9. The Virtues of Platonic Love

Gabriela Roxana Carone

Socrates’ speech on Love in the Symposium (201–212), reporting his conversation with the Mantinean priest Diotima, stands as prima facie counterintuitive. First, it is not clear that it has anything to say about interpersonal love at all; and even if it does, it might seem to offer a view that conforms pretty well to our popular notion of “Platonic Love,” one that does not involve any personal commitment, and that is spiritual rather than physical. How, if at all, is the speech supposed to help us understand ordinary love in our practical lives? [1] In this paper I wish to argue, by considering various objections, that the speech can be seen as providing useful tools for enhancing our understanding of love, both from a descriptive and a normative perspective.

We may start by briefly summarizing the main claims of the speech: (1) love is a state of mind directed towards beauty; (2) love is a state of mind expressing the yearning of humans for happiness; [2] (3) Love is a desire for perpetual possession of the beautiful, and thus for procreation as a means of perpetuation; (4) procreation through the soul or spirit is of higher value than physical procreation, and thus guarantees a higher or larger share in the Beautiful; (5) the highest manifestation of Beauty—the Form of Beauty—is to be reached after a process involving several steps—usually called the “Ladder of Love”—of which the individual physical body is only the first, and ultimately shown to be severely lacking in the property we all strive for.

While (2) might seem intuitively right—after all, few people would disagree that in searching for an object of love, one is searching for happiness—the other claims seem vulnerable to objections. For example: {208|209}

(1) seems to imply that when we love, what we love is a universal property, beauty, rather than an individual. This may appear problematic for various reasons: First, it seems to overlook a uniqueness in the person we love that cannot be reduced to her being a particular instantiation of a universal property (let us call it the “Uniqueness Problem”). Second, it could be thought that one may be drawn to, and love, precisely the ugly aspects of a person, so it is just wrong to claim that beauty is the aspect of something to which all love is directed. At least, it is not immediately clear that we are all attracted to Beauty and only to Beauty (call this the “Attraction to Beauty Problem”).

(4) might also be resisted if it is taken to imply, first, that a life devoted e.g. to intellectual endeavors or artistic creativity (procreating in beauty through books, education, or works of art) is to be preferred to a life devoted to procreating children, and second, that one can be as much “in love” with art, philosophy or one’s career as one is with a human being one is attracted to.

(5) is probably the greatest target of criticism, insofar as it seems to imply, first, that Platonic love at its summit excludes love of individuals, and second, that the individual that one loves can at most have value as a means—or rung in the ladder—and not as an end in itself.

While I agree that in many of these areas the text seems to be challenging our intuitions, I believe it deserves more credit than one might be inclined to give it at first sight. For, even where Diotima says something that does not sit well with our ordinary preconceptions about love, I wish to show that she has the resources to respond to our objections. The force of the speech, I contend, consists in working partly with preconceptions that we may share but showing us from there that, if we are to be utterly consistent, the conclusions that flow from them may differ markedly from many of the ordinary conceptions about love with which we began.

The Charmides had suggested a view about the individuation of mental acts that seems to be present also in the Symposium. According to this view, an act is defined, and individuated, by being directed at a distinctive kind of object. [3] Thus, fear is of the dreadful, hearing is of sound, love (erôs) is of beauty (cf. Charmides 167d–168a). This latter claim receives further elaboration in the Symposium, where Socrates, playing with the personification of erôs as a daimôn {209|210} or demigod, maintains that “Erôs is love of Beauty, not of Ugliness” (201a9–10). [4] Thus, we have the joint claims that (1) erôs is “about” something; and (2) erôs is for something insofar as it is beautiful. Let us analyze each in turn.

