Eros as Procreation

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EROS AS PROCREATION IN BEAUTYAuthor(s): Philip W. CummingsSource: Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science, Vol. 10, No. 2 (November1976), pp. 23-28Published by: De Gruyter

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EROS S ROCREATIONNßEAUTYClearly, love and friendship, eros and philia , are two, or perhaps better one , of the

central aspects of Plato's thought. Equally clearly, about the only thing clear about eros

and philia in Plato is that love in Plato is not Platonic love - and even that statement

needs reservations. A thorough study of the topic of love in Plato would require looking at

the Lysis , the Symposium the Phaedrus , and large tracts of the Republic , the Laws and the

Timaeus. However, Diotima's speech in the Symposiumcomes as near an "official" account of

his own views on the nature of love as Plato ever permits himself. I shall therefore concen-

trate on Diotima's definition of love and the surrounding passages and on related passages

in the Republic.The course of Diotima's exposition of the nature of love is somewhat exasperating to

anyone trying to work out the logical sequence of ideas. However, three key characteriza-

tions of love are highlighted:(1) Love is, generically, all desire of good things and of happiness. (Symp.2Q5D)

(2) Love, i.e. a lover, desires the good to be his forever. ( Symp.06A)(3) Love is engendering and begetting in beauty whether bodily or spiritual. (Symp.

206B)2Of these, characterizations (1) and (2) are logically connected by a series of concess-

ions Diotima extracts fromSocrates. Together with the context they seem to be egoistic and

eudaemonistic: one desires the good for the sake of happiness, and one cannot even ask whysomeone wants to be happy (Symp. 05A) . The implication one naturally draws, and the one

that the other participants in the symposiumtook for granted, is that one desires good things(an equally possible translation for what was translated above as "the good") for the sake

of one's own happiness." However, the deliberate obscurity here in comparison with the pre-cise teasing out by Socrates of egoistic conclusions in the Lysis ought to suggest that

Plato wants the reader to draw a different conclusion from the natural one. And even (2)

is subtler than it seems.With (3), which I take to be Plato's definition of love, we reach a bold and paradoxical

departure from the surface meaning of (1) and (2) . Engendering and begetting mayproduce

pleasure for the lover, but there is no hint that the lover desires to engender and begetfor the sake of the pleasure that engendering and begetting provides him (at best, the lover

4seeks to rid himself of the pain of carrying his physical or spiritual offspring) .I first look at the three characterizations in order. There are three things to say

about characterization (1) . First, after Pausanias1 characterization of the love-sick homo-

sexual lover, the claim that any kind of desire for good things is love is like saying that

all meat is filet mignon. The force of an erotic passion, Pausanias claimed, was so compell-

ing that it excused the most outrageous lapses frompropriety and apparent self-interest.

Diotima here makes the important point that all, or at least other, desires get their force

from the same source of energy as erotic love - indeed that all desires have an erotic com-ponent nearly proportional to their force. Alcibiades' speech is an illustration of this,as of much in the Symposium. ocrates is no stranger to the effects of physical beauty, as

his excitement at the unexpected sight inside Charmides' clothes illustrates. Paradoxically,Socrates1 immunityto Alcibiades1 attempt at seduction is itself an erotic force overpower-

ing another, physical, erotic "orce.

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ApeironVol. X (1976) No. 2

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The second aspect of characterization (1 has already been hinted at. It would have

struck Socrates' listeners as more to be expected. Love is every desire for good things and

for happiness. Good things and happiness are not desired independently. Rather the acquisi-tion of good things is desired as a means to happiness,

" .. and we have no more need to

ask for what end a man wishes to be happy, when such is his wish: the answer seems to be

ultimate.11 ( Symp. 05A, Lamb translation).

The account leading up to characterization (1) is an account of egoistic desires,

(e.g. "Now do you suppose ... that everyone always wishes to have good things" (Symp. 205A,

Lamb) . But we must abstract from this aspect of the account. The illustrations establish

that a man who desires good things for himself desires them as a means to happiness for him-

self. But nothing in the course of the argument rules out the possibility that someone

might desire good things for someone else as a means to the happiness of someone else. Hence,

characterization (1) is not stated egoistically .

