Some philosophers have argued that love has moral-psychological power, as it can motivate one to appreciate the existence of others and to offer care for them. This appears evident in the context of our relations with nonhuman animals and nature: love can motivate one to think of them as morally considerable. But what is love? The paper at hand investigates one classic philosophical definition of love and applies it to our relationship with other animals and nature. (...) This definition is the quality view of love, i.e., Platonic love, which, I argue, facilitates deeper moral concern for nonhuman animals and things. (shrink)

The architectural facade -- a crucial and ubiquitous element of traditional cityscapes -- addresses and enhances the space of the city, while displaying or dissembling interior arrangements. Burroughs traces the development of the Italian Renaissance palace facade as a cultural, architectural and spatial phenomenon, and as a new way of setting a limit to and defining a private sphere. He draws on literary evidence and analyses of significant Renaissance buildings, noting the paucity of explicit discussion of the theme in an (...) era of extensive architectural publishing. (shrink)

The main goal of chapter 18 is to emphasise the importance of love in the Republic but also more generally in Plato’s ethics. To begin with, it is considered how love is able to fill the gap between the rational and the irrational part of the soul. Thus, it is shown how love can be the key element to link self-regarding and other-regarding virtues. Finally, how love allows Plato to consider justice as a non-instrumental good is (...) investigated. (shrink)

Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between (...) higher and lower forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition. (shrink)

In Lucas's universe, the Jedi have a special capacity to connect with the Force. There is nothing more powerful in human psychology than the power of attraction in the love of one person for another. The power of passionate love between persons – sexual‐love or love of the body – is experience of the Force. The Jedi also teach their trainees to have a detached, compassionate love for others that is sometimes called “Platonic (...) class='Hi'>love.” Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader seems to contradict a prophecy about him: that he's the Chosen One who would bring balance back to the Force. Star Wars doesn't leave the original love, Anakin's passionate love for Padmé, behind. The Force love of Rey and Ren concludes the drama of love that finally achieves the balance of the Force in the sequel trilogy. (shrink)

Nikolaj Fëdorov insists that the proper end of the philosophical project must be the repudiation of history in the creation of a new being not subject to death. This project appears to be an extension of the kind of philosophical madness one might associate with the Platonic striving for synoptic vision of the whole. Federov develops this notion of philosophy, not in dialogue with Plato, however, as much as with the Hegelian notion of the end of human striving in (...) absolute knowledge, the final unity of will and reason, which Fëdorov criticizes. The exceptional radicality of Fëdorov’s philosophical project as a project of divinization, as well as its flaws, are most clearly manifest in the Russian context with reference to two other crucial projects of divinization deeply influenced by Hegel: that of Vladimir Solov’ëv and Alexandre Kojève. (shrink)

Physical and emotional intimacy between humans and robots may become commonplace over the next decades, as technology improves at a rapid rate. This development provides new questions pertaining to how people perceive robots designed for different kinds of intimacy, both as companions and potentially as competitors. We performed an randomized experiment where participants read of either a robot that could only perform sexual acts, or only engage in non-sexual platonic love relationships. The results of the current study show (...) that females have less positive views of robots, and especially of sex robots, compared to men. Contrary to the expectation rooted in evolutionary psychology, females expected to feel more jealousy if their partner got a sex robot, rather than a platonic love robot. The results further suggests that people project their own feelings about robots onto their partner, erroneously expecting their partner to react as they would to the thought of ones’ partner having a robot. (shrink)

