#Marriage Handbook #For platonic love, I think everyone is no stranger. It is a view of love of the philosopher Plato. It refers to the mutual longing and spiritual purity of love between hearts and minds. In other words, the element of physical communication is removed, and the emphasis is on the spirituality of love. This kind of spiritually pure love can transcend distance, race, age, and even gender.
Platonic love was born at a party, and Plato recorded the situation of that party and wrote a work called "Drinking". The meeting was attended by the tragicist Agasson, the comedian Aristophanes, the singer and priestess Pausania, the polemical philosopher Federo, and Socrates.
In this party, there is a link, that is, everyone should take turns to tell their own thinking experience of love and express their own concept of love. Federo began with a debate, presenting the argument of Carlos, the god of love.
At the beginning of the chaos of the world, Carlos, the god of love born from the chaos, was the son of Zeus and Aphrodite, the god of love and beauty, the oldest god since the founding of the world, and also the embodiment of the great desire between heaven and earth, the appearance of Carlos represents the unity of love and desire, the god of love is the oldest and most lovely god, the source of all things, the source of human happiness, in short, Federo's view is very simple, that is, love is supreme.
Next, it was Pausania who spoke, who did not blindly praise Eros as Federo did, but dialectically divided Eros into two, saying that Eros was originally two, one was a heavenly Carlos, in love with the soul of the beloved, one was the signed Carlos, in love with the body of the beloved, that is, one of the two Eros is noble, one is secular, one is old, one is young, one is eager to love the flesh Ivan the fetus, one is eager to love wisdom and love brave, one is eager for women and longs for young men, One prefers men.
His words are a bit like the manifesto of homosexuals, but his distinction between noble love and vulgar love has its own ethical significance, and there are right and wrong in all human activities, and love is no exception, and at the same time contains the dual components of beauty and ugliness, legitimate love, dominating the desire of the flesh with the mind, this love is beautiful, improper love suppresses the mind with the desire of the flesh, this love is ugly. It can be said that Bossania's speech contains a large number of elements of so-called platonic love.
The next speaker was the dramatist Aristophanes, whose speech can be described as a classic, telling a mythical story, that is, the famous ball man, the story of the yin and yang people.
He said: "Once upon a time there were three kinds of people in the world, men, women and yin and yang people, all of whom were born with a round ball, and each of them had two faces, two pairs of eyes, two pairs of ears, two noses and two mouths, and at the same time they had four hands and four feet, and when they walked, they could swing up and down and left and right, especially back and forth, and they could move eight hands and feet together, so they were almost like spiders. Such humans were too powerful, causing Panic in Zeus, who decided to punish them, dividing all three of them in two and weakening their power. ”
Whoever is cut off from men and women becomes homosexuals, while those who are cut off from yin and yang become heterosexuals. The untangled ball man, and his thoughts of each other, hope to reunite again, so when they meet again in the human world, it is love. Although this time the body cannot be fused again, the spiritual soul can be fused together. Therefore, the love between people is often unforgettable.
Sure enough, it was a dramatist writer, and the imagination was so rich. Although his remarks are somewhat nonsense, this statement about love is very novel and interesting.
Quoting the metaphor of this story, the other half of humanity spends its entire life searching for the other half. And in the vast sea of people, once the men and women who love each other meet each other and have their hearts sealed, they will return to the consummation of a ball man, and the power of their love will surpass the power of man, and the power of love will be comparable to that of the gods.
Perhaps Aristophanes wants to express that people are born imperfect, that the ears want to be perfect, that the eyes want to be perfect, that the heart desires perfection, that they hope to meet a spiritually synchronized soul that communicates with each other and loves each other.
Next up is the speech of the party's owner, Agasson, a talented poet. He said: "Carlos, the god of love, is delicate, so he walks neither on the earth nor in his head, but in the softest thing – that is, the heart." And he does not walk in the heart of a person with a hard heart, he only walks in the heart of a person whose heart is too soft, so a loving person always has a too soft heart. Nevertheless, Eros is not a man of pretense, but of wisdom, bravery, justice, and perfection, and with Eros, virtue ripples in the river of love, goodness grows in beautiful fields, and joy sings in the earthly world of suffering. ”
The concept of love expressed by Agasson is so gorgeous, but the philosophy is insufficient, compared with the previous people, the views it throws out are still stones, and the real jade always has to wait until the end. And the famous person is Plato's teacher Socrates.
Socrates synthesized the opinions of his predecessors and pointed out the limitations and inadequacies of the opinions of all those who preceded him, and Socrates first gave Agasson a failure in his beautiful remarks. He said: "Love is by no means perfect, love is to love, to desire something perfect, so love itself is not perfect, otherwise there is no need to love people say that love beautiful things, that means that love itself is not beautiful, people only lack what will pursue what, since love is the pursuit of beauty, then love itself is not beautiful." Socrates forced Agasson to admit that Carlos was not the beloved, and that he was neither beautiful nor bad.
Then with regard to Federo's view, Socrates did not directly point out his mistakes, but hinted at Federot through the mouth of a female philosopher, Diotemas, who, through his redefinition of love and love of God, showed that Federo's view was not valid—that the character and destiny of Eros depended on his complex genetic inheritance. Eros is a descendant of the rich man Polos rain beggar Penha. The mother is poor, the father is rich, and because of the mother's beggar status, Eros is vulgar and poor and humble and inferior.
