Abstract

Plato on eros What is love for Plato, and why, after his analysis of eros in Symposium, did Plato take up the subject again, some ten years later, in Phaedrus? This article describes a transtition in Plato’s thinking about eros. In the Symposium, eros is a desire for immortality and a creative power, and it is is elicited by a beautiful person. In the homoerotic case, the lover’s soul is pregnant, and his eros produces the good in the form of poems, laws, philosophical ideas, and virtue. But the philosopher has to gradually outgrow his love for a beautiful body, and turn towards the realm of abstract ideas. In the Phaedrus, by contrast, the beauty of a boy can straightforwardly connect the philosopher to the divine, i.e., perfect and timeless reality. Here, the philosopher does not leave his love for the person behind. On the contrary, the friendship is forever, and it is the conversation between the friends that generates knowledge.