Clanak raspravlja o odnosu izmedju paradigmatskog statusa filma i upotrebe filmskih analogija u psihoanalitickom diskursu filozofije Slavoja Zizeka koji cini temelj njegovog kritickog diskursa o drustvu i kulturi uopce. U prvom dijelu, polazeci od novijih rasprava medju nekolicinom engleskih i americkih sveucilisnih intelektualaca o kontroverznim vidovima djelovanja Slavoja Zizeka u akademskoj zajednici i na siroj javnoj sceni, u prvom dijelu clanka prikazuju se neki usporedni primjeri i unutrasnji pokretaci kontroverzije sadrzaj-forma u filozofiji i pop-kulturi te Zizekovo razumijevanje te kontroverzije. U (...) drugom dijelu raspravlja se o Zizekovim sporadicnim refleksijama o meta-egzemplifikaciji i obrazlaze teza da kod Zizeka, na pretpostavkama ontologije virtualnog, presutno djeluje dvostruka, paradigmatska i analogijska, koncepcija inherencije u odnosu primjera i principa te zamjena analogije predmet? analogijom analiz?, sto stvara tipican konflikt izmedju metonimijske i metaforicke evazivnosti diskursa. Na toj pozadini vrednuje se ponovo opci prigovor protiv Zizeka o?virtualnom totalitarizmu? lisenom kontingencije smisla i ukazuje na mjesto subjekta izvan diskursa kao druge osnove za analizu uvjeta istinitosti. U trecem dijelu ispituje se i metodoloski vrednuje Zizekovo vlastito razumijevanje njegovog postupka filmske ilustracije i njegovo osebujno performativno razrjesenje epistemoloskog problema filmske interpretacije kroz montazu imaginarne identifikacije ili?empatije? s filmskim objektima, koje s?m naziva?perverzijom? ili?ljubavlju?. U cetvrtom dijelu analizira se ocigledni nesrazmjer izmedju Zizekove primjene doktrinarnih zaliha psihoanalize u kritici kinematografije, s jedne strane, i njegove teorijski oskudno razradjene apoteoze?kinematickog materijalizma?. Argumentira se da taj nerazmjer donosi u rezultatu ono sto Zizek odbija u nacelu: supstituciju materijalizma analize i kontingencije uvjeta u potrazi za istinskom holistickom koncepcijom smisla, sto, u konzekvenciji, izokrece psihoanaliticki diskurs o kinematografiji u hermeneuticki. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in the figure of Socrates and in love in ancient Greece, no recent monograph studies these topics in all four of Plato's dialogues on love and friendship. This book provides important new insights into these subjects by examining Plato's characterization of Socrates in Symposium, Phaedrus, Lysis and the often neglected Alcibiades I. It focuses on the specific ways in which the philosopher searches for wisdom together with his young interlocutors, using an art that is 'erotic', (...) not in a narrowly sexual sense, but because it shares characteristics attributed to the daimon Eros in Symposium. In all four dialogues, Socrates' art enables him, like Eros, to search for the beauty and wisdom he recognizes that he lacks and to help others seek these same objects of erôs. Belfiore examines the dialogues as both philosophical and dramatic works, and considers many connections with Greek culture, including poetry and theater. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Like a Virgin”Levinas’s Anti-Platonic Understanding of Love and DesireBrigitta Keintzel (bio)Translated by Brigitta Keintzel, Benjamin McQuade, and Sophie UitzMy article is divided into three parts. First, I outline transformations in the understanding of love through philosophical tradition from Plato to Levinas, exploring Levinas’s anti-Platonic understanding of love via the relationship between knowledge and love. This relationship is asymmetrical: knowledge functions in the name (...) of love, but love does not function in the name of knowledge. Love is not knowledge but instead entails knowledge. As love of wisdom, knowledge serves in the name of love. The open question here is: how can Platonic love of wisdom or Levinasian ethical desire have the ability to respond to social, political, and cultural challenges — a question I will come back to in the last section.In the second section, I discuss the relationship between love and desire. As opposed to desire, which is explicitly bound to the Desired, along with some ideal position vis-à-vis that person, love possesses a plethora of connotations that often render it vague. Love is bound not only to the self but to other persons — as well as to objects, facts, attitudes, situations, ideas, institutions, cultures, and even governments. Desire, on the other hand, is a stronger term than the timeworn and [End Page 21] much-abused word “love.” It entails a stronger orientation toward the Other with a temporal, prospective connotation: in the horizon of desire, the Other is “not yet,” the Other is future in the present. For Levinas, the delineation of “not-yet”-ness is a central feature for describing alterity and virginity.My central question in the third section is on how sensual love and ethical desire relate to Levinas’s description of the relationship between “intimate” and “real” society. I will show that it is particularly Levinas’s introduction of the figure of the Third that makes it possible to finally overcome the Platonic dualism between individuality and generality. In both erotic love and in ethical desire, the figure of the Third is decisive for exploring Levinas’s understanding of justice. The figure of the Third is not only a witness of the truth between the subject and a desiring Other but also a precondition for establishing this truth. Therefore, it is not necessary to see but to hear the claims of the Third, as well the claims of the Desired.The Wisdom of LoveIn Plato’s interpretation, love is seen as a progression from the discrete, individual, erotic love to the general and comprehensive. The lover feels in him/herself a deficiency and strives to compensate this deficiency — accomplished through various activities of consciousness, involving desire, suffering, thought, perception, the striving toward the good and the beautiful. These are not considered equal in quality but rather form a progression from the particular to the general. Eros remains dutiful to the idea of the good. Renunciation of corporal love is seen as a precondition for attaining love of the good and the beautiful, this being equated with the attainment of immortality. This renunciation, as it has been argued in the dialogue between Alcibiades and Socrates, implies that spiritual, intellectual love is of higher value than corporal love. As opposed to spiritual love, corporal love is fraught with a deficiency that can never be completely assuaged. [End Page 22]This model is based on the myth — related in the Symposium — of the spherical human being, comprised originally of two people in one body, with four hands, four legs, two genders, and two faces. Only the splitting of this single human into two people with two faces and two genders created the longing for a lost unity, expressed in erotic desire for the other gender or the other face. In this narrative, erotic desire is brought into semantic proximity with lost unity and with suffering. Unisexuality is seen as a deficiency, to receive a “truer and more perfect” assuagement only on a spiritual level. The implied antagonism between spiritual (“Platonic”) and corporal love constitutes a narrative motive that — in various forms — particularly marked post-Enlightenment literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In examples... (shrink)