The view that at least some emotions are about something has its contemporary resonances. Thus, Gabriele Taylor speaks of the “determinable” quality of the object of an emotion, by which the emotion is directed to that object in the first place: [5] fear, for example, exists insofar as its object is felt to be dangerous, even though “dangerous” admits of further determination (e.g. it is a determinate quality of this particular object of my fear that it has sharp claws and is aggressive). The ability to specify a determinable quality, according to Taylor, enables us to assess whether our emotions are reasonable or unreasonable (if the thing after all does not possess the quality that I believe it to have, then the emotion is unjustified): to this extent, it is possible to apply some rational scrutiny to our emotions. Yet Taylor fails to find a determinable quality that “love” is about, in a way that seems to make this emotion prima facie more intractable than others.

By these lights, Diotima’s speech in the Symposium would seem to offer a more optimistic response to the question about the determinable quality of the object of love by telling us that it is beauty. Whether this answer is satisfactory, however, is a different matter, and we might wonder to what extent we are allowed to relate her remarks on erôs to the emotion we ordinarily call ‘love’.

To be sure, the Greek term erôs seems rather more restricted in meaning than our English “love.” What is distinctive of erôs, and need not be present in the other kinds of love, is the notion of a lack that triggers the desire for a fulfillment of that lack. Sexual desire is the most basic manifestation of erôs, but erôs would also encompass any striving for something stemming from a lack. Thus, when Peter is in love with Mary, part of his feeling (the one corresponding to erôs) consists in feeling that he needs Mary for his life to be fuller; he misses her insofar as that latter state is not achieved. (To this point, one could also feel erôs for, say, reading, if that desire stems from a lack and represents reading as the object that would render satisfaction. Thus conceived, my love of reading would also be a case of erôs, and we shall see later how Diotima exploits this.) By contrast, when Peter cares for Mary’s well being, he may not be in a state of need; he may spontaneously and generously feel inclined to help her and protect her. Insofar as Peter is in the latter state of mind, we can say he is in a state of philia (of the sort Alcestis displayed in dying {210|211} for her husband, Symposium 179b–c) [6] or in a state of agapê. Thus, the word the Christians chose to refer to God’s “love” was agapê—they could not, obviously, choose erôs, insofar as erôs would have conveyed a desire and an attraction stemming from a need that a superior being like God could not feel for his inferior creatures. Similarly, Diotima contends in the Symposium that god, insofar as he is perfect, lacks nothing, which implies he feels no erôs (cf. 202c–d, 203e–204a). [7]

Thus the English “love” only partially overlaps with the ancient Greek erôs. But, despite this restriction, the speech still has many enlightening things to say about the “erotic” part of our love, where erôs need not be exclusively sexual, even though sexual desire is not excluded from it.

A definition of erôs is presented in the Symposium (199e–200b, 204d–e), as part of an argument that may be reconstructed as follows:Erôs

is a wanting, or longing for, the beautiful.If A wants, or longs for, B that means that: (i) A does not have B, though (ii) A desires to have B, or make B its own.Thus,

erôs

desires to make the beautiful its own.

Premises 1 and 2 express constitutive features of erôs: Premise 2 indicates that erôs pertains to the generic kind of “desire” (epithumia, cf. 200a–b), and, as such, involves a lack that seeks for its satisfaction; premise 1 adds that erôs is, specifically, a desire for the beautiful. (This specific difference is worth highlighting by contrast with other kinds of desire, which can also be individuated by their specific objects: thirst, for example, is desire for drink, and hunger for food. [8] Of course these objects may overlap. If, for example, I feel erôs for food, [9] that would occur, according to the Symposium, insofar as I find food beautiful. That is, beauty is the property that everything must possess in order for one to feel erôs for it.) While premise 2 seems unproblematic—particularly if one accepts the Greek usage of the word erôs as described above, in contrast e.g. with other forms of love—it is 1 that looks more difficult to grasp.

