We often hear:
You're in platonic spiritual love, right?
Plato
But do you really understand "platonic love"?
There is a debate about love in Plato's Drinking
Will drink
One person said that Carlos, the god of love, represented love
Carlos, the god of love born out of chaos, is the son of Zeus and the god of love and beauty, the embodiment of desire. Carlos is the unity of love and desire, then love must have desire.
Another said that yin and yang people can represent love
Once upon a time there were three kinds of people in the world: men, women, and yin-yang people. All of them are round balls, born with two faces, two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears, two noses and two mouths, with four hands and four feet, and can swing up and down, left and right, back and forth when walking. But Zeus divided all three in two to weaken their power.
Four-legged beast
All men and women who are cut off become homosexuals, while those who are cut off become heterosexuals. They are longing for each other, eager to reunite again. When they meet, love happens, but they can only love each other, they can't merge together.
We are born imperfect, and we long for perfection, for the exchange of souls, for complementarity with our peers, and this is love.
The third man retorted:
Carlos was delicate. Not walking on the ground, nor walking on the mind, but walking on the softest heart, and only walking on the heart of the soft-hearted, so the loving person is always too soft-hearted.
But Eros is not squeamish, but righteous, brave, wise, and perfect.
Socrates
In the end, Plato borrowed socrates to explain his understanding of love:
Love is not perfect, the character and fate of Carlos, the god of love, depends on genetic inheritance. Eros is the descendant of the rich man and the beggar girl. Since the mother is a beggar, Eros is vulgar and poor, humble and inferior, but since the Father is a rich man, Eros is wise and brave, strong and talented.
So Eros is a synthesis of two extreme traits that are neither beautiful nor ugly. It is inherently lacking, so it will love.
Happiness is the ultimate goal of loving someone.
But happiness is often short-lived, people long for eternity, but life is limited. So people gain eternity through procreation, which is the real motivation hidden under love.
People sing the praises of love in order to seek a justification for the eternal possession of happiness.
eternity
For eternal happiness, human beings desire reproduction and procreation, both physical and mental. The fertility of the flesh produces objects of the functional world. The fertility of the mind is a kind of spiritual and cultural procreation, which can compose poetry and compose music. Spiritual reproduction is nobler and more meaningful to human beings than to physical reproduction.
In Plato's view, through the search of the soul for the other half, the ultimate touch of beauty, and the spiritual fit with the other party, and then the physical mating and conception, such love is the combination of spirit and flesh, the yearning for beauty, the road to the ultimate good. If, according to today's understanding, only platonic love is reduced to spiritual love, love without physical relationships, this is a crude distortion.
The platonic concept of love is to advocate more spiritual admiration, but it definitely does not reject the pleasure of the body, and after dancing with the soul, it can achieve the true fusion of spirit and flesh, and touch the beauty. Platonic love transcends everything. In fact, Plato did not fall in love all his life, neither in love with a girl nor a man, and certainly not married.