1. Love and lust of God
As long as you have a little understanding of ancient Greek culture, you will find that myths have a decisive influence on people's lives at that time. The ancient Greeks' concept of life is closely related to their understanding of God. Similarly, their view of love is inseparable from their understanding of love. In mythology, there are two goddesses in charge of love and beauty: the older one is from heaven and is called Aphrodite in the sky; The young one was born by Zeus and Dione, and is called the Aphrodite on the earth. Accordingly, love is divided into two kinds: love in heaven and love on earth. Because Aphrodite in the sky was born without any lust and debauchery, the corresponding love in the sky is also a noble and pure love, which deserves people's real yearning and pursuit. Aphrodite on the ground symbolizes the inseparable connection between love and lust on the ground, so it is regarded as vulgar and debauchery.
goodness and beauty occupy a very important position in both ancient Greek philosophy and ancient Greek concept of life. The love of the ancient Greeks also yearned for the ideal world of beauty and kindness. "Will Drink" recorded the debate between the celebrities about the love of God and love at that time, which generally reflected the people's view of love at that time. In this dialogue, Plato expressed his favorite love through Socrates. Socrates got the knowledge about love from the witch Diotima, which really reflected the philosopher's deep thinking about love.
first of all, the object of love is goodness. Love is simply a desire to attribute good and beautiful things to oneself. In Fidel, Socrates gave a clear definition of love: "When the desire to enjoy beauty controls the judgment to promote correct behavior, when this desire gains new power to pursue physical beauty from other related desires, this power provides a name for this desire-this is the strongest desire, called love". This definition reveals the close relationship between love and beauty and goodness, that is, in Plato's view, the object of love is goodness, not beauty, and beauty is only the driving force for love. It is Agathon who insists on the view that the object of love is beauty. By praising the beauty of God, he deduces that the object of love is beauty itself. In the article "Drinking", the dialogue between Socrates and Diotima also clearly expressed the following opinions: "We only love the good, and we don't love anything else", "Love will never expect the other half or all of anything except seeking the good". And "the act of love is to nurture beauty, both in the body and in the soul". Under the influence of love, people look forward to fertility, just like looking forward to goodness, and the real purpose is to look forward to immortality.
Secondly, the highest love is a philosophy. Love is not a life-long combination with a flesh-and-blood spouse, or even a "similar heart", but an "incredible fusion" of soul and "eternal wisdom" far above human lust. In the eyes of modern people, love and philosophy are definitely irrelevant, but ancient Greek philosophers have linked philosophy with love. No wonder Socrates, who believes in self-knowledge and ignorance, said that love is the only thing he knows. Philosophers' thinking about love is not only a profound understanding, but also a kind of life practice. Plato compared love to a mysterious religion. If a person wants to reach the highest level of love, he must go through four steps: the "deepest esoteric path" of love must begin with sensitivity to physical beauty. If a person gets the right guidance, he will turn his love for a specific beautiful body into a noble conversation. Then he will realize how the beauty of concrete form is related to other beauty, so he will fall in love with all beautiful forms and regard concrete beauty as insignificant. Furthermore, he regarded the beauty of mind as more precious than other physical beauty and began to guide the beauty of law and system. Finally, relying on his understanding of the vast field of beauty, he used his eyes to look at the beautiful sea of Wang Yang, and found that meditation can produce lofty thoughts and acquire the beauty of knowledge. At this time, his soul took care of beauty itself. He "the beautiful soul that has been working hard for a long time will suddenly emerge with beautiful scenery." It can be seen that on the road to the holy land of love, only when people are guided correctly, that is, from being sensitive to concrete physical beauty to paying attention to formal beauty, institutional beauty and intellectual beauty, can they finally have happiness and achieve immortality.
Thirdly, love is indispensable to the pursuit of oneself. In Greek mythology, Eros, the goddess of love, was born on Aphrodite's birthday by combining the god of resources with the god of poverty. Therefore, Eros is divided into the mother's poverty, ugliness, untidiness and homelessness, and the father's temperament, so he strongly yearns for all good and beautiful things-courage, perseverance, wit and the skills to pursue these desired things. But in a strict sense, Cupid is not a god. In the dialogue between Socrates and Diotima, they agreed that Cupid is an elf between man and god. Love is not a real god, so it does not have the perfection and goodness of God. What cupid seeks is exactly what he lacks. Therefore, the nature of love also contains a desire for what one lacks.
apart from the explanation of love itself, Plato did not shy away from exploring the relationship between love and lust. In Fidel, he used a carriage as an example to vividly express the role of lust and reason in the process of love. He compared lust to a bad horse, while reason is a good horse. When people are crazy about love, two horses will interact with each other, and the bad horse is defiant, but Plato hopes that the good horse in the soul will prevail, that is, he advocates reason and moderation. In the madness of love, people should still be temperate and live a life dominated by the noble part of the soul. If love liberates the power of goodness in the soul, then people can live a disciplined and philosophical life and enjoy the glory and greatness brought by love. However, if the love of the soul is not completely forgotten, it is also recognized to do "things that ordinary people think are happy to satisfy their desires", because they can be regarded as friends whether their love is strong or exhausted. "Because they have love, when it's time to grow wings, they will still grow wings" 8
Although the ancient Greeks made a strict distinction between love and lust. However, the ancient Greeks who had a healthy and sound concept of life did not shy away from lust, but organically combined love and lust. As long as there is love between people, lust is not a shameful and low-level thing. In contrast, the oriental view of love is very deformed in the view of lust. Plato thinks that it is best for people to control the bad horses in their souls, that is, to treat love in moderation, so as to live a truly happy life.