Diotima claims, in fact, that erôs “is love for beautiful things” (204d), but immediately proceeds to add that one can put “good” in place of “beautiful,” {211|212} so that love can be rendered as a desire to make good things one’s own (204e). The ease with which “beautiful” and “good” are interchanged may baffle us (after all, the Charmides had claimed that the good is the distinctive object of another faculty, namely wish, boulêsis, 167e). Yet the Symposium is very far from detaching moral from aesthetic value. It uses kalon (beautiful) and agathon (good) as words that can jointly help to describe the valuable aspect of an object that triggers our attraction to it. [10] According to this view, for example, crime is repulsive not only because it is morally reprehensible but also because it is aesthetically ugly. (After all, in English we can also call a good theory a beautiful theory, and a bad act an ugly act.) The interesting implication underlying this claim, however, is that Plato seems to believe that erôs for any object, whatever it may be (Mary or philosophy) is for that object qua beautiful; erôs could never be for an object qua ugly. In a similar way, Plato had Socrates claim in the early dialogues that one’s wish is—only—for the good. [11] If this theory is maintained in the Symposium, and if it equates “good” with “beautiful,” there is an implication that all the erôs one feels—however irrational it may seem— involves wishing for the good.

Now, this—let us call it—“teleological” view of erotic desire [12] may certainly be the target of criticism, as it could be argued that desire need not be for any good or beautiful at all, and it is here that Taylor’s point might seem particularly poignant. In cases of infatuation, for example (which Plato would surely count as a type of erôs), a person may be drawn to another while recognizing that such a drive is bad or irrational. Further, a masochistic kind of personality may feel attraction towards abusive people, while finding their treatment not only bad and painful, but also ugly. Along these lines, in the eponymous dialogue, Meno had objected to Socrates that it is possible for people to wish and pursue the bad rather than the good. Socrates, however, had countered that if someone wishes the bad (which is also harmful), it must be because she finds it good in some way, as no one wishes to be harmed and miserable (cf. Meno 77b–78b). Similar reflections could be applied to the Symposium: if one loves something ugly, it must be insofar as one finds it beautiful. {212|213}

To illustrate this point, let us consider the following two scenarios:

Tom is attracted to Mary who is indeed ugly-and-bad, even though he finds her beautiful-and-good.Tom is attracted to the ugly aspects of Mary.

The Symposium would allow 1, along the lines presented above, but deny that Tom is attracted to the ugly aspects of Mary qua ugly. Rather, Tom is attracted to the ugly aspects of Mary insofar as he finds those ugly aspects beautiful. That is, Mary may either be found ugly by most, even though Tom finds her beautiful, or Mary may indeed be ugly. In this latter scenario, it would again be denied that Tom could be attracted to Mary, who is really bad and ugly, insofar as he finds her so; rather, 2 would be treated as a case of 1: Tom must find Mary beautiful somehow or other if he is attracted to her. This introduces a distinction between the subjective and the objective aspects of good/beautiful, and betrays a commitment to some form of realism (aesthetic and/or moral) about properties such as the beautiful, a theory which precludes any sort of reduction of the beautiful to one’s own perceptions of it. Controversial as this commitment may be, certain rewards are apparent. For, as we shall see, it is precisely because the reduction cannot be performed that one may have grounds for changing one’s perceptions: one who starts being attracted to the “wrong” kind of person (say an abusive one), has potential for growth if she realizes that her value judgments guiding her original choice were mistaken. That is, however fashionable it may seem to say that “beauty” (and for that matter “goodness”) is in the eye of the beholder, we come to see on close examination that, by postulating the existence of Beauty/Goodness as an objective value, the Symposium is providing us with standards by which to make our choices and assess their correctness or otherwise. [13]

Now, if this is so, a new problem might seem to arise: is Diotima claiming that one feels erôs for the (objective) Beautiful, or for what one believes to be beautiful? The latter might seem to undermine objectivism, depriving us of those standards that it seemed useful to have. On the other hand, if the claim is that we all feel erôs for the objective Beautiful, then we would be committing Diotima to denying that Tom really loves Mary (whose apparently beautiful side is actually ugly), even though he believes he does.

