivity, because they didn’t want to do anything apart from each other”

“That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started.”

Explains same-sex relationships

“‘love’ is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness.”

“our human race can only achieve happiness if love reaches its conclusion.”

Centers on Eros, the god of love, endowing him with three characteristics: Eros is beloved, Eros is an artist, and Eros is good. Socrates, however, disagrees with Agathon, arguing that Eros is a lover rather than a beloved.

“Love is the happiest, because he is most beautiful and the best.”

“Love is a good composer”

Origins of Love + ladder of love

“Desire and love are directed at what you don’t have, what isn’t there, and what you need”

Love is a “great spirit” - connection between mortals and the gods

“he is the son of Resource and Poverty”

“Love must necessarily be a lover of wisdom.”

“every type of desire for good things or happiness is what constitutes, in all cases, ‘powerful and treacherous love’.”

“Love’s function is giving birth in beauty both in the body and in the mind.”

“It’s to achieve immortality that everything shows this enthusiasm, which is what love is.”

Ladder of love - A particular beautiful body, All beautiful bodies, Beautiful souls, Beautiful laws and institutions, Beauty of knowledge, Beauty itself

Diotima tells Socrates that if he ever reached the highest rung on the ladder and contemplated the Form of Beauty, he would never again be seduced by the physical attractions of beautiful youths. Nothing could make life more worth living than enjoying this sort of vision. Because the Form of Beauty is perfect, it will inspire perfect virtue in those who contemplate it.

“you couldn’t easily find a better partner for human nature than Love.”

Comes in drunk - declaration of (unrequited) love for Socrates

“Whenever I listen to him, my frenzy is greater than that of the Corybantes. My heart pounds and tears flood out when he speaks” - LINK TO SAPPHO (LOEB 31)

“I only feel shame in his company”

Socrates walking on ice barefoot

“Alcibiades is a dangerous warning of what happens if one does not go further up the ladder of love” - Christopher Gill

“[Socrates] a man so powerfully erotic that he turned the conventional world of love upside down by seeming to be a lover (erastes), while really establishing himself as a beloved boy (eromenos) instead” - C.D. Reeve

“[Plato constructs] a bridge between love and philosophy” - G.R.F. Ferrari

“eros is not a desire for bodily contact but a love of moral and intellectual excellence” - K.J. Dover

Controlling desire - breeding festivals

Sex just for the purpose of reproduction - licentiousness will be punished

Women and men as equals in ability is given opportunity (radical)

“if women are to have the sam duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education?”

“if bald men are cobblers, should we forbid hairy men to be cobblers, and conversely?

“there is nothing peculiar in the constitutions of women which would affect them in the administration of the State”

“general inferiority of the female sex”

“women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same.”

“no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent.”

“they will be drawn [to desire] by the necessity of their natures”

“licentiousness is an unholy thing which rulers will forbid”

“often needed in the regulations of marriages and births”

“the offspring of the inferior will be put away in some mysterious, unknown places, as they should be”

“his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust.”

Critiques desire and the pedastric relationships instead promoting friendship

Physical symptoms of desire - “a shudder runs through him”

“the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration”

Grow wings - “the growth extends under the whole soul - for once the whole was winged”

“the whole soul is in a state of ebullition and effervescence”

Charioteer metaphor - white horse is “lover of honour and modesty and temperance”

Black horse is the “mate of insolence and pride”

Good horse restrains itself out of shame, bad horse pursues desire - is punished “sorely” - “he is tamed and humbled”

“love is a desire, and … non-lovers desire the beautiful and good.”

“desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us”

“victim of his passions” ; “slave of pleasure”

“As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their loves.”

Ideal state run without promiscuity - sex just for purpose of reproduction

Against homoerotic relationships

“a feeling of alarm came over me” (how to manage desire)

“desires which frequently plunge many into ruin”

Forbids same sex desire - “nor sowing seeds on rocks and stones where it can never take root and have fruitful increase.” - sex just for reproduction

“Victory over pleasures”

“love and honour, and that which is desirous of fair forms of soul, not fair bodies.”

K.J. Dover [restraint against sex]

“in praising the ability to resist temptation to bodily pleasure Plato was fully in accord with Greek moral tradition”

John Murray Goldhill

“To describe what ‘Greek love’ is - the desire of men for men, its institutions and practices - allows us to explore the more contentious issue of what ‘Greek love’ means for us today.”

Dodds

“Plato expresses with some clarity that sexual gratification distracts from the focus on recollection”

“To describe what ‘Greek love’ is - the desire of men for men, its institutions and practices - allows us to explore the more contentious issue of what ‘Greek love’ means for us today.” - John Murray Goldhill

“The erotic world of Plato’s dialogues is in part, of course, just that of his society.” - Reeve (Hackett 2006)