Egoism would be established by characterization (2) if "good things" was a better

translation than "the good." In this respect the argument seems to recapitulate the move-ment that Vlastos points out with respect to philia in the Lysis. But the way one possessesthe good, it will be shown, is so different from the way one possesses things that egoismis transcended.

How does one possess the good? What is it to possess the good? There are any number

of ways of possessing good things. But the notion of possessing the good is not unproblem-atical. Is it to know what "good" means? Is it to know what acts, things, persons, or

states of affairs are good? Is it to be good? to do good? to have good done to one?

Sometimes, perhaps usually, in the possession of good things I may possess a good indirect-

ly. But I cannot, in the same way, possess the good directly. And this indirect manner of

possession of the good would be, for Plato, at least second-rate.

According to characterization (2) the lover desires that he himself possess the good

forever. Now Plato, as we shall see, distinguishes three kinds of lovers, and the meaningof (2) is going to depend on the understandino . or misunderstanding, of the nature of his

love by each kind of lover. The heterosexual lover, for example, is going to understand

his desire as one to be united physically with his beloved forever. The admirer of Guernica

might desire, per impossibile, that he could contemplate Guernica for all eternity without

compromising his other desires.

But anything like this is, for Plato, a misapprehension of what one really desires.

To possess the good is to know the good, and to know the good is to be aware of the form of

the good. We have two accounts of the ascent to the forms - in the Republic the ascent to

the form of the good and in the Symposium the ascent to the form of beauty. What is the

relationship between the philosopher, the lover par excellence, and the form when he has

made the ascent? In many spots the analogy is with seeing.

"When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love . . . suddenly he will haverevealed to him ... a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature."5

"And then, I take it, in the course of the work they would glance frequently in either

direction, at justice, beauty, sobriety, and the like as they are in the nature of things,and alternately at that which they were trying to reproduce in mankind." (Rep. 501B,

Shorey) .

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Such talk, and there is muchof it, implies that Platonic eros, as it is most purelymanifested, in the philosopher, is the desire for eternal contemplation of the forms. In-

deea, Diotima herself says, "Here above all places, mydear Socrates, ... is the life thatis worth living for man, lived in the contemplation of the Beautiful itself." ißymp.11D

Groden trans.) And this maybe, indeed, the kind of immortality a philosopher hopes for.But contemplation of the forms, mystical or otherwise, for any extended period is no more

possible for an embodied humanbeing than extended and uninterrupted sexual pleasure.Hence, Diotima1 s definition (3) shocks us into a quite different conception of what is

involved in a humanbeing's possessing the good. The desire to possess the good foreverfunctions in a man as the desire to beget and give birth in the presence of beauty, whether

bodily or spiritual. Love is a desire to father something within oneself. (The mother, inPlato's biology, is just an incubator.) This is more than a bit strange. From the apparenteudaemonistic egoism of characterizations (1) and (2) we seem to have moved to somethingwhich might on the face of it be neither egoistic nor eudaemonistic: Physical children, at

least, have a fair chance of turning out in ways that cause their father great unhappiness.The transition is not handled very clearly, but the psychology is good. Love is not

contemplation of something loved, but a creative activity. (And hence, the life of the

great lover, the philosopher, is a life of creativity) .Love is still, apparently, egoistic. The lover desires to be immortal. But of the

three kinds of love, the highest class involves a sublimation of the desire for immortalityand the realization that the desire for immortality is a pale copy of a muchdeeper relation-

ship between the lover and the good.The three kinds of love are:

(a) the desire to become immortal by producing replicas of oneself inspired by the

beauty of a woman a procedure which fails to produce perfect replicas even if a replicawere not just indiscernible from but numerically identical with myself. Since the woman

contributes nothing genetically to the progeny, apparently the beauty of the woman s not areason for having children by her: they cannot inherit her beauty, but can at most be

affected environmentally by her womb.