Maybe the latter problem can be resolved counterfactually: Tom would never be attracted to those sides of Mary if he knew better. [14] Now, it is possible {213|214} that Mary should (and indeed, I shall argue, according to Platonic metaphysics, Mary must) have also, side by side with her “bad” qualities (such as, say, the habit of invidious gossip) some “good” ones (such as, say, kindness to the poor): it may be that Tom loves her for her (even objectively) good side, not her bad one. What the theory would be denying is that Tom may love Mary for her “bad” qualities, unless he finds those qualities somehow or other (mistakenly or not) “beautiful.” And this is, as we shall see later, the beginning of the “ladder of Love”: one starts by loving an individual, perceptible sample of beauty, which admits of compresence of opposites (insofar as anything in the realm of particulars that admits of a property, also admits of the opposite property, so that it is beautiful in one way, ugly in another, or beautiful to some, not to others): [15] to this extent, there is room for subjectivity and differing tastes guiding one’s choices. Yet the possibility of ascending to a more stable and uniform standard of Beauty will also mean the possibility of reevaluating, correcting or changing one’s choices in the light of those newly acquired standards. Here, then, is a first response to the “Attraction to Beauty Problem,” and to which I shall return.

Now, the claim that erôs expresses one’s basic yearning for happiness seems to capture a common intuition. Even though we may think it is a matter of argument whether that yearning is common to all humans (Aristotle, for example, thought there might be exceptions), [16] it seems that, as we saw in the Meno, the claim that no one wishes to be miserable is axiomatic in this kind of philosophy. The interlocutors in both dialogues do not hesitate to agree with it. What is interesting in this regard, however, is not so much whether they should take it as axiomatic, but what consequences follow from its admission. Arguably, we are led to some pretty counterintuitive conclusions, as might be inferred from the following argument (204e–205a):

To have the beautiful and good is to be happy.Everyone wishes to be happy.To wish to have the beautiful and good is to be in love.Therefore, everyone is in love!

There are many factors that might make us question the soundness of this argument. First, to make our desire to share in the beautiful and good coextensive with “being in love” seems too broad. Second, if all of us have that desire, the conclusion that we are all in love seems disconcerting. If we are all in love already, why do some people feel that they would love so strongly to be in love? (After all, even Diotima concedes that in colloquial usage “we say that some people love and others don’t,” 205b.)

It is possible, though, that through this claim Diotima may be trying to show that the experience of erôs is less distant to us than it may seem: as long as we feel passion for something (call it a person, or sports, philosophy, an ideal), we are lovers of some sort—all of us, whether for good or bad. For, without the fuel of motivation, we would be inert. It is erôs, precisely, that provides the motivational energy, [17] and beauty that is the common target of erôs in all its variegated forms. Later on, we are told that there is a “vast sea of Beauty” to behold, under whose aspect we’ll realize the kinship of all those things that seem so disconnected and different in kind (210c–d).

