What is platonic love?

Platonic love is a expression used with great frequency in the slang popular to refer to an impossible or unattainable love. Although it has the adjective “Platonic”, which relates it to Plato’s philosophical vision, we will see that this philosopher’s postulate, regarding love, went along another line.

We know that love has always been a topic that has given us a lot to talk about. It has been and continues to be a source of inspiration for many poets, writers, thinkers and philosophers since memorable times, not an exception being this well-known philosopher from Ancient Greece called Plato.

Notes on Plato

Plato was a Greek philosopher, a disciple of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. He wrote multiple writings, among them are the Symposium and the Myth of the Caves. In the first of these is where Plato develops his conception of love, which is where the basis will be taken to define Platonic love.

Love for Plato is the motivation that leads us to know and contemplate beauty itself. However, beauty contemplated from dualism, which is one of the guiding threads of his philosophy. This philosophical current – dualism – is based on the postulate that reality is made up of two independent substances that never mix: spirit (form) and matter.

These two substances can be combined, but not mixed. Plato considered that the human being was composed of soul and body, where the soul belonged to the plane of ideas and the body to the material. Therefore, the soul coexists with the body, in which it is precisely trapped; being independent, yes, the two realities.

From this philosophical conception, Plato develops his concept of love. Misunderstood by many, he went so far as to propose that the notion of platonic love proposed an abstemious or spiritual love, when it was not such. The love that this philosopher suggested walked the middle path; avoiding promiscuity, but also abstinence, since for him morality meant containment.

Love

The large number of uses, meanings and feelings that this concept encompasses makes the task of writing a definition not easy. Thus, one of the fundamental characteristics of love is that it is about a universal concept that refers to the affinity between human beings.

In Spanish, the word love covers a large number of different feelings.. It ranges from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the asexual emotional proximity of familial love. It also includes the deep devotion or unity of religious love.

For example, From the Buddhist perspective, love is the desire for all beings to be happy and have the causes of happiness.. This desire includes all beings without exception, both our friends, neutral people and our “enemies”. Buddhism also contemplates the concept of compassion, which is the wish that all beings be free from suffering and its causes. Both Buddhist love and compassion establish a different vision than what we are used to.

Whatever type of love we are talking about, the emotions that are present are extremely powerful, and if you want, they could be classified as irresistible, making it impossible to escape from them. It is in itself an important facilitator of interpersonal relationships; Therefore, it is a source of inspiration for the arts and an object of study for psychology.

What does platonic love pose?

The adjective “Platonic” attached to the concept of love alludes to the doctrine of this Greek philosopher. Plato, in Socrates’ speech, points out that love is the motivation or impulse that leads us to try to know and contemplate beauty itself. In loving eternal, intelligible, perfect forms or ideas that go beyond the physical beauty that can be appreciated – however, it does not exclude it.

In other words, for this philosopher love arises from the desire to discover and admire beauty. The process begins when someone appreciates physical beauty and then progresses to spiritual beauty. Having as its maximum stage pure, passionate and detached admiration of the essence of beauty.

So, Platonic love itself does not have to do with an unattainable or impossible love, but with one that transcends the boundaries of physical beauty, perhaps that being the difficult thing to achieve. There are no sexual elements at all, simply because authentic love for Plato is not that which is directed towards a person, but rather that which is oriented towards the transcendent essence of beauty itself.

At work The banquet Plato explains this postulate in this way:

Beauty and love in Plato

According to Plato, when we encounter beauty, love arises in us, which can be defined as the impulse or determination that pushes us to know and contemplate it. It is a series of phases that occur gradually, appreciating in each of them a particular type of beauty:

Body beauty: is the first phase. It begins with the feeling of love towards a beautiful body in particular that evolves into appreciating beauty in general.Beauty of souls: after overcoming the barrier of appreciating and falling in love with a person’s physical appearance, we begin to focus on their interior; having to do with what is related to the moral and cultural level of the person. In this phase of love, it transcends the body, the physical, to the internal, the soul.Beauty of wisdom: the path of appreciating the beauty of the spirit, of the soul, leads unequivocally to the love of knowledge, ideas; This goes beyond the loved one.Beauty in itself: When you have been able to overcome the three previous phases, a new and final door opens, which is the possibility of experiencing love for beauty in itself, detached from any object or subject. It is the supreme level of love, the greatest.

This last step is characterized by knowing beauty in a passionate, selfless and pure way. Contemplate a feeling that does not corrupt or alter with the passage of time. Therefore, It is not an impossible love in itself, but one that is based on the appreciation of perfect, intelligible and eternal ideas and forms.

Why is platonic love related to an unattainable love?

The expression “platonic love” was used for the first time by Marsilio Ficino in the 15th century, and platonic love was a love focused on the beauty of character and intelligence of a person and not on their physical appearance. However, it is a love only present in the world of ideas, where it is considered perfect and incorruptible.

According to Plato, in reality it is not possible to achieve the purity of this feeling because love is not based on interests, but on virtue. That is to say, it would be a perfect love and perfection in itself is only an illusion in the real world – nothing perfect exists – it can only be possible in the world of ideas in a perfect way.

To simplify the matter, it can be said that Platonic love is understood to be that which is idealized and does not include sexual desire.. By extension, in colloquial language, platonic love is mentioned as the romantic feeling one has for a person who, for some reason, is unattainable. That is, said love cannot include a sexual bond.

In this sense, the expression is consistent with what this philosopher proposes regarding love; however, It is only covering a tiny space of what the conception of platonic love refers to.which makes the expression an error of frequent and colloquial use.

The Argentine newspaper Clarín echoes the feature film thinking about him which addresses the meeting that occurred between Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo, two intellectuals from the early 20th century. This Argentine-Indian production tells of the platonic love that its protagonists experienced, since she only knew him intellectually. Could it be a sign of authentic platonic love?

What does platonic love contemplate?

According to Plato, the Beautiful is equal to the Just, the Good, the True. Thus, love seeks, because it needs it, the Beautiful, the Just, the good, the True, launching itself after it. In summary, Platonic love refers to the task of searching and finding the part of the soul that we are missing, in a person, yes, but in a person who represents for us everything mentioned.

For this reason, platonic love is not really an impossible or unattainable love. It is a middle path that, obviously, can include the sexual, but it is not its central point. It is possible to generate and fertilize more than the body, it is to be able to fall in love with the ideas, with the soul of that other being and this does not necessarily imply the exclusion of the corporeal, the sexual. It implies inclusion, but at the same time transcending it.

Platonic love in psychology

When it comes to the field of modern psychology, platonic love is related to an inability to get closer to the person who is the object of attraction.. That is, it finds its cause in insecurities, introversion and emotional inhibition, and not in the morality of finding pure love.

Platonic love is considered, according to some currents, as part of the myth of romantic love: totally pure, without stain, with a restrained sexuality and an intense emotional codependency. That is where the vindictive part of the new trends comes in, saying that this “spell” is broken at some point, so it is more emotionally intelligent to have healthy, honest and non-idealized relationships.

Having a platonic love (in the current sense of the expression) is something that happens once in a lifetime and is not a cause for concern. However, it is advisable to consult a professional when this type of attraction becomes an obsession and generates pathological frustrations.

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