Platonic love
From Freepedia
Platonic love in its modern sense is an affectionate relationship into which the sexual element does not enter, especially in cases where one might easily assume otherwise. A simple example of platonic relationships is friendship between two heterosexual people of the opposite sexes.
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History
Image:Alcibiades from www-livius-org.jpg
The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th Century by Marsilio Ficino, as a synonym for "amor socraticus", referring to the affection between Socrates and his young male pupils. The English term dates back as far as Sir William Davenant's Platonic Lovers (1636). It is derived from the concept in Plato's Symposium, of the love of the idea of good which lies at the root of all virtue and truth.
Paradox
Ironically, the very eponym of this love, Plato, as well as the forementioned Socrates and Ficino all belong to the community of men who desire boys, and they all engaged in sexual pedagogic friendships with youths. The concept of Platonic love thus arose within the context of the debate pitting sexually expressed pederasty against chaste pederasty.
Regarding Socrates, John Addington Symmonds in his A Problem in Greek Ethics states that he "avows a fervent admiration for beauty in the persons of young men. At the same time he declares himself upon the side of temperate and generous affection, and strives to utilise the erotic enthusiasm as a motive power in the direction of philosophy." According to Linda Rapp in glbtq, Ficino, by "Platonic love," meant "a relationship that included both the physical and the spiritual. Thus, Ficino's view is that love is the desire for beauty, which is the image of the divine."
Thus the term Platonic love as it is understood today is at best paradoxical in light of these philosophers' life experiences and teachings. The philosophers taught not that a man's relationship with a youth should lack an erotic dimension, but rather that the longing for the beauty of the boy is is the very foundation of the friendship and love between those two. However, having acknowledged that the man's erotic desire for the youth magnetizes and energizes the relationship, they countered that it is wiser for this eros to not be sexually expressed, but instead be redirected into the intellectual and emotional spheres.
In order to clarify that distinction between conventional understanding and original intent, some have made use of the term Platonical love to refer to the sublimated pedagogic eros that more closely describes the type of love propounded – if not exclusively practiced – by the school of Socrates, Plato and Ficino.
This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.
Quotes
- "Platonic love is love from the neck up."
- "Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost."
- "I am convinced, and always was, that platonic love is platonic nonsense."
- "Platonic love is what would happen if Ms. Lumb turned into a robot..."
- "Men don't have platonic friends. We just have women we haven't fucked yet."
References
- Gould, T. (1963) Platonic Love. New York: The Free Press.
See also
- Asexuality
- Historical pederastic couples
- Pederasty
- Romantic friendship
- Sexual abstinence
- Spiritual marriage