But even this might seem hard to understand. Nussbaum (1986:180) expresses her reaction powerfully: This opens up a new question, one which Vlastos raised, [18] and Nussbaum tries to address, about the fact that the Symposium, in the speech of Diotima, seems to suggest that our love is only for the repeatable properties in an individual, thus missing their “uniqueness and wholeness” (what I have labeled as “the Uniqueness Problem”). Now the Symposium gives us an answer as to why love is not of the whole: “Love is neither of half or whole, unless, my friend, it happens to be good” (205e). Aristophanes, a previous speaker in the Symposium, had represented picturesquely what it is to yearn for someone, {215|216} through the myth of those who were originally round wholes and, by punishment of Zeus, were cut in half, thereafter seeking their irreplaceable “other half” (189d–191d). While this myth may well capture a recognizable experience (we can have the sense of meeting, or even yearning to meet, “the one,” that person who makes us complete), [19] Diotima seems to demystify the yearning by telling us that indeed it is the beauty, the property, that we yearn for, rather than the “other half” as such. Even granting the intuitive appeal of Aristophanes’ speech, the point here is that no other human half as such, even if we meet it, can possibly satisfy our fundamental desire for completion; to understand that is to become initiated in the ladder of love: It is the third transition that marks an important shift between stages, which can also be described in terms of different sorts of procreation resulting from one’s basic desire for immortality, or for perpetual possession of the beautiful: what the Symposium had previously described as pregnancy of soul rather than pregnancy of body (208e–209c, cf. esp. epitêdeumata at 211c5 with 209c1). The drive to procreate in beauty explains why people seek to leave behind carnal children, but it also explains the desire to leave a spiritual legacy. Certainly, the step concerning love for ethical behavior (and thus for the soul) is presented as higher than the one concerning love for the body, and accordingly procreation in the former will have higher value than procreation in the latter. This need not exclude carnal procreation, but can simply be seen as emphasizing the right order of priorities—for one would not want to procreate in the body {216|217} if one were to know in advance, for example, that one’s children are fated to become incurable criminals. Further, much as the Symposium exalts procreation in the soul, special stress is laid on how one cherishes beauty of both body and soul in another person, even when the soul has priority of value: “So he welcomes beautiful bodies more than ugly ones insofar as he is pregnant, and if he encounters a fine, noble and gifted soul, he warmly embraces the combination (sunamphoteron),” 209b. That is, the Symposium teaches us to honor the people that we love as wholes rather than as objects of merely physical attraction. [20]

Certainly, if one’s erôs is towards beauty, then one will be inclined to embrace the most beauty one can get. Nussbaum goes on to remark: “So, in each stage of the ascent, the aspiring lover, aided by his teacher, sees relationships between one beauty and another, acknowledges that these beauties are comparable and intersubstitutable” (180).

Should we really take the text to mean that the beauties we encounter are “intersubstitutable”? Here we must pause and reflect briefly on Platonic metaphysics. In the first place, it is true that all singular beauties in the realm of particulars are instances, or exemplifications, of Beauty. At the end of the ladder we shall see them as “images” of it (cf. 212a4). But images are not necessarily intersubstitutable, since the combination of beautiful properties that a particular sample embodies will most likely be unique in each case (let us just imagine making a list of the beautiful properties in the person we love: how complex a task, and how absurd the thought would seem to us that we might just encounter another person with exactly that same complex combination!).

At the same time, Beauty appears to be an all-pervasive property, at least to the extent that, since particulars suffer from compresence of opposites, everything in that realm that is not beautiful in one way will also be beautiful in another. The contrast between these and the Form of Beauty is made clear later on, when we read that: “First, it [the Form] always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, nor does it increase or decrease; next, it is not beautiful in one way and ugly in another, nor beautiful at one time and not at another, {217|218} nor beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, nor beautiful here and ugly there, as being beautiful to some and ugly to others” (211a). [21] It is, then, the fact that no particular can bear beauty unqualifiedly that makes it incomplete and imperfect in many ways, including the fact that particulars lend themselves to different perspectives. So, I may be attracted to someone because I rightly see the respect in which the person is beautiful (which you may miss, by focusing on her non-beautiful sides), or even because (unlike you) I wrongly take some aspects of her to be beautiful. To some extent, then, it is the ontological makeup of particulars that explains the phenomenology of love (why we tend to be attracted to different people and make the most diverse choices); it even leaves room for some sort of perspectivism based on our perceptions, as it is part of the various senses in which particulars appear beautiful and not beautiful that I may find a particular person beautiful (and thus be attracted to him or her) while the perceived lack of beauty in the same person keeps you away. Of course, this is not tantamount to saying that all perspectives matter the same; for, as was argued above, knowing the correct standards can serve to correct possibly distorted perspectives. [22] But it is the fact that individual beauty is in flux that explains our propensity to perspectivism. [23]

Perspectivism, then, together with the fact that to some extent beauty is everywhere, explains the variegatedness of our choices and attractions, and why there is always some beauty to be discovered even in the most apparently repellent person. The fact that there is beauty everywhere may in fact be seen as a consolation to the person who has suffered a particular loss, were she to {218|219} climb higher in the ladder. But would that mean that a particular instantiation of beauty that was lost—and that was bound to be lost, cf. Symposium 211a—can easily be interchanged with another?

