Plato's theory of love

Plato's theory of love is one of the philosophical proposals that have generated the most interest of this ancient Greek thinker.

The world of love and personal relationships is already, in itself, something to which we attach great importance, and when this area is unites the approaches of one of the great figures of philosophy, the result is a theoretical legacy that attracts all eyes. However, this philosopher conceived love in a very characteristic way, since linked it to his theory of knowledge and ideas.

We'll see now What are the main features of Plato's theory of love? and how it related to his philosophy.

Plato's dualism

Before I could understand How did Plato understand love?, it is necessary to be clear about a concept: dualism. This is a philosophical current to which Plato subscribed, and which after his death was adopted by many other renowned thinkers, including, for example, Rene Descartes.

What is dualism? Well, basically, and simplifying a lot, in the belief that reality is made up of at least two independent substances and that can never be completely mixed: matter and spirit, also understood on occasions as the world of comings and goings consciousness. These two substances are independent of each other, in the sense that although they can "come together", they do not mix, nor is one derived from the other.

Plato believed that the human being is essentially a soul trapped in a body., which in turn moves in an environment that is also solely material. This is, while the mind belongs to the realm of ideas, everything else, the matter to which the mind is anchored, is a kind of material prison.

But the mind has a natural tendency to want to be close to the rest of the ideas, and that is why it is perfected every time he is able to see beyond the appearances of the material world of ideas to access the truth behind it, that which is universal and cannot be located in time and space. space.

Plato's Myth of the Cave, for example, is a mythical story that expresses precisely this: the liberation of the human being through access to the truth, not being fooled by the appearances of the physical world.

Plato's theory of love

And what does the above have to do with Plato's theory of love? Well, it's very related, because For this philosopher, love can be understood as the state of ecstasy and at the same time moderate frustration. that is experienced when knowing that there is something beyond the physical that calls us but that, at the same time, it will not be fully delivered to us, since no matter how much that we do not want it, we are still chained to the material world, the place in which to enjoy things depends to a large extent on our proximity in time and space to them and in which it is almost impossible to stay away from the influence it exerts on aesthetics, the appearances.

The Platonic conception of love is, therefore, that of an impulse that leads us to want to go beyond the material in our experimentation of something, in the access to its beauty, which for the thinker has to do with his proximity to the truth and not because of his aesthetics.

In the case of people, this beauty belongs to a spiritual plane that we intuit but that we cannot come to make our own, since it is not something material for a reason. What characterizes love is, therefore, the search for the true and the pure, which has to do with the very essence of beauty and that it belongs to a plane of existence totally separated from what is physical.

Thus, in mortal life, platonic love is full of frustration, since despite the fact that beauty is intuited, it is impossible to experience it directly because of the limitations of the material.

Love as something unattainable

Sometimes it is said that the essence of Plato's theory of love is the impossibility of accessing what is loved. However, the impossibility of directly accessing this idea of ​​beauty is only a consequence of the distinction that Plato makes between the ideal and the material.

This philosopher made his theory revolve totally around the world of ideas, and that is why he did not establish very strict rules about specific actions that must be followed to experience love in a correct way, as if our way of moving and acting on a physical space were in itself something very important.

That is why, among other things, he did not say that love had to be expressed through celibacy, since that would mean contradicting himself in his principles by being based on the assumption that the experimentation of beauty has to be connected to the way in which one experiences the world material. That was rather a distortion of the dualistic philosophy used from the popularization of the Abrahamic religionsespecially Christianity.

Thus, brass left the door open to different ways of partially accessing the spiritual world, of transcending the borders between matter and what, according to him, existed beyond this.