In this paper, I compare two theories of ideal love, the Platonic and Frommian, and argue that they give opposite advices to lovers in practice. While Plato emphasizes “whom to love” and urges one to continuously look for a better beloved, Erich Fromm emphasizes “how to love” and urges one to grow and change with one’s imperfect lover. Using the movie Her as an example, I explain why an ideal love is extremely difficult to attain (...) under the guidance of the Platonic and Frommian ideals. In an imperfect love, to leave or to stay seems to be a question with no simple answer. (shrink)

What is love? Beneath all the sentimental, rhetorical piety of common talk about love lie deep moral and metaphysical dimensions of human experience. In this book Morgan explores these dimensions calmly, sympathetically and clearly. He examines and compares three of mankind's most comprehensive conceptions of the nature and meaning of love, each with its unique insight, its own profound illumination.

Hobbes's understanding of love, and its significance for his political thought, has received insufficient attention. This essay contends that Hobbes has a consistent and comprehensive teaching on love that directly repudiates what he regards as the Platonic teaching on eros. In attacking the Platonic idea of eros, Hobbes undermines a pillar of classical political philosophy and articulates a significant aspect of his new understanding of the passions in terms of power, which is itself a critical part (...) of his new political science most famously presented in Leviathan. (shrink)

Socrates engages his audience in Phaedrus with speeches that include revised or newly composed myths that express his theory of philosophical eros. The aim of the speeches is to generate a love for truth that spills over into dialogue. Speeches are a starting point for dialogue, just like physical attraction is the beginning of love. In the case of Phaedrus, the beginning of philosophy is portrayed using playful and rhetorically rich speeches that serve as "love potions" awakening (...) the novice's soul, and ultimately leading Phaedrus to higher rungs on the ladder of love through the palinode, a medicinal speech. It is thinking about speeches, not the speeches themselves, which moves Socrates' student Phaedrus from the love of speeches to the love of Beauty itself. This is a stark contrast to the purpose of speechmaking for the sophist. The sophist seeks to enchant the soul, while the philosopher seeks to charm the soul into loving wisdom through stimulating discussions. Socrates also uses role reversals in the lover-beloved relationship to model the soul's ascent, contrasting the traditional roles with the way the lover and beloved are presented in Socrates' speeches. The novice must actively recollect Beauty itself in order to ascend, rather than passively listening to speeches that provide an image of beauty. Socrates' interlocutors must move themselves up the ladder of love from their own philosophical eros; wisdom is not attained by merely being pushed all the way up the ladder of love. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Petrarchan Love and the Pleasures of FrustrationAldo Scaglione—Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto III, st. 7As Byron ironically intimated, there is a behavioral connection between much of the literature of love and sexual frustration. What is known as medieval “courtly love” was an epiphany of idealized love. Whether self-imposed or forced (...) restraint, it infused much of Arthurian lore, the troubadours’ and then Petrarch’s lyric, and later partly merged with the Renaissance phenomenon of Platonic love. 1 But we wonder about possible historical derivation both on the cultural (literary) level and on the level of practical behavior. In other words, if taken case by case, is the similarity among cultural patterns and between literary phenomena and behavioral patterns a consequence of: 1) intertextual connections with courtly love and Petrarchism; 2) ideological circumstances similar to those which produced “courtly love”; or, inversely, 3) a broader human need that also lies in the background of courtly love? Where and how did frustration, denial, or sublimation acquire a deeper and greater value than consummation and satisfaction? Was it through religion, myth, morality, psychology, or a combination of these factors? Is this essentially an anthropological or rather a psycho-moral question? Does it originate in our perennial “nature” or in our time-bound mores?It seems safe to assume a combination of these factors. Ideals of psychologically sublimated, hence physiologically frustrated, love have an anthropological foundation and are inherent in any sophisticated cultural form. At the [End Page 557] same time, in the Western tradition they owe much to the persistence of the specific historical phenomena of courtly love and its Petrarchistic variations.Of course the folklore of love includes both satisfied and unfulfilled sorts. Jean Hagstrum’s Esteem Enlivened by Desire (1992) deals with the conjugal sort, implying consummation. He distinguishes his theme from “long-term relations that remain unconsummated, valorizing delayed or obviated climax, prolonged foreplay, ascetic discipline, traditional Platonic or Petrarchan love, or various forms of sublimation.” 