To think so would be a tremendous leap of logic, one that Diotima is careful not to make. Not only can people embody beautiful properties in complex combinations that may be very hard to duplicate; in addition, particulars can participate in Beauty to a greater or lesser extent. Presumably, the reason why Socrates was found so attractive to many, as the speech of Alcibiades will later on make vivid, is that he instantiated beauty as no other did. He, so to speak, made the Form shine through him to such an extent that, by the less philosophically trained, like Alcibiades, he could easily be confused with the paradigm of Beauty, that is, the Form itself. [24] And even the writer of the Symposium presumably found Socrates sufficiently irreplaceable that he felt drawn to compose dialogues after his powerful inspiration, thus perpetuating the beauty that he had seen in him and begetting in it by leaving behind “children of the soul.” Neither is it denied that a complete relation with another which includes erôs will also include other aspects of love for one’s companion that might be closer to an emotion such as philia; and it is because of philia (together with one’s erôs for higher values) that one may be drawn to help one’s partner grow. Let us elaborate this point by looking into the issue of personal commitment.

Does not the Symposium convey the thought that reaching the top of the ladder (contemplating beauty) would be the very end of one’s erotic pursuits, so that interaction with other people turns out to be a mere instrument (or step in the ladder)? [25] From that perspective, does the theory of the Symposium leave room for personal commitment at all, if by comparison with the Form of Beauty all bodies and the like could be perceived as “mortal nonsense” (211e)?

First of all, it is true that we are told that contemplating Beauty is the end (hou heneken) of our previous toil (ponois, 210e), and it is suggested that its contemplation will give us sufficient detachment to realize the smallness of the things (the mortal things, thnêta, 211e3) that uninitiated lovers agonize about—just as the scientist who contemplates the vastness of the {219|220} universe comes to realize the narrow dimensions of his own life within it. And it is Beauty more than anything else that makes our lives worth living (biôton, 211d2), if it is ideals and values more than anything else that give meaning to them; values without which we wouldn’t even be able to recognize the goodness of other objects of our choice. But we still want to “beget true virtue” (212a) [26] and thus come back to the realm of particulars with an altered perspective—just as the liberated prisoner in the Republic (VII 520c) goes back to the cave after contemplation of the Good. To this extent, at least, it is not the Form, but the others to whom we come back in our practical lives that are the final destination of our erotic initiations, [27] which are prefaced precisely as targeted to making us understand “the correct love of boys,” 211b5–6. [28]

At the same time, the right choice of companion may be viewed as a way of sustaining the erôs for that beauty which can now be seen more lastingly and fully instantiated in that individual than in others: Thus, just after we are told that everything is in flux and nothing stays the same in the mortal realm (cf. 207d–208b), it is now insinuated that erôs, when directed to a beautiful whole including above all the soul, can precisely bring some stability to our lives, a stability in turn supported by philia. It is worth noting to this effect that the Symposium does not contain any theory about the preexistence or postmortem survival of the soul; rather, the only (monon, 207d2) form of immortality envisaged is through reproduction or leaving a legacy, either carnal or spiritual. But, without assuming a theory of recollection of the Phaedo sort, [29] we still find how important it is to have constant reminders of the value or values that ground the meaning of our lives. [30] And it is precisely that personal bond alluded to at Symposium 209a that helps one sustain the communing with the Form envisaged at the end of Diotima’s speech (cf. theômenou kai sunontos autôi, 212a2). If, as in other dialogues, also in the Symposium philosophy remains not a solipsistic but a communal affair (recall here Socrates’ crowning his report of Diotima’s speech by declaring that he has been “persuaded” by its truth, and that he feels a desire to “persuade others too” about it [cf. pepeismenos de peirômai kai tous allous peithein, 212b2–3] as well as to exhort them [cf. tois allois parakeleuomai, b6–7]), [31] reaching the top of the ladder must be seen not as excluding but as grounding and enriching the practical dimension of our lives (erôs being a sunergon, 212b3–4), as it provides the scenario where the enlightened lover not only communes with the Form but is also able to use it to inform his practical existence. And this will in turn have the consequence that, once we have grasped the correct standards of beauty, there is more of a guarantee that our love choices will be the right ones, and thus more enduring. [32] {221|222}

