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Ironically, the very eponym of this love, Plato, as well as the forementioned Socrates and Ficino, all belong to the community of men who desire boys, and they all engaged in chaste but erotic pedagogic friendships with youths. The concept of platonic love thus arose within the context of the debate pitting mundane sexually expressed pederasty against the philosophic – or chaste – pederasty elaborated in Plato's writings (Symposium, Phaedro, Laws, and others).

Regarding Socrates, John Addington Symonds in his A Problem in Greek Ethics states that he "...avows a fervent admiration for beauty in the persons of young men. At the same time he declares himself upon the side of temperate and generous affection, and strives to utilize the erotic enthusiasm as a motive power in the direction of philosophy." According to Linda Rapp in glbtq, Ficino, by platonic love, meant "...a relationship that included both the physical and the spiritual. Thus, Ficino's view is that love is the desire for beauty, which is the image of the divine."

Because of the common modern definition, platonic love can be seen as paradoxical in light of these philosophers' life experiences and teachings. Plato and his peers did not teach that a man's relationship with a youth should lack an erotic dimension, but rather that the longing for the beauty of the boy is a foundation of the friendship and love between those two. However, having acknowledged that the man's erotic desire for the youth magnetizes and energizes the relationship, they countered that it is wiser for this eros to not be sexually expressed, but instead be redirected into the intellectual and emotional spheres.

To resolve this confusion, French scholars found it helpful to distinguish between amour platonique (the concept of non-sexual love) and amour platonicien (love according to Plato). When the term "Platonic love" is used today, it generally does not describe this aspect of Plato's views of love.

The understanding that Platonic love could be interpreted as masculine eros, albeit unconsummated, is intimately linked with the construction of a homosexual identity, and the cultural model of platonic friendship / pederasty was used by educated gay men since the early Renaissance.[1]

Quotes Edit

• "Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost."
  • Ambrose Bierce
• "Platonic love is love from the neck up."
  • Thyra Smater Winsolow
• "Platonic Love is like getting laid. Without getting laid."
  • Chris Brewer
• "Platonic love is like finding an oasis in a desert. But then that oasis won't give you any."
  • David Greenhalgh

ReferencesEdit

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Platonic love is a love beyond all measures of understanding and truth. It is the love for anothers sririt over the body, the love of the mind overall. This does not take away from but add to the sexual experience, being that most who experience have to need for sexual affection, yet when it comes tis affection becomes the light and love of the relationship. A relationship built off of the value of friendship and anothers soul.
• Gould, T. (1963) Platonic Love. New York: The Free Press.

External linkEdit

• Plato's Theory of Love

See also Edit

• Asexuality
• Historical pederastic couples
• Philosophy of pederasty
• Romantic love
• Romantic friendship
• Sexual abstinence
• Spiritual marriage

References & BibliographyEdit

Key textsEdit

BooksEdit

PapersEdit

Additional materialEdit

BooksEdit

PapersEdit

• Google Scholar

External linksEdit