Eros, and the search for what is perfect: Plato on the philosophical value of erotic experience
“I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent’s tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or do anything. And you whom I see around me… have had experience of the same madness and passion in your longing after wisdom.”
Plat. Symp. 218a-b
§1. Introduction
If love is a goddess that must be praised for her immortal beauty, then what of heartache, that ever-haunting specter of the human soul? If eros, in the Platonic tradition, is a daimon that leads to the perfect form of beauty, then why is it that it is nearly a universal experience that heartache has been one of mankind’s greatest teachers? The epigraph to the present text are the words drunkenly poured out of the beloved and heartbroken disciple of Socrataes, Alcibiades, in Plato’s Symposium, bringing about the conclusion of the great speeches in praise of eros in the Platonic dialog. However, this rupture in discourse that appears to be a condemnation of love rather than a eulogy of praise proves to be more revealing about nature of eros and what it tells us about the philosophical import of the pursuit of the good life and the attainment of arete, or perfected virtue.
In this paper, I suggest that the Platonic conception of eros was a pedagogically useful emotion; that more than a means for moving from the love of “the beauty of form to the form of beauty,” it reveals to us something more about the human condition, the search for goodness, and the limits of perfection. I propose that eros functions in human relationships much in the same way that the method of elenchus does in philosophic discussion, and that ultimately, eros can be and is one type of embodied and lived philosophical experience. In what follows, I the following is elucidated:
§2, begins with a discussion about the juxtaposition of erotic discourse and philosophical inquiry that occurs in the Platonic dialogue, Charmides. This section offers a description of the method of elenchus, how it functions, and what it appears to signal about how philosophy is done and the limits of what one can know and how one can know more. Here an exposition is given on the discussion of the limits of self-knowledge concerning the dialogue, and it is demonstrated that eros also plays a role in self discovery and understanding.
Following in the next section, the argument looks at the speeches in praise of eros given in Plato’s Symposium. Here §3 draws the relationship between eros and fulfillment, and picks up on fulfillment, or self fulfillment, as what constitutes the good life, or eudaimonia. Here the central argument of this paper is, in its force, that eros and elenchus are both tools that can be used to reach eudaimonia, and that Plato demonstrates the two as operating similarly or in parallel manners.
Finally, §4 picks out evidence in Symposium and Republic that support the idea that although eros can be pedagogically useful in the philosophical development of a person, it is also the object of another virtue, sophrosyne, or self control. With this concept in hand, I sketch the idea that self control or self restraint is an important virtue regarding all tools in the world, including other pedagogical tools such as rhetoric, or more importantly, elenchus. That being the case, this section culminates with the thesis that although the attainment of righteousness in virtue is important for achieving the good life, without restraint in all manners concerning the pursuit of virtue, one can fall painfully short of the proper goals of Socratic education, just like Alcibiades proclaims in his speech in Symposium.
§2. Charmides: On elenchus and knowing oneself
Charmides begins with locker room talk at the gym. There’s banter about and Socrates lays his eyes on what is quite possibly one of the most handsome young men about Athens. Socrates has the hots for him, and everyone can see it; and everyone wants to see how good Socrates’ game is. Socrates feigns sheepishness, until one guy pipes up and says, “Hey, listen. That kid you’re eyeing up, he’s my cousin” – yes, his cousin – “Charmides. He’s got a killer headache that’s been affecting his performance during his lifts.” (paraphrased) Socrates follows, and this cousin of Charmides says, “maybe you can tell him you have a remedy for his headache.” This cousin, Critias, winks a knowing wink at Socrates and everyone is standing around with their voyeuristic tendencies on display. Socrates replies, knowing full well what is being suggested: “Well if you can get him over here…” Critias says, “Obviously I can,” and turning to Charmides across the way, he yells for Charmides to come over to see this “physician” and chat. (Plat. Charm. 153a-155c)
Socrates has now entered a game. In order to chat up this young Charmides, Socrates feigns the role of a physician with the cure for his headache. Socrates tells the young man that in order for his remedy to work, he be treated with a balm after submitting to be treated by chanting an incantation for sound mindedness. However, Socrates cautions that he was instructed not to give the prescribed drug to anyone under other circumstances, for being treated with the incantation is strictly necessary prior to the administration of the drug. (Plat. Charm. 157b-c)
This theme runs throughout the Socratic dialogues: Socrates’ insistence that the wellbeing of the body comes from a well ordered soul. Thus begins a little more than small talk between the boy and the physician. Socrates, in his usual manner, has transformed what appears to have been a flirtatious moment into a serious discussion about the nature of sophrosyne, or sound-mindedness. Whether Socrates intended to turn this into a philosophical lesson, or saw this philosophical lesson as an opportunity to spend time in the company of this beautiful and illustrious young Athenian man is not clear, but this farcical story puts Charmides squarely in the position to defend his own sound-mindedness or risk being embarrassed before a crowd of respected men. Critias points this out by proclaiming that Charmides is in fact reputable for being distinguished in sound-mindedness amongst his peers, egging on the conversation. Charmides, now in front of his cousin, is tasked with proving that this is true.