Second, Plato's love
As a philosopher, Plato's thinking about love and his other works, such as The Republic, have built a world of goodness and beauty. The true meaning of "platonic love" does not lie in transcending time and space, nor is it entirely because it only exists between souls, but is an advocacy of moderation. Although Plato was not an ascetic, temperance seemed to him to be the key to true love. Temperance is another horse in the soul, it is very cautious, so that love will not fall into the vulgarity of lust. Love makes people in a frenzy, and the interaction between two horses prevails, which influences people's emotions. Plato advocated temperance, so that real happiness could be generated between lovers.
In addition, contrary to modern people's thinking, Platonic love does not refer to the general love between men and women, but refers to the same-sex love between men and women. It is worth mentioning that Xenophon also wrote "Drinking Articles". Although his writing purpose is quite different from Plato's, in his works, Plato's love also refers to gay men. Platonic love is the pursuit of goodness, and only moderation can guide love to the good world. As we all know, in the eyes of ancient Greeks, only men enjoyed virtues such as temperance and courage. Women are only related to fertility and family matters, and do not have these virtues. Even to a great extent, women symbolize indulgence. Therefore, Plato's desired and restrained love for the best must exist only among men. Socrates himself is a homosexual. At the end of "Drinking", Socrates' lover's admiration for him can be said to be a true portrayal of Platonic love. Socrates' lover is a beautiful teenager. The reason why he loves Socrates, who is ugly and not rigidly dressed, is that he is moved by his personality charm and impressed by the goodness of Socrates' soul and his wisdom. The story of Socrates risking his life to save his lover recorded in the dialogue shows the power of same-sex love. The ancient Greeks generally believed that a lover would be brave in front of the person he loved, so many soldiers were lovers when fighting in the army. A soldier fights not only to win, but also to show courage and wisdom in front of his lover. Therefore, they will become brave and invincible. In ancient Greek society, the so-called love in the sky basically refers to the love between men and women, that is, gay men. Only the love on the earth refers to the love between men and women, and the love between men and boys, because most of these loves are out of lust.
Plato's view of love in "Drinking" is very unique, far beyond the scale of ordinary people's thinking. But the love he described, like the utopia he built, is beautiful, but it has an unattainable ideal color. He compared love to religion, which shows his pious and persistent pursuit of love. Therefore, to understand Platonic love is not to experience the spiritual fit (spiritual love) caused by the separation of time and space in a simple sense, but to practice the kindness and happiness brought to people by abstinence under the madness of love. Plato conceived a ladder for people to reach the country of love. He hoped that people would be as pious as Christians and constantly release the power of goodness in their souls to finally get permanent happiness. Modern people regard the harmony of souls as the most critical factor when understanding Plato's love, which shows that people see that Plato's love is the supreme love between souls, but forget the important significance of temperance for this kind of love. In addition, the modern concept of love makes it impossible for people to understand the inevitable connection between love and knowledge. Plato's view of love is not only a praise of same-sex love, but also contains the ideal of philosophers, that is, the highest realm of love is philosophy. The life of philosophers who pursue wisdom and knowledge is the most desirable, because through meditation, their souls can take care of beauty itself. Therefore, only by understanding the significance of goodness and beauty to the ancient Greeks, and only by knowing Socrates' concept that knowledge is good, can we truly understand Platonic love.
Third, the lack of women's status in the love world
Although love is so worthy of people's yearning and longing, in the eyes of women in ancient Greece, love has nothing to do with them. Rather than examining the position of ancient Greek women in the love world, we should examine the reasons why women were expelled from the love world. In ancient Greece, the status of men and women was very different. The feelings that modern people think spontaneously arise between men and women are not generally accepted in the ancient Greek concept. The ancient Greek polis is still an ideal model for people to yearn for democracy and freedom after thousands of years, but the status of women living there is very humble. Even in the world of love, they are the objects of expulsion. In the patriarchal society at that time, women had no economic autonomy in the economic field and no political right to vote in the political field. As far as legal status is concerned, women, like minors, have no legal independence rights all their lives. Women have to live under the supervision of guardians all their lives. According to historical data, women in ancient Greece were mostly isolated at home, doing housework and having little chance to participate in public activities. Women's seclusion is a universal moral concept, and silence and obedience are women's virtues. The meaning of marriage to ancient Greek women was only to reproduce and take charge of the family.
Because the ancient Greeks held such an idea about women, the love world that advocates beauty and goodness naturally has nothing to do with women. Some philosophers even interpret the phenomenon that women are expelled from the world of love as a matter of course. Xenophon's "On Economy" discusses that women are naturally suitable for indoor work from the perspective of family gender division of labor, so it is their duty to raise children and do housework. A wife pleases her husband not by dressing up and applying makeup, but by working hard at housework. In Xenophon's view, marriage is just a need, and the combination of men and women is only for utilitarian purposes, without the slightest affection. Since the marriage between men and women is not based on mutual love, men can only get love in the interaction with the same sex. At that time, women didn't even have the right to go out freely, so it was even impossible to find their own lover. Ancient Greek society was a monogamous society dominated by men, and the disparity in status between men and women was one of the reasons for the lack of love between men and women.
The expulsion of women in the love world was not only the reality at that time, but also there was still no place for women in Plato's ideal love world. As mentioned above, the love advocated by Plato is still the same-sex love between men. For Plato, women's lack of position in his ideal love world is probably related to women's lack of education. In the Republic, his special discussion on women's education may give us some enlightenment. Plato yearns for the highest level of love, while uneducated women have no knowledge at all, so they don't know good, so it is natural to be excluded from the world of love.
Aristotle's views on women are also very representative. Modern people are generally concerned about women in Spartan society, because they exercise, live and manipulate many public things like men. However, in Aristotle's eyes, Spartan women were "indulgent", and he accused Spartan women of always indulging.