2 Yet “this last... is dialectically and psychologically tied to [Hagstrum’s] main theme: it is one kind of long-term love relationship with often more than a tinge of the erotic.” 3 For Hagstrum these behavioral variations are determined by culture, since purely “natural” behavior would be more uniform and “unhistorically” steady. 4The notion that idealized desire is culture-bound finds support in Denis de Rougemont’s well-known thesis, that chivalry and courtesy are inventions of medieval Europe with no equivalent at other times and places except by direct influence or imitation: the behavior of an ancient Greek lover or a modern Japanese lover does not involve “chivalry” toward the woman. 5 For de Rouge-mont, ideal love came under the spell of what he called eros, defined as infatuation with desire itself rather than love for its natural end. Difficulties and obstacles became more meaningful than success, even to the point that, as in the story of Tristan and, differently and uniquely, in Dante’s poetry, the death of the beloved marked the culmination of eros. This eros postulates self-denial and sublimation for the sake of a higher achievement.Regardless of chivalry’s roots in medieval Europe, frustration can be a powerful ideal in non-Western cultures, too. One signal example might suffice. The Chinese literary classic, The Dream of the Red Chamber by Chan T’sao (ca. 1717–63), is the life story or Bildungsroman of a high prince who, after a [End Page 558] life of indulgence, decides to renounce the world and become an ascetic monk. 6 This problematic main character, Pao Yu, moves in the framework of Taoist and Confucian ideals, with the addition of some Buddhist religious traits. His final withdrawal from the world, however, which appears to family and society as a disappointing betrayal, obeys a psychological need for a frustration that represents a nobler achievement than the satisfaction of worldly ambition.The point of this essay is to sample a few cases of literary representations of idealized love while underlining their ideal and, at times, literal interconnections. I also mean to suggest... (shrink)

This book tells a compelling story about love, friendship, and the Divine that took over a thousand years to unfold. It argues that mind and feeling are intrinsically connected in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; that Aristotle developed his theology and physics primarily from Plato’s Symposium (from the “Greater” and “Lesser Mysteries” of Diotima-Socrates’ speech); and that the Beautiful and the Good are not coincident classes, but irreducible Forms, and the loving ascent of the Symposium must be (...) interpreted in the light of the Republic, as the later tradition up to Ficino saw. Against the view that Platonism is an escape from the ambiguities of ordinary experience or opposed to loving individuals for their own sakes, this book argues that Plato dramatizes the ambiguities of ordinary experience, confronts the possibility of failure, and bequeaths erotic models for the loving of individuals to later thought. Finally, it examines the Platonic-Aristotelian heritage on the Divine to discover whether God can love us back, and situates the dramatic development of this legacy in Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. (shrink)

What if Plato's Symposium took place in present-day America rather than in ancient Athens? The Thanksgiving Symposium imagines this, and makes it happen. Like Plato's dialogue, The Thanksgiving Symposium focuses on the age-old question: what is the nature of love? In The Thanksgiving Symposium, three men and three women of varying ages and degrees of closeness meet for Thanksgiving dinner. Their particular situations give rise to a discussion of love in the general and the specific, leavened with the (...) normal give and take of social interaction. During the evening, much is discussed and some things are decided. Plato's dialogue verges on being a play about philosophy rather than a philosophy, people discussing things rather than a philosopher telling us what to conclude. The Thanksgiving Symposium develops this aspect of Plato while offering a new philosophy that responds to the old. Is the result a play? A dialogue? A philosophy? Like Plato's Symposium, it is all of these at once. (shrink)

Studies the context of Giordano Bruni's Eroici furori in the light of two traditional literary forms; prose commentaries on verses, and Platonic love treatises.