Ultimately, Charmides fails to prove that he is in fact of sound-mind by proving that he does not know what it is to be sound-minded, and admits defeat. (162b)
Here, the conversation very well could have ended. Socrates did get to flirt with the boy, the crowd got to watch, but Critias was not satisfied. Whether it was from pure enjoyment of such philosophical inquiry, or more likely that he had praised his young cousin for his wit only to be proven wrong, Critias chooses to pipe in. Without detailing the whole of the conversation, Critias goes on to prove that sound-mindedness is, as his cousin was saying, having to do with “doing one’s own thing.” (162e)
Eventually, it comes to pass that being of sound mind means to do what is good for oneself, and that this entails that one knows what is good, and one knows himself. Self-knowledge proves to be crucial to Socratic eudaimonia. To live a good life is, as we find in Charmides, to take care of oneself, and to know oneself; a theme we will return to again in other Platonic dialogues.
Here we see quite clearly that the Socratic method by which Socrates determines what is to be examined (sic. sophrosyne), and then going on to find inconsistencies in what one believes about it, is what Socrates envisions is the proper course of action to determine whether or not one knows what they claim to know, so that if they do not, which it is often the case in the dialogues, they have the opportunity to amend their inconsistencies. Knowledge of the Good is what again and again proves to be the ground and purpose of all virtue for Plato’s Socrates.
The scene with Charmides is not the only time that Socrates has fancied himself a physician or medical practitioner of sorts. He has explicitly called himself a “midwife,” elsewhere, in that he himself does not give birth to wisdom, but can help others bring out that wisdom which grows inside them and determine its soundness. (Plat. Theaet. 148e, 160e)
It is odd, however, that Socrates fashions himself capable of diagnosing the ills of others’ wisdom, given that he himself always maintains that he knows nothing at all, as we see in the beginning of the Apology. Yet, this is not entirely a problem. While Socrates himself claims to not know anything, his method of diagnosing what is wrong with others’ knowledge is not the sort that involves positive assertions of inconsistencies, but rather one that discovers inconsistencies by way of negation in the propositions others hold.
The idea proposed here is that Socrates may also hold the belief that to know is to recollect what one already knows but has forgotten. Socrates maintains in the Theaetetus that the minds of men are never barren, but rather just waiting to be examined. (Plat. Theaet. 148e)
This idea that in order to know the Good one must remember or put together the scattered pieces of “eternal truths latent in our souls,” as justification for the way by which Socrates examines himself through his examination of others allows for a sort of consistent thread of wisdom that runs through the sometimes seemingly disparate findings in the dialogues. (Rowe 2011: 203) Lest we not be like Charmides at the end of the eponymous dialogue who threatens violence against Socrates for pronouncing himself a physician when he himself does not know what it is he must cure, we can trust that Socrates at least builds his beliefs around the idea that we can “recollect” this latent knowledge that is within us.
Evidence for this presents itself in the drama that is the final days of Socrates. The final three dialogues in the drama of Socrates' life emphasize in subtle ways the importance of memory, or being mindful. Michel Foucault notes in his final lectures on Socrates (2011) that the Apology begins with a claim that the political trial against him and the speeches of his accusers led him to nearly “forget himself” (Plat. Apol. 17a), and that the final injunction Socrates imparts in the Phaedo are to “pay the debt, do not neglect” or as other translations would have it, “do not forget.” (Plat. Phaedo. 118).