Now, there are still issues concerning commitment and attachment. Does an enlightened understanding of the nature of Beauty liberate us from all contingencies, or, as Nussbaum would put it, “our bondage to luck” (1986:181)? To some extent, yes. For it is clear that, at some point in our ascent, there occurs, so to speak, an “internalization” of Beauty: now the beauty to be found need not be outside us, as we can become instantiations of fine forms of behavior, virtues, or knowledge by the love that draws us to them. In that sense, we have gained some self-sufficiency and detachment from this or that external instantiation of Beauty; we know that we can have fulfillment even if we are not attached to a particular person, as we have not only the beauty that we have internalized, but also the “vast sea of beauty” (210d4) that surrounds us. We understand that happiness is not just about this or that particular companionship, but a higher order experience. Is such experience of detachment, however, only, or mainly, therapeutic, as Nussbaum contends? That is, is it aimed at making one “abandon his or her cherished human belief in irreplaceability in the service of his inner need for health” (1986:181)?

To answer this question, it is useful to see the speech of Diotima side by side with the speech of Alcibiades. Nussbaum contends that, while the former tries to “describe the passion or its object in general terms,” the latter describes precisely the particularity of it, “because his experience of love has happened to him only once” (1986:187). According to Nussbaum, the latter then captures an aspect of the experience that the former misses, even though, at the end of the day, the two speeches are put in front of us rather dilemmatically, as two “mutually exclusive varieties of vision” insofar as “we must choose: one sort of understanding blocks the other” (1986:198). Socrates gives us recipes to get away from the vulnerability and volatility that we all fear; but Alcibiades makes us realize “the deep importance unique passion has for ordinary human beings; we see its irreplaceable contribution to understanding.” {222|223}

Rather than meant to juxtapose two attitudes on love, however, I believe that the addition of Alcibiades’ speech after Diotima’s can be read in an alternative way—that is, as providing a practical illustration of the risks one runs if one avoids philosophizing about love, and of the kind of confusion that a person who does not have a proper understanding of love is bound to experience. This is the confusion of Alcibiades, who arrives after Socrates’ speech is over (212d), and who, so to speak, mistakes Socrates for the Form itself (just as the cave dwellers in the Republic mistake images for the realities that cause them). [33] Even though this section of the dialogue does have a positive side—showing us, through the image of Socrates, what it is like to be ascending the ladder [34] —it is not, in reality, a choice between a particularized experience of erôs and the apprehension of a Form (for we have shown that in a sense the latter is not even the ultimate end of the speech of Diotima—there is clearly a practical reward after the ascent). It is the choice between having an unenlightened experience of particulars and the transformed approach to them that one can gain ultimately through grasp of the Form. Socrates refuses to sleep with Alcibiades, but not because getting higher on the ladder has killed every sort of sexual attraction in him. [35] Indeed he is far from minimizing his feelings towards him: on the contrary, he describes his love (erôs) for Alcibiades to Agathon as “no trivial matter” (ou phaulon pragma, 213c). [36] It is rather that, one could say, the fact that his erôs is also directed towards a higher standard of beauty helps him realize that sex with that man would not be fulfilling, or (as he puts it) a fair exchange (cf. 218a), if the spiritual values that Alcibiades {223|224} professes to lack (216a–c) are supposed to be present in a sexual exchange that honors the beauty of the person as a whole (recall here the sunamphoteron of 209b7); instead, Socrates, exemplifying a point previously made in the speech of Diotima, spends a good part of his time trying to bring forth virtue in his beloved (cf. 216a). (And after all, Socrates himself is far from being portrayed as a man who would shun bodily pleasures in the Symposium, as he is, for example, the man who can drink as much as it pleases him (cf. pros hêdonên, 176e3), albeit without getting drunk, 220a4–5, and “enjoys” (apolauein) feasting, not like any other, but uniquely so (monos, 220a2); other dialogues reveal that he has been sexually active in old age.) [37]