(b) the desire to have physical homosexual relationships with a younger male. This

relationship is of course physically sterile: it cannot produce even replicas of me. Buthomosexual desires are a kind of deflected desire for immortality: the younger male is morelike me than any woman, and hence here the desire for immortality is a desire for union with

something like me that is likely to last longer than I will. And homosexual companionship,even whennot purely spiritual, is likely to produce spiritual progeny when it is partiallysublimated. Diotima mentions, with only partial relevancies, the work of Homer, Hesiod,Lycurgus and Solon in this connection.

(c) the desire to produce spiritual progeny in the companyof a beautiful soul. In the

Symposium,here Socrates is the great lover, the beautiful soul is in a younger male apt forphilosophy. In the Republic philosophical eros is a co-operative undertaking amongthe

philosophers who have attained to knowledge of the good. In this highest case the relationbetween lover and immortality is complex. On the lowest level it is the soul's desire to

replicate itself through spiritual progeny. Second, spiritual progeny outlast physical ones

and are more highly honored. Third, engaging in philosophical conversations is the way in

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which embodied human beings can best retain possession of the good. Rational dialectic and

the production of new philosophical truths by co-operative discussion is the nearest mortal

approach to the eternal unchanging relationships between the forms themselves. Finally, itis most godlike, and immortality was, for a Greek, the most conspicuous characteristic of a

god. The philosopher, like a daemon, and like love which is a daemon, is halfway between

gods and men. Thus Alcibiades, as has often been pointed out, depicts Socrates as a satyr,as a daemonic teacher. And thus, Delphi willing, the philosopher kings of the Republicwill be worshipped as daemonsafter their death.

From our original perspective, all forms of desire were presented as displaced forms

of sexual desire. From our present perspective, the first two forms of love appear as dis-

placed and misconceived forms of philosophical eros , with philosophical eros very much the

most intense and satisfactory of the three.

I now want speculatively to tie in a number of threads that may make sense or may not.

The state of mind of the philosopher who has attained to knowledge of the good or of beauty

is a desire to make goodness or beauty present wherever possible to a higher degree. It isnot a desire jusr. to "look at" goodness or beauty. It is rather a desire to take anythingthat is partially good or partially beautiful and to make it more good or more beautiful.Now a beautiful soul is by nature more beautiful than a beautiful body, and hence the result

of making a beautiful soul more beautiful is going to be more beauty than the result of

making a beautiful body more beautiful. And since rational thought is the most beautiful

aspect of a beautiful soul and indeed the most beautiful thing that a human being can

attain to, the philosopher will seek to possess goodness always in the most effective

manner, that is, by rational discussion with other beautiful souls.

The philosopher, then, after he has attained to knowledge of the good or of beautywishes, not just to contemplate goodness or beauty, but to philosophize. Does he wish to

philosophize with youths with philosophical aptitude à la Symposiumor with fellow philoso-

phers a la Republic ? (In either case it is a co-operative and not a solitary effort) . Ifone philosophizes with youths one may bring them a much greater distance: they are likelyto be much better thinkers after being subjected to philosophical midwifery than they were

before. If one philosophizes with fellow philosophers one starts at a much higher plateauand hence may reach higher peaks. Alcibiades1 pursuit of Socrates implies that the latter

is the most satisfactory.

Whythen, does the Symposiumoncentrate apparently on the relationship of an older anda younger man? First, the Symposium s, with the Phaedo, Plato's compliment to the peculiarattractiveness of the personality of Socrates. It would thus be out of place to departfrom the erotic relationship characteristic of Socrates. And second, there is the charac-

ter of Socrates' audience. Plato presents Socrates as describing a form of love that tran-

scends the notions of his interlocutors. But he cannot depart too far from their views on

pain of not being comprehended.I have suggested that in Diotima's speech we are beyond egoism. These are my reasons:

The Philosopher gets the most intense pleasure possible out of philosophizing, but he

does not philosophize for the pleasure. Plato stresses the awesomeness of the good and the

beautiful. * This awesomeness is self-certifying. The philosopher does not, really, desire

that he possesses the good forever, even in the sense that he may go on philosophizing

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forever. Socrates expects immortality but faces extinction with equanimity. Nor can he

desire that goodness exist forever: goodness, as a form, does exist forever and the philo-

sopher knows it. What the philosopher wants is that goodness and beauty be realized asmuchas possible for as long as possible in this world: that this world come as nearly as

possible to being like the world of forms.