Foucault notes that forgetfulness, here, is tied up with the negation of mindfulness, or to take care:
“You find, this same word “care,” the noun that designates forgetting or not forgetting, negligence and non-negligence, all this series of expressions, throughout the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo.” (2011: 91)
This observation works with Christopher Rowe’s support of a theory of “recollection” that happily translates into the lessons we take from Charmides. In Charmides we learn that to be of sound mind means to do what is good for oneself, to be mindful of what one knows; to take care of oneself. To take care of oneself then in Charmides was to know what one knows, the sort of self-knowledge for which this author and Rowe advocate; and if knowing oneself involves the self examination that Socrates demonstrates is only possible with the help of one with the likeness of a physician or midwife who can diagnose via the Socratic elenchus, and which constitutes the sort of recollection that aims at piecing together the latent knowledge of the forms in the soul, then to take care of oneself is to not forget oneself.
Yet, as Rowe points out, another problem arises of a practical sort. Rowe indicates that the problem which arises repeatedly is that when one finds with Socrates that they and he himself do not know what they claim to know, and also that they do not know what they don’t know, frustration ensues – as we see in the Apology – leads to the misological hatred of the Socratic mission. Quoting Myles Burnyeat, Rowe points out that the obvious and only answer to this practical problem is that one is aware of their need for this Socratic self-knowledge (Rowe 2011: 211).
The problem follows, then, that if one is to avoid the trap of misology, then one must be aware of their need for self-knowledge. Yet if one is aware of their need for self-knowledge, then they must be aware of the knowledge of the Good and must want it. The persistent circularity of this problem is that Socrates finds that not only is he not aware of what the Good is, but neither is anyone else, and thus they do not know what they want. [1] So what then would be a solution to this problem? A viable solution would be to present one with an instance of the form of the Good that one would want, and use this as a means of desiring the good itself.
§ 3. Eros: A vehicle to the soul
The Symposium gives us quite possibly the most extensive discourse on the nature of eros in the Socratic dialogues. The dialogue is set in what is basically a drinking game, in which Socrates and his many companions have tasked themselves with giving speeches in praise of the daimon Eros. A host of speeches are given, and as plausible or implausible as they are in telling the origins, nature, and good deeds of great love (henceforth,eros and love will be used interchangeably unless explicitly noted), they each reveal some truth about it that ultimately paint a larger picture of what it means to love and the significance that eros plays in Socratic ethics.
The first of the speeches in Symposium, given by Phaedrus highlights the idea that a notable observation between lovers [2] (Plat. Symp. 179b) is the willingness of one to die for the other. Pausanias follows with a speech that eros allows for a transactional sort of relationship between a man and an adolescent boy [3], in which the boy receives an ethical education in exchange for the sexual gratification of the man.
Both of these speeches highlight important qualities of eros that are essential for understanding how this love can be virtuous. Firstly, concern or care for the other, as presented by Phaedrus, and secondly, the import of willingness to give something up (namely sexual favor) for the enhancement of virtue. [4] Both of these themes go hand in hand, as to care for something means to be willing to sacrifice on its behalf, or to do something for the object of care, or to not neglect or not forget the other. Already we start to see the relationship between care and memory in the erotic space. But the erotic space is surely different than the pure pursuit of knowledge, but to what extent, in what ways, and at what limits?
Continuing in Symposium, Aristohpanes gives a speech with what Christoher Gill (Plato 1999) notes was to be a comic speech about the beginnings of love. The speech details how humans were first large orbs with double the human features. Two faces, double the arms, the legs, etc. These beings were a threat to the gods, and so Zeus cut them in half, forever separating them from their other halves, with the warning that to be a threat to the gods again means to be further divided. Aristophanes continues that these halves wander about seeking to return to their other half, and that they attempt to put themselves together by having sexual intercourse. This humorous story of erotic attraction is used to demonstrate that love consists in desire for an object, and as Gill points out (xxiv) by way of Nussbaum, this shows that eros is a longing for a specific other, or an individual. While this is true, I also point out that this specific other that we half creatures long for are a part of ourselves that we have lost, much like the latent memories of the forms that rest in the soul that is argued for in the previous section §2.
Here we see again that theme that to love another is to remember something by re-membering parts, i.e. putting separate or even disparate pieces together. Yet, to put these pieces together proves to be an impossible task, and this is why the erotic desire for sexual or romantic stimulation persists in humans.
