Book contents
- Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Love in Plato
- Chapter 1 Plato on Love
- Chapter 2 The Selfishness of Platonic Love?
- Chapter 3 Love and Rhetoric as Types of Psychagōgia
- Chapter 4 Plato on the Love of Wisdom
- Part II Development of Platonic Love in Antiquity
- Part III Love and Metaphysics during the Middle Ages
- Part IV Platonic Love during the Renaissance
- Bibliography
- Subject Index
- Index Locorum
Chapter 1 - Plato on Love
from Part I - Love in Plato
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
- Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Love in Plato
- Chapter 1 Plato on Love
- Chapter 2 The Selfishness of Platonic Love?
- Chapter 3 Love and Rhetoric as Types of Psychagōgia
- Chapter 4 Plato on the Love of Wisdom
- Part II Development of Platonic Love in Antiquity
- Part III Love and Metaphysics during the Middle Ages
- Part IV Platonic Love during the Renaissance
- Bibliography
- Subject Index
- Index Locorum
Summary
This chapter explores the different treatments the topic of love received in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. The Symposium expressly addresses the question of the character and benefits of eros – and the question of its nature. It is a philosophical enquiry into this phenomenon, conducted by a set of mature men (and the memory of one exceptional woman) who have personal experience in this topic and have thought about it. In the Phaedrus, by contrast, the topic is addressed from the point of view of a would-be lover trying, through a speech addressed to the young and inexperienced man, to persuade him to submit to his overtures and desires. For Plato, eros is crucial to the practice of philosophy, a force which can take us in two separate directions, towards the good and towards the bad.
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- Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance , pp. 15 - 31Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022