I distinguish, describe and explore two different conceptions of love that inform our lives. One conception found its classic philosophical articulation in Plato, the other its richest expressions in Christian thought. The latter has not had the same secure place in our philosophical traditon as the former. By trying to bring out what is distinctive in this second conception of love, centrally including its significance in revealing the fundamental value of human beings, I aim to show the importance (...) of extending our philosophical reflection to acknowledge it. (shrink)

The strangeness of modern physics has sparked several popular books--such as The Tao of Physics--that explore its affinity with Eastern mysticism. But the founders of quantum mechanics were educated in the classical traditions of Western civilization and Western philosophy. In Nature Loves to Hide, physicist Shimon Malin takes readers on a fascinating tour of quantum theory--one that turns to Western philosophical thought to clarify this strange yet inescapable explanation of reality. Malin translates quantum mechanics into plain English, explaining its origins (...) and workings against the backdrop of the famous debate between Niels Bohr and the skeptical Albert Einstein. Then he moves on to build a philosophical framework that can account for the quantum nature of reality. He shows, for instance, how Platonic and Neoplatonic thought resonates with quantum theory. He draws out the linkage between the concepts of Neoplatonism and the more recent process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The universe, Whitehead wrote, is an organic whole, composed not of lifeless objects, but "elementary experiences." Beginning with Whitehead's insight, Malin shows how this concept of "throbs of experience" expresses quantum reality, with its subatomic uncertainties, its constituents that are waves and also particles, its emphasis on acts of measurement. Once any educated person could explain the universe as a vast Newtonian web of cause and effect, but since quantum theory, reality again appears to be richer and more mysterious than we had thought. Writing with broad humanistic insight and deep knowledge of science, and using delightful conversations with fictional astronauts Peter and Julie to explain more difficult concepts, Shimon Malin offers a profound new understanding of the nature of reality--one that shows a deep continuity with aspects of our Western philosophical tradition going back 2500 years, and that feels more deeply satisfying, and truer, than the clockwork universe of Newton. (shrink)

When people now talk about a relationship as being “Platonic”, they mean that the relationship is a non-sexual friendship. But what did Plato himself say about different kinds of relationship, and how did his name come to be associated with non-sexual relationships? While Plato’s Symposium has been the center of attention for his views on love, I argue that the Phaedrus and Laws VIII provide a much clearer account of Plato’s views. In these dialogues, Plato distinguishes between two (...) kinds of love and three kinds of lover. The two kinds of love are fundamentally oriented towards different objects: one kind of love is focused on the body of the beloved and seeks to extract as much bodily pleasure from them as possible, whereas the other kind of love is focused on the soul and seeks to benefit the beloved by improving their character. There is a lover for each kind of love, and a third kind of lover who is torn between these two opposing objects of love. Notably, in the kind of love directed towards the soul, the lovers will not engage in sexual activity. I argue that this is because Plato thinks that the natural function of sex is the procreation of good children and that engaging in such an intensely pleasurable activity risks making the lovers intemperate and lacking in self-control. Thus Plato thinks that the best kind of relationship is one of love (and not just friendship) but is nonetheless non-sexual. (shrink)

Downton Abbey is, at its most basic, a story driven by intimate, romantic relationships: Mary and Matthew, Bates and Anna, Sybil and Branson, Lord and Lady Grantham, and many others. As viewers, we root for (or against) these characters as they fall in love, quarrel, break up, reconcile, have children, and deal with separation and death. But what do we get out of this? Is it merely an emotional “rush,” or is it something more meaningful? In this essay, I’ll (...) attempt to answer this question by examining how the relationships portrayed in Downton Abbey might look to the characters of Plato’s Symposium, one of the first (and most famous) philosophical treatments of love. The residents of Downtown Abbey provide ideal models for exploring and critiquing the various “theories of love” offered by the Symposium’s characters. Thomas’s defense of James, for example, provides a great illustration of Phaedrus’s claim about the relationship between love and courage, while Mary’s early struggles illuminate Pausanias’s suggestion that “pure” love can be achieved only by following (well-designed) social rules. By contrast, Bates and Anna help give content to Aristophanes’ s idea that love involves finding your “missing half,” while Carson’s and Mrs. Hughes’ relationship exemplify the sort of “order” celebrated by Eryximachus. Edith, for her part, seems to have fallen for Agathon’s sophistical claim that romantic love can only truly be experienced by the young and beautiful. Finally, Socrates’s famous account of the “ladder of love” can be seen most vividly in the transformative relationship of Sybil and Bronson. Along the way, we’ll consider what is really meant by “Platonic love,” and consider what the characters of Downton Abbey can teach about this invaluable philosophical concept. (shrink)

