Popularly, when someone wants to talk about an unattainable or impossible love, he refers to it as a platonic love, even without knowing very well what it actually means, in a mistaken way and very different from the Greek philosopher Plato - where he comes from. the adjective “platonic” — postulated about love. Understand this matter!
Who was Plato?
Plato was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, born in Athens, approximately in 428 BC and died at the age of 80, probably in the year 348 BC, having as main interests Philosophy, Dialectics, Arts, Literature, Education, Justice, Virtue, Politics, Epistemology and Militarism. He was the founder of the Academy of Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He received ideological influences from Socrates, Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Parmenides, Pythagoras and Heraclitus, among others. He influenced most philosophers like Plutarch, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and many others.
Plato carried out many studies and developed many texts and “dialogues”, among them “The Symposium” in which he developed his conception of love, the basis of the term “Platonic love”.
Love, according to Plato
Love, for Plato, is a source of motivation, it is essentially pure, it is not based on interest, but on virtue, and it is not based on passions, as these are material, fleeting and false. It is ideal and perfect.
It is important to emphasize that Plato followed the principles of dualism, a philosophical current in which reality is formed by two “substances” that never mix: spirit and matter.
According to Plato, love arises from the desire to discover and admire beauty, which begins with physical beauty, progressing to spiritual beauty and advancing to pure admiration, already detached from material beauty, at a higher stage.
Based on Plato's postulate, we can see that Platonic love is not unattainable or impossible, on the contrary, because it is deep, broad and complete. It starts from the physical beauty that is material and must transcend, being difficult to reach, but not intangible. It is not specifically people-oriented. See this excerpt from his speech, taken from “The Banquet”:
“You should consider the beauty of souls more valuable than the beauty of the body, so that if someone is virtuous in soul, even if he has an undesirable appearance, it will already be enough to love, care, cultivate and seek ideas such that will make people better. young people, so that he is forced, once again, to contemplate the beauty that resides in the norms of conduct and to recognize that all the beautiful is related to each other, and in this way to consider the beauty of the body as something insignificant.”
Understanding beauty, in Plato's conception
When we manage to identify beauty, love arises in us, which will move us to know and contemplate. It is a process, with gradual and evolutionary phases, in which beauty is always present:
Physical beauty — is the first phase and starts with love directed towards a particular beautiful body, but evolves to a broader appreciation of general beauty. Based on Plato's passage, we can see that the concept of beauty is subjective, for which there is no predefined aesthetic standard.
Beauty of the soul — once you have passed the first stage and “fallen in love” with physical beauty, the next stage is to know the “inside”, that is, the moral, ethical, cultural, spiritual aspects, beliefs and values, the universe person, the soul.
Beauty of Wisdom—Knowing and appreciating the beauty of soul or spirit, love progresses to the stage of knowing and appreciating the beauty of ideas, knowledge, and far beyond the person itself. Love at this stage transcends matter.
Pure beauty — at this stage, love is free from any subject or object. It refers to the purpose of love itself, for its beauty of being, for the possibility of being felt. It is the stage of supreme, transcendental and intransitive love, which does not change, does not corrupt, because it is understood as for eternity, universal and essential.
How did the current concept of platonic love come about?
The concept of Platonic love, as it is understood today, first appeared with Marsílio Ficino (Italian humanist philosopher), in the XNUMXth century, characterized by being a love focused on the beauty of the person's character, on intelligence and not on physical appearance, relative to the plane of ideas, incorruptible and perfect, until then very related to the postulate by Plato.
Because it is a perfect love, it ends up being unattainable in our world, because there is not enough purity, we still haven't freed ourselves from loving according to our interests, we haven't reached love in virtue. We don't live in a perfect world; he is material, therefore this love is an illusion.
So, platonic love is idealized: a romantic feeling that one has for the other, without being able, for any reason, to reach him and, therefore, it is not physical, there is no desire and no sexual bond. It is exclusionary and, from this point of view, solitary.
In Plato's concept, love seeks and needs the beautiful, which is equal to the just, the good and the true.
Platonic love, according to Plato, is the search for the part of the soul that we lack and that the other has to offer, because it is the representation for us of beauty, justice, what is good and what is true. So, it is not in fact unattainable or impossible, but it represents a journey, a resource, which can include desire and sexual bond, the perpetuation of the species, but it is far beyond that, because it transcends matter. He is not exclusionary.
Why does platonic love happen in the current view?
Most people understand platonic love as the one that, being perfect, cannot exist in the real world, which is imperfect and only exists on the plane of ideas. It is a love at a distance, idealized and fanciful, in which the loved one is perfect and flawless, without physical contact, following the interpretation of Marsílio Ficino.
Some people are afraid of getting involved, of getting hurt and of realizing that the loved one was in fact idealized and that it does not correspond, in reality, with what was imagined and, therefore, they are afraid of being disappointed. So, they prefer to feed a platonic love to protect themselves, even if this attitude is not consciously.
Another possibility is already knowing that love is not reciprocated and, even so, it is fed in a platonic way, as if it were enough or if it was enough for those who feel it.
Consequences of platonic love
If love is related to beauty, transcends matter, goes from the physical to the soul and with it one being completes itself with the other, it can only be worthy of being lived, experienced.
Failing to experience the feeling of real, doable love, in its entirety, with everything it can bring and that is part of the search for beauty, is, at the very least, lonely and sad. We can consider that there are more gains than losses, especially if we are talking about healthy people who allow themselves to love.
Allowing yourself to know yourself, while knowing the other, is a journey, a work path to be made. It requires courage and overcoming barriers. This is why the phrase “Love is for the strong” has such an impact. However, not adopting the attitude of getting involved also has its consequences of distance, disbelief and sadness.
To love means to know and to make oneself known. It involves giving and receiving affection; it is an exercise in reciprocity, not necessarily egalitarian, because it has an individual, personal and specific content.
Living in the fantasy of a platonic love means breaking with reality and with the possibilities of learning and evolution that this feeling makes possible and which is the basis for living together in society. There is an impediment to seeing yourself.
How can we get over a platonic love?
Adopting an attitude of self-love is the first step towards overcoming platonic love and identifying the possibilities of finding the beauty of a reciprocal affective relationship. Other tips are:
– Talk to friends, close family members or someone you trust about your feelings. Talking about emotions and hearing the opinion of someone outside the situation can bring a different and more realistic look, much needed.
– Discover in yourself the positive characteristics that can also be observed by other people and open yourself up to make them known. Cherish yourself! Bring out the best in you. Strengthen your self-esteem.
– Allow yourself to meet new places and many people. Travel, walk, chat, take a course, get involved in activities other than routine ones. Let other people discover it!
– Look for beauty in people, places, ideas, but note that we are far from perfection and we are all susceptible to failure, not fulfilling expectations and not understanding reality as it presents itself. Nobody is perfect, there are perception distortions and everyone is in the process of learning.
You may also like
- Find out who are the greatest philosophers of all time
- Find the different definitions for what love is
- Know the relativity of the concept of beauty
– Fall in love with yourself, with life, with nature. Take a different look at relationships and coexistence. Feed positivity. Look for examples of happy relationships in the differences!
When we reflect a little on love, in Plato's conception and in what we currently know as Platonic love, we also analyze our ideas and how we see this feeling in our lives. Realize this opportunity for self-knowledge and seek to love a lot and everyone. Love is beautiful and very valid, as much as this definition is cliché.
