495. PLATONIC LOVE: ALL YOU NEED IS SOUL by un'Americana a Venezia

Gli Amanti - Renè Magritte

Originally, the word "symposium" meant neither a conference nor a collection of essays, but rather, a laid-back party for men only.  In his work entitled Symposium, in the context of such a gathering, Plato tackles the subject of Love, a concern reserved mainly for males.  Females were expected to stay at home and run things there in silence.  In Plato's day, Love was called Eros, a figure now banalized as a winged imp armed with a bow.  Six guests in Plato's Symposium entertain the company with speeches made in praise of Eros.  In so doing, attempts will be made to explain the meaning and expression of Love.  Plato invents these speeches, naturally, and best summarizes his own position through the one he wrote for Socrates' character.  (Socrates had been Plato's own teacher.)  Its contents comprise what has come to be known as Platonic love, the complete nature of which is a much debated topic among scholars.  Interestingly, a foreign philosopher-priestess who may have really existed, Diotima of Mantinea, is written into Socrates' speech.  She concedes an interview with Socrates, supposedly conducted when he was a youth.  The speech is a question and answer session in the famous Socratic method.  This wise instructress, Diotima, teases out the essence of Eros.  The following excerpts are my own translation of an old RAI TV production available at YouTube (Discorso di Diotima a Socrate sull'Amore):  "Eros is between two things, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad.  If Eros were a great god, he would be the happiest of all, and in possession of all good things in the world.  Love does not possess the good and the beautful, he can only desire the good and the beautiful.  Love is not a mortal like us, he is a powerful daemon, a great and beneficial daemon.  (Note:  A daemon for Diotima and Socrates was simply a supernatural being.)  Love is a messenger between gods and mortals, and also a cosmic force; he shortens the distance between gods and mortals, and joins the universe unto himself. . . Love is always a philosopher.  Because Wisdom is the greatest and most beautiful thing, and Love, by his nature, cannot help but love Beauty.  Love is nothing more than the subject, the lover, and the absolute desire of the beautiful; he is always impatient, greedy. . . Don't all men desire Happiness and Beauty?  This desire is the force of Love, powerful, sly, seductive.  Procreating is the only means by which a human being can attain immortality.  In loving one's own child, one

Diotima di Mantinea

loves his own immortality.  But certain mortals feel within themselves another creative instinct even greater than that of the body:  the impulse of the soul that generates Thought, Poetry, and the most beautiful virtue of all, Justice.  A man in love feels the need to procreate.  He is attracted to the most beautiful bodies.  In love, he feels resourceful, and dissolves himself in beautiful words . . . but he soon realizes that the exterior beauty of one body is equal to that of another.  In time, Socrates, you will learn to love Beauty in its totality, to see the same beauty in all bodies, and to calm that excessive desire to possess a single body. . . Then you will discover that the beauty of the soul is more precious than the beauty of the body, and then you will understand that within the body, the soul, and the Law dwells the same Form of Beauty.  You will know the Beauty of Wisdom. . . That's when you will near the end of your initiation.  You will finally contemplate Eternal Beauty, that without beginning or end, an Absolute Beauty that never changes."  Socrates is left to conclude that whoever produces the virtual "children of the Beauty of the Soul," here referring to poetry, the arts, great legal instruments, etc., will become a friend of the gods.  In order to partake of such a gift, he advises, the best guide is Love.  Speaking for myself, I had long assumed that Platonic love simply meant intimate friendship untouched by sex.  Taking a closer look at the literature, I now realize that Platonic love is, in effect, the semination, birth, and cultivation of virtuous ideas, one in another, so that s/he who succeeds in leaving behind such a legacy in others' hearts cannot help but become immortal.  Well over two thousand years ago, the lofty thoughts which sprang from the philosopher's pen impregnated mankind with hope, and also with the faith that there is much more to Love than the impulse towards physical procreation.  Ironically, we must thank the immortal (and chauvinistic) Plato for having let a woman teach the teacher about the role and importance of soul.  UN'AMERICANA A VENEZIA