The Republic repeatedly treats eros as if it were unruly or bad and ought to be remade to be more congenial to good government. The illegality of choosing a mate for oneself, compulsory coed exercising in the nude, the imposition of eugenically determined match making, and the enforced discipline of having many sexual partners but no single partner to call “one's own” are decidedly strange institutions. Such attempts to coerce and mold eros to fit abstract justice imply a negative judgment about the political effects of ordinary erotic desire that is not in harmony with the liberated views about love and sex prevalent in most liberal democracies today. Nor are the coercive and legalistic stances toward sexual unions taken in the Republic and other political dialogues (e.g., Pol. 310bff.) in harmony with certain other dialogues of Plato, namely, the “erotic” dialogues, which literally sing the praises of eros: in the Symposium and Phaedrus, eros is said to lead upward to pure beauty and goodness. In fact, the coercive parts of the Republic are not even in harmony with other parts of the Republic itself, for - just after the erotic regimen has been legally imposed - there follows a disquisition on eros that reads like a Symposium in miniature, with a profligate, promiscuous eros providing humanity's primary mode of access to the Forms.