Christian ethics are usually based on a theology of love. In the case of Christian relationships to nature, Christian environmental writers have either suggested eros as a primary source for Christian love, without dealing with traditional Christian arguments against eros, or have assumed agape (spiritual love or sacrificial love) is the appropriate mode, without defining how agape should function in human relationships with the nonhuman portion of the universe. I demonstrate that God’s love for nature (...) has the same form and characteristics as God’s love for human beings, and that because agape is self-giving, it is preferable to eros in relationships with the environment. Agape concerning nature (I) is spontaneous and unmotivated, (2) is indifferent to value, (3) creates value, (4) initiates relationships with the divine, (5) recognizes individuality, (6) provides freedom, and (7) produces action and suffering. Agape might best be defined, not as Platonic ascent above the world, but as completely self-giving engagement with the world. Human love for nature is often limited by a human inability to accept love, including divine love, from nature. Flowing from God, agape cannot require reciprocity; yet agape understands what “the other has to give and can offer it complete valuation. Agape is the ideal form of human interaction with nature, because agape does not require equal status or ability, or common goals or needs. Love between humans and members of the land (or sea) community can be sacrificial, and should be distinguished by a loss of self-regard and a willingness to suffer. Further philosophical and theological discussion of the role of reciprocity and sacrifice in love for nature is highly desirable. (shrink)

This paper provides a novel response to Vlastos’s challenge that Platonic erōs in the Symposium, since it is for the form of beauty rather than any particular person, is impersonal and egotistical. Vlastos, in addition to generations of his readers and critics, badly misunderstands Diotima’s reproductive theory of love. In particular, it has been widely overlooked or diminished that the ideal erotic relationship set out in the ladder of love mirrors the reproductive labor of ancient Greek mothers (...) and caregivers. The lover of the highest mysteries undertakes the psychic equivalent of motherly care to rear virtuous ideas in the next generation. Thus, properly understanding Diotima’s gendered vision of psychic reproduction reveals that Platonic love is anything but impersonal and egotistical. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of Platonic eudalmonism. Plato identified human excellence with mental health, mental health with psychic harmony, psychic harmony with the rule of reason, and he conceived reason to he the synergetic union of the power to know and the power to love. Plato believed that virtue is a constitutent of eudaimonia, that, therefore, it is its own reward. Plato was right on all these counts but one. He misunderstood the nature of the love (...) that is a constituent of reason. That love is not the eras of the Symposium. It is what I call'undemanding love'. In this essay I describe the structure of undemanding love and I explain its connections with reason, mental health, and the moral excellence that is characteristic of a rational being. (shrink)

In 1984, Irving Singer published the first volume of what would become a classic and much acclaimed trilogy on love. Trained as an analytical philosopher, Singer first approached his subject with the tools of current philosophical methodology. Dissatisfied by the initial results, he turned to the history of ideas in philosophy and the arts for inspiration. He discovered an immensity of speculation and artistic practice that reached wholly beyond the parameters he had been trained to consider truly philosophical. In (...) his three-volume work The Nature of Love, Singer tried to make sense of this historical progression within a framework that reflected his precise distinction-making and analytical background. In this new book, he maps the trajectory of his thinking on love. It is a "partial" summing-up of a lifework: partial because it expresses the author's still unfolding views, because it is a recapitulation of many published pages, because love--like any subject of that magnitude--resists a neatly comprehensive, all-inclusive formulation. Adopting an informal, even conversational, tone, Singer discusses, among other topics, the history of romantic love, the Platonic ideal, courtly and nineteenth-century Romantic love; the nature of passion; the concept of merging ; ideas about love in Freud, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dewey, Santayana, Sartre, and other writers; and love in relation to democracy, existentialism, creativity, and the possible future of scientific investigation. Singer's writing on love embodies what he has learned as a contemporary philosopher, studying other authors in the field and "trying to get a little further." This book continues his trailblazing explorations. (shrink)