Socrates’ speech and his recollection of the erotic wisdom of Diotima illuminates a central claim that the present author makes: that eros, though directed at individuals, fundamentally points towards a more basic desire for goodness in the form of beauty.
Piecing all of this together, an image of eros as a longing for something lost becomes apparent, and it is easy to see how an argument can be made that eros allows for one to direct themselves towards the Good by longing after a person who possesses qualities associated with it; beauty, virtue, honor, etc. To care for the other and to desire the other proves to be a way to be directed towards knowledge of the Good, but again, as we see in Aristophanes, the attainment of that Good always falls short, and we always again find ourselves searching for more. Aristophanes tells us of how this love is overwhelming and how it fills the lovers with “affection [and] concern.” (192b) Lovers like these, Aristophanes goes on to say, long for something more than the simple affection they receive when with their partners, but something “in his mind that he can’t articulate; instead, like an oracle, he half-grasps what he wants and obscurely hints at it.” (192 c-d). We are told that this evanescent desire that is lost in some primordial separation is a wish for wholeness; that man longs for wholeness, and that love is not only a desire, but also the pursuit of it. (193a)
A string of themes runs throughout these dialogues indicating that wholeness and the good are ultimately what one longs for and if as Socrates suggests that eros is aimed properly at this attainment, then the desire for wholeness and goodness (205e) is tantamount to the pursuit of the good life.
But as we left off in the last section, an aporetic hole in the argument still remains, leaving the question of how one knows what one is looking for? We see as we left the previous section that simple self-examination does not produce the desired knowledge, but rather points only to the fact that one does not know what one must know. Here eros has the distinct advantage of having a direct object to go after, and that is another person. The desire for another individual gives the body and soul something to long for, and it is through the care and concern for another that one looks at and searches for the wholeness of the true forms of the Good that he cannot access in himself. In this way, as it were, one is able to move from a love of the beauty of form to the form of beauty which is the Good itself.
To love, however, always features a longing, and this perpetual longing for the Good requires prudence in behavior and this will be taken up in the following section. However, we see here, given this evidence (and evidence elsewhere) that there are near analogous similarities between the self-examination via the Socratic elenchus and the longing of eros; namely that the virtue is in the pursuit of the Good just as well as it is in the Good itself. [5]
§4. Self-Control & The Virtue of Failure
No discussion of eros in the Platonic dialogues goes without discussion of the virtue of temperance, the same virtue of sound-mindedness that we see in Charmides. The sound mind is the temperate mind, and if anything, one might venture to say that aside from knowledge of the good itself, temperance, sound-mindedness, or sophrosyne comes as a close next. We return to the question of temperance or restraint as it pertains to the value of eros.
It is now clear why to begin with such a flirtatious moment between Socrates and the young Charmides, while pondering whether he should strip in front of the gathered men, Socrates first asks if the boy knows himself to be temperate; to have self-control.
The mishaps of unrestrained erotic desire are constantly warned against. Even in Symposium, Pausanias cautions that a boy should not engage in the pederastic exchange with a man who is not of moderate desire. (184c-d) Socrates gives a damning account of how eros can lead to tyranny when it is unbridled and uncontrolled.
“But by associating with cleverer men filled with with lawless desires we just described, the democrat is moved to their form of life and every kind of insolence… He is led into every kind of lawlessness, which is called complete freedom by those who seduce him… Do you think an Eros is aught else, among such desires as these?” (Plat. Rep. 572c-573a)
Clearly, the idea that eros be fostered in relation to desires not guided by the desire of the Good is terrifying to Socrates; that baseless desires lead to the Tyrant who only seeks to fill a void he cannot name; namely himself.
What emerges here is an admonition that restraint must be taught even if eros is considered useful in the ethical education of an individual. Those desires must be girdled by an object that is concerned with wisdom, care, and concern for the good.
Clear evidence of this erotic madness would be to refer to the speech Alcibiades gives in Symposium. Drunkenly, Alcibiades, a steady lover of Socrates stumbles in to orate on how love is painful, on account of Socrates only pointing to him what is wrong in him. If to love is to learn the Good, then Alcibiades clearly has missed the point, or otherwise that there is some failure in his education. He accuses Socrates of bullying him, and poignantly damns the whole of philosophy with the quote that makes the epigraph to this paper.