But because of his father's rich status, Eros is also wise and brave, strong and talented, that is, Eros is a synthesis of two extreme characteristics, neither extraordinary nor divine, she is neither beautiful nor ugly. He is neither wise nor ignorant, he is neither good nor evil, and Socrates uses this to show that Carlos, the god of love sent by Federotzan, is not a god at all, but an elf, so that no one has praised him since ancient times.
As for Aristophanes' views, Socrates also gave a positive rebuttal. He said: "What love desires is neither half nor whole, because even if it is one's own siblings, people would rather cut off these parts of their bodies if they think they are bad." It can be said that except for good things, people do not love people at all, and they will never get their other half, because you and your other half cannot be eternal in heaven and earth. For Pausania's view, it is essentially a trade in exchange for virtue. Socrates replied that his view was neither beautiful nor bad, that it was inherently lacking, and that is why it would love, then the lover would not necessarily have the virtue and wisdom that the beloved would exchange through his body, and Thatbusania's speech merely expressed his desire to possess the one she loved.
After Socrates's rebuttal to all the previous speakers, he also elaborated on his understanding of love, he said: "To love a person is to get happiness, happiness is the purpose of longing, love is a way to try to possess happiness, and the possession of happiness is often temporary, people are very eager for eternity, life is limited, so human beings are eager to reproduce, and to win the status of ancestors in the minds of future generations to obtain eternity." ”
This is the real motivation that lies beneath love, and the celebration of love is nothing more than to find a reason for the ultimate purpose of longing for eternal happiness, for eternal happiness, human beings desire to reproduce, and fertility, specifically, has both physical and mental fertility. The fertility of the flesh produces the perishable objects of the functional world, and the more noble reputation is the reputation of the mind, which is the creation of the mind, the conception of wisdom and the derivation of virtue, which is a reputation of spirit and culture, which can compose poetry, compose music, and is more meaningful and noble to mankind than to the physiological reproduction and spiritual reproduction of man.
This is Socrates' view of love, and true love is a more magnificent realm, starting from the beautiful things, gradually rising along the beautiful things, rising from the beautiful body to the operation of beauty, to the various learnings of beauty, and finally understanding beauty itself. Only when a person touches the most real beauty can he produce true virtues, and only by making this the object of love can he be called a true act of love, and the ultimate mastery of beauty here is Zen.
At that time, Plato also realized his own concept of love and sex through Socrates' point of view, through the soul's search for the other half, the ultimate touch of beauty, and the other party has a spiritual fit, and then physical intercourse, such love is the combination of spirit and flesh, is the yearning for beauty, the path to the ultimate good, reproduction is a sacred thing, Shi Ke decaying human beings have an unattainable nature, the soul is obviously more holy than the flesh, simple, and beautiful spiritual love can achieve true immortality.
But Plato does not reject the pleasures of the flesh, but only the union of the flesh, based on the pleasures of the spirit. Platonic love can coexist with spiritual love and physical love, if according to today's understanding, only platonic love is reduced to spiritual love, love without physical relations, is just a rough distortion. In fact, platonic love can be said to be an iceberg, and spiritual love is only the part of the iceberg that surfaces, platonic love is also a process of gradual ascension, spiritual love cannot appear out of thin air, and true love is a process of rising from the pyramid of image to imageless.
There is also a platonic view of love, he said: "Gay men and philosophy, sports are the three major symbols of ancient Greek civilization, the symbols that distinguish the civilized world from the barbaric regions." Whether or not this view is correct for the time being, at least he proposes a general phenomenon that in ancient Greek times, the sexual orientation between men and men, between women and women, was the history of ancient Greek weathering written by the unforgived German scholar Lichde, which recorded the entire love life of the Greeks, according to which the Greeks were on a par with each other.
They are very enthusiastic about homosexuality, but there is no delay in the love between men and women, which is equivalent to grasping with both hands, both hands are hard, the ancient Greeks said that education usually has two meanings, on the one hand, it means that the two sides of men are a teacher-student relationship, both sides take knowledge, experience and knowledge as a link, not limited by age, on the other hand, it implies a homosexual relationship, adult men like unmarried underage teenagers show affection, willing to use their knowledge and knowledge, exchange with them, in order to win goodwill, Usually the other party is also happy to accept this kind of courtship, and this kind of homosexual relationship is often a spiritual love and attraction, rather than a physical sensory stimulation and satisfaction, in the ancient Greeks, the process of homosexuality is more of a spiritual intercourse than a physical intercourse. Plato firmly believed that true love is a persistent emotion, and that only time is the touchstone of love, and that only otherworldly love can stand the test of time.
This is Plato's theory of sex, his concept of love is more advocating spiritual love, but absolutely does not reject the pleasure of the body, and the other party can achieve the true fusion of spirit and flesh after the soul resonance, touch to beauty, touch to good, Platonic view of love beyond gender, age, race, time and space love.
But Plato's life was devoid of love, neither in love with girls nor with boys. Plato said, "Everyone else is here to find their other half, and I am born complete, I do not need lovers, I only love wisdom, love truth, love knowledge, and the beauty condensed on it is the same as the beauty of lovers." "Well, this is platonic love, very metaphysical, just ask who else in the world can live in this kind of love?" I don't think there is a second except Plato.