On Love.

A Story by i.am.the.sun.

for philosophy of emotions class. got a B+

so i was going to edit the grammar mistakes and such in this but i figured it's just not worth it since it's already been marked. and they're not bad ones anyways. so this was an essay on love, it was marked at a B+ and i cranked it out in one night as per usual. man if i ever get my s**t together i might do something impressive... one day. maybe. until then, just read it if you're into that sort of thing and let me know what you think. yes, it would help if you were familiar with plato but that really shouldn't be too necessary unless you're concerned with checking my citing.

Love can make a lot of people do a lot of different things since everyone reacts to it differently. There are some people who will succumb to doing dishonourable and disgraceful things in the name of love and others who will find virtue because of it. However, love is a destination, we seek to attain love, we do not use love to find other things no more than someone uses a cave to find their flashlight. When I say virtue can be found because of love I do so because if one is to truly show someone they love them they must refuse to be dishonourable and disgraceful, and instead learn to be virtuous, and rise above servitude in showing their loved that they love themselves as well. I will show here that love can most definitely lead someone to do disgraceful and dishonourable things, and while virtue may be found along the way, it is virtue that leads us to love.

At the beginning of Plato’s Symposium Phaedrus makes the first speech and puts forth the idea that love will deter the person in love or who is loved from doing shameful or dishonourable things. Phaedrus makes this clear when he says “If a man in love is found doing something shameful, or accepting shameful treatment because he is a coward and makes no defence, then nothing would give him more pain than being seen by the boy he loves �" not even being seen by his father or his comrades.” (p10) Pausanias disagrees with Phaedrus, saying “a lover is encouraged in every possible way; this means what he does is not considered shameful” (p16). What Pausanias is saying here is that while we may not consider some of the deeds someone does whilst in love to be shameful or disgraceful, the deeds themselves are still as such, and so the loved or lover who has committed them have still done a shameful or disgraceful thing but are not said to be shameful or disgraceful. Pausanias agrees with the lover and the loved not being labelled as shameful if the shameful act was done with the proper intent. He believes that one may even subject himself to a state of servitude, doing whatever his lover asks of him as long as he is convinced he will learn wisdom and better his soul, becoming virtuous thanks to his lover. He ends his speech with this idea, saying “in addition to recognizing that the lover’s total and willing subjugation to his beloved’s wishes is neither servile nor reprehensible, we allow that there is one- and only one- further reason for willingly subjecting oneself to another which is equally above reproach: that is subjection for the sake of virtue.” Pausanias does not disagree with Phaedrus’ idea that love will deter someone from doing dishonourable things only because when in love someone simply cannot commit dishonourable things as long as the intent is good or that they believe the deeds will lead them to virtue. He believes everything depends on the circumstances surrounding them.

It makes sense in saying that if one is truly in love with someone else that one would want to love them to the best of one’s ability. Agathon has something to say about this during his speech about love: “you can’t give to another that which you don’t have yourself, and you can’t teach what you don’t know.” (p35) I believe what he’s trying to say here is that you must love yourself before you can love someone else to the best of your ability. To love yourself is to better your soul, and to better your soul you must become more virtuous. It is because of this I believe Agathon would agree with me that love does not show you the way to virtue. Love requires virtue to be found, but no more does it help you attain a virtuous state than wanting to be successful in life shows you good work ethic.

I believe it is safe to say that love desires goodness or beauty, and that there are many good and beautiful things in this world but the only thing they all have in common is simply that, that they are good or beautiful. For example: A beautiful sunset does not have much in common with a beautiful person other than that they are both beautiful. No physical thing can embody the essence of beauty or of that which is good entirely since the beauty or goodness would be bound to an imperfect or particular, that is to say something physical and therefore impossible to be beautiful or good in every aspect as some things are beautiful or good to some people but not to others. Beauty and Good are both ideas and so cannot be attained through physical means, they may only be met in the mind. One must seek to attain them through betterment of the soul, likening oneself to that of the idea of the good or the beautiful. To do so however, Aristophanes would argue that one must find their other half, the person they were separated from by the gods before they are able to be whole. (p27) One cannot seek to be like the good nor the beauty when one is functioning with only half of one’s whole. It might be easy to say that Aristophanes would disagree with my saying that love does not lead to virtue based on what I’ve just summed up, but I would say otherwise, what he says can be interpreted in two ways; one which has no bearing on the question, and another which agrees. Aristophanes clearly believes that on one’s quest to virtue one must find love or their other half, but on the question of which led you to what, it makes complete sense to agree that virtue leads to love and not vice versa. If someone were looking for love, they would not find virtue while looking for their other half according to Aristophanes, but if one were looking for virtue, one must find their other half in order to push forward. So while looking for love does not get you closer to virtue if you are not look for virtue, looking for virtue will get you love as well as closer to being virtuous, but the intent is important- you must be seeking virtue in order to find virtue. Seeking love in the way Aristophanes explains will not make you more virtuous.

A person seeking love will go through many necessary steps along the way, the first being love of the physical beauty of one person. The second step is seeking that physical beauty in a multitude of people. The third step is loving one persons character or mentality, the morals and virtues they have that make them who they are. The fourth step is the love for those same morals and virtues in other people, seeking better character and more “good” mentalities. The final step is attempting to become immortal. Having children with a partner one has found in the fourth step is an obvious solution to this, however there is a better approach to it. Seeking children of the mind, immortal ideas that convey the sense of the good or the beautiful, these are what someone must strive for with their love to become immortal. These things are immortal and fulfill the seeking of immortality for the sake of continued possession of love as it does not matter if the idea is forgotten as long as it is true, in that way the idea is eternal and unchanging- it is the best child. (p57, 58, 59)

When one desires love, one desires what one lacks. When you have love but desire to keep it, since you cannot desire that which you have, it follows that you desire for a future where you have a continued possession of love. It makes sense that a person will never stop wishing for that future possession of love, and so by default desires immortality, wishing they could live and possess love for all of eternity. By doing this one might say they would become a universal truth, existing through all time. This is, however, impossible as every person has been born and so has had a beginning rather than an omnipresent existence. It is as close as anyone could hope to come to being as the good though; being immortal and possessing love in the most true form while being completely virtuous. (Diotima) so while in this case love would lead to virtue, it is impossible to achieve.

So while someone in love may not wish to commit shameful or dishonourable acts as they would shamed or dishonoured when witnessed by someone, especially their loved, the idea put forth by Phaedrus is moot. This is because according to Pausanias we may not label someone who is in love who has done a shameful act for his lover to be shameful or dishonourable. The fact that the act they committed was shameful and/or dishonourable still remains true. This proves that while lovers get away with it, they are still able to commit such acts, and while in love will almost undoubtedly do so, especially if they do not get reprimanded for such and do not feel they will be shamed even if witnessed by their loved since the deed done in the name of love is forgiven. And while love may help someone become virtuous, it is only because the wanting to be virtuous is needed to acquire love. Virtue will lead to love along the way to virtuousness, but love will only lead to love, leading you to the required virtuousness to reach that love along the way, but it is not true virtue, it is but a taste. This is what I believe the arguments in Plato’s Symposium to prove on the subject of whether love leads to virtue and whether or not love can make someone shameful and dishonourable.

Plato Symposium, edited by A. Nehamas, P. Woodruff. Copywrite 1989, Hackett publishing company, inc.