Though some would argue that Alcibiades speech highlights his own failures and lack of understanding of how eros operates as an epistemic tool (Candiotto 2017) [6], one could argue in accordance with Chen-Ya Sun (2019) that this aporia of failure exists to demonstrate the inexorable lack of fulfillment that exists in the human pursuit of the good-life; namely that what is good is never good enough. Though Sun argues that Symposium offers no clear solution but only a relevant and persistent problem, I argue that perhaps to have a readily available solution to such an exigent pursuit would be to do injustice to the virtuosity of the pursuit to begin with.
Alcibiades, despite his heartache, returns again to Socrates to orate once more in his drunkenness. There is salvation, perhaps, in the failings of unbridled erotic love: namely, that even should ones desires lead them astray and to lose sight of the pursuit of the Good, to fall trap to the misology that we have been warned against, it is still the case that the desire for something, the desire for wholeness, for the Good buried within us causes us to return again and again to search for it.
We are reminded by Socrates – to revisit the last words of the Phaedo – that it is not until the very end of his life that he will offer a sacrifice to Asclepius: “See to it; do not forget.”
Notes
What Socrates demonstrates again and again is that one cannot posit what is good for another because it is clear that no one, including himself, knows what they claim to know. This only suggests further that living the ethical life or living the good life is to always be in pursuit of it. Is this why it is not until the very end, as Foucault suggests, Socrates would have a sacrifice offered to the god on his and Crito’s behalf? If it is the case, as Foucault suggests, that the “cure” for which the sacrifice is being offered is to be cured from “false opinions,” (2011: 107) then Socrate’s commemorates his cure of this illness only as he is about to die, instructing his friends to “not forget,” or “not be negligible,” or, as has been the Socratic theme: “to take care.”
It is arguable that this can involve much further unpacking, as the examples and language Phaedrus uses indicates relations between “loved ones” and not necessarily “lovers.” This is not of the concern of this present paper.
This practice of pederasty was common at the time the dialogue was written and set, and as Christopher Gill notes in the introduction to his translation “Common love is purely physical; Heavenly Love is also physical but it is only aroused by those who are capable of rational and ethical development. Thus, Common Love is directed equally at women (taken to be non-rational) or boys, whereas Heavenly Love is directed only at males who have reached the age (adolescence) at which they become capable of developing rationality and virtue.” (1999: xxii) Pausanias argues in favor of the latter love, but as will be argued further in the present paper, as Gill also points out, Socrates emphasizes that the pederastic relationship that Pausanias describes is more about the sexual gratification of the man than the education of the boy.
I am also recalling here the importance of the admonition to offer a sacrifice at the end of Phaedo.
(ref. note 1; Plat. Meno. 86c; Plat. Rep. 434a-e)
“Plato created a new educative model understood as a metamorphosis of the traditional paiderastia for his own philosophical goals, but also for Socrates’ apology, arguing that the love which Socrates felt for Alcibiades was epistemic and very different from the one felt by Alcibiades. Plato had to ascribe to Alcibiades the faults of his pedagogical failure and, thus, his incapacity of understanding the epistemic valence of eros is one of the reasons of his downfall.” (Candiotto 2017:233)
Abbreviations
Plat. Apol. - Apology
Plat. Charm. - Charmides
Plat. Meno. - Meno
Plat. Phaedo. - Phaedo
Plat. Rep. - Republic
Plat. Symp. - Symposium
Plat. Theaet. - Theaetetus
References
Candiotto, Laura. “On the Epistemic Value of Eros. The Relationship Between Socrates and Alcibiades.” In Peitho. Examina Antiqua. 8 no. 1 (2017): 225-236.
Foucault, Michel. The Courage of Truth. New York: Palgrave, 2011. (2008)
Plato. Charmides. Translated by Thomas G. West et al. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1986.
_____. Republic. Translated by R.E. Allen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
_____. Symposium. Translation and Introduction by Christopher Gill. London: Penguin Classics, 1999.
Rowe, Christopher. “Self-Examination.” In The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011: 201-214.
Sun, Chen-Ya. “ The Virtues of Unfulfillment: Rethinking Eros and Education in Plato’s Symposium.” In Journal of Philosophy of Education. 53 no. 4 (2019).