The realization of this desire is going to require three things:(a) That philosophers be able at all times to philosophize with one another. Hence

every philosopher will want to philosophize with others.

(b) That there be constantly a new supply of philosophers in training. And hence,since the philosopher will realize that he is best equipped to train budding philosophers,he will wish to personally engage in philosophical training even though, all things consid-

ered, he would prefer to philosophize with his peers.(c) That there be a stable institutional environment that fosters philosophizing, i.e.

that Plato's republic exists and survives. Since the philosopher is best equipped to lead

a city-state towards the good of philosophy which is at the same time the good of the whole,he will want, although reluctantly by comparison with the desire to philosophize, to engagein administration. The pressure needed to make the philosopher devote part of his time to

governmentneed not be as intense as the Republicmakes it out. The philosopher knows that

realizing the best formof state requires his leadership.I close with two problems. The highest eros in Plato is not egoistic. But it is not

directed at an individual but rather at the potential for good in that individual. It is

directed normally at the good of that individual, but when what is good for goodness itself

conflicts with the good of the individual, the Platonic lover would sacrifice the beloved.

The policies of the Platonic philosopher have the result that all individuals, and hence

the beloved, are better off. And yet the policies are not undertaken for the sake of the

beloved, or indeed for any individuals. Plato's republic fosters philia among its citizens

not because philia is in itself a good thing, but because it is a means to another goodthing. It maybe a romantic prejudice on mypart, but I can't help believing that loving

persons is a good thing quite apart fromits consequents. Indeed, since most of us are in-

capable of loving more than a few people, and the beloved maydemand individual love, we

must deprive some people of all our love (and its benefits, if any).

Second, the stress on creation in beauty in the Symposium ay seem to jar with the

strictures on art in the Republic But even in the Republic creation in poetry and music is

not totally banned. The role of creativity is so hemmed n that the results would strike

us, with our jaded tastes, dreadfully monotonous. To Plato, however, this might be the

beauty of it: it would be more like the unchanging forms. The creation stressed in the

Symposiums an intellectual copying of the rational structure of the world of forms. The

creation attacked in the Republic is a copying of things in the world of appearance and

more particularly the worst aspects of Lt, at Least fromPlato's point of view. But onedoes wonder whether the kind of philosophical creativity that aims at duplicating as nearlyas possible the world of forms would nave tne excitement of Socratic dialectic.

Philip W. Cummings Trenton State College

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Notes:

1. Cf. Gregory Vlastos, "The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato", in Vlastos, Platonic Studies, Prince-

ton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1973, pp. 3-42, esp. Part I. The direction of the present paper owes

much to Vlastos1 paper, and its contents owes much to the comments of Vlastos and of my colleague, Nancy

Demand

2. Not: as two translators have it, "in a beautiful thing." The lover himself is the one who is pregnant

and desires to bring to birth, inspired by the beauty manifested in the beloved. Vlastos' oral rendering,

"in the presence of beauty," captures the sense nicely. Cf. R.A. Markus, "The Dialectic of Eros in

Plato's Symposium," in Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays II: Ethics, Politics, and

Philosophy of Art and Religiou. Garden City, NY: Doubleday- Anchor, 1971, p. 139.

3. On the Lysis, see Vlastos, op. cit., part II.

4. I admit that there is no clear evidence that Diotima's account is not egoistic. I can only say that the

thrust of the argument as I see it, and as I hope to present it, is away from egoism.

5. Ten phusin kalon. Ms. Groden is, I think, closer to the sense with "the Beautiful itself." Joyce and

Hamilton omit.

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