But this then leads to another philosophical question: if equipped with the correct standards, it appears that we shall be able to make better choices, and that we are lucky if, even deprived of those standards (as in principle Alcibiades would be), we come across a person with the capacity to draw others to them. But then, would this have the consequence that, despite the variegated and multiform mass of images of Beauty, we should all be drawn to the one that embodies it best? For example, assuming that Plato intends to represent Socrates as the “best” instantiation available, should then everyone around him be infatuated with him above all mortals?

To an extent, Plato might perhaps be willing to grant the point. How could one fail to be drawn to an individual of exceptional charisma, and how could one deny the rightness of such attraction if it promises significantly to improve the quality of our lives? At the same time, we must not forget that we are finding this or that other individual attractive; however high we have climbed on the ladder, we are after all human; and insofar as we are human we have needs that continue to be particular precisely in that we ourselves embody beauty in one sense but not in another. The sense in which we don’t creates a lack, and it is the desire to fulfill that particular lack, distinct from one individual to another, that may draw us to different persons instead of necessarily the same one in all cases. And even in cases where we are attracted to, and seek the companionship of, a person embodying properties that we ourselves have, Plato would argue that, as one does not embody that property in its whole perfection, such companionship may make one’s experience of beauty fuller and thus be a suitable channel for its enhanced instantiation.

This certainly does not mean that I will, or should, be bound with that person for ever—needs change, and so may one as one grows. So this view of {224|225} Love is no consolation for one who is looking for the security of a commitment as often understood and dreamt of today, the life-long contract that will shelter one against any eventuality. Rather, it teaches us how much delusion there may be in that idea. It is a category mistake to confuse the fleeting other—which itself changes, as we ourselves do—with the stable Form; it enables us to see the misplacement of our obsessions, and of the unreasonable demands that un-philosophical partners usually put on their beloved, from whom they expect to receive a completion that by definition they cannot provide. By liberating us from those obsessions, and by seeing the particular others for what they really are, Platonic Love—understanding love as Plato would have us understand it—enables us to treat them with more, not less, respect. And, ironically enough, it may thus promise something more long-lasting or—in the Symposium’s words—a “more stable friendship,” [38] as our relation will be based on true apprehension of the facts rather than a fantasy, and thus liberate us from the disappointment that so often follows infatuation and is such a common cause of the dissolution of a bond.

The Symposium does not tell us much about what exactly it means to know the Form of Beauty, beyond the quasi-mystical description of the experience. This part of the theory must remain rather mysterious to us. It is conceivable that the essence it talks about is that which we are still searching for, through all forms of art and ethical enquiry; but the essence must be there, and justifies our search for it, as Plato’s realist commitments indicate. To that extent, the Symposium invites us to continue searching for that property, which means continuing to discuss what qualifies as valuable, both in our aesthetic and moral choices. Certainly, at points it looks like Diotima’s theory, while trying to accommodate the phenomenology of love at one level, is at another level highly normative: we are constantly reminded of what we “must” do in the ascent. [39] But should this be a subject of criticism? Even where one might be tempted to glorify one’s privacy and the elusive nature of love, Diotima diligently reminds us that the theory of love we endorse is directly relevant to morality. We would certainly criticize a person who loves a criminal in his criminality: [40] not because she loves, but because her love is misplaced. By {225|226} contrast, when our love is given properly we have a better chance, as Diotima would say, of begetting true virtue rather than images. [41] {226|227}