Let us praise love…it will return us to our primitive nature after this life, it will cure our illnesses and provide us with pure happiness.

Plato’s Dialogues

Surely you have asked yourself some… or many times, what is love? Maybe you’re here because you’re in love… or, on the contrary, perhaps you’re heartbroken. Sometimes there just are certain books that touch us so deeply that help us with the process we’re living through. Here I get you back to Plato’s famous work (Dialogues) in order to discuss more about platonic love. Basically, in “The Banquet”, Plato delves into the types of love, as well as its applications to real life. Those are questions that you’ve probably encountered along the way.

But… who was Plato?

“The Banquet”: what is it about?

One of Plato’s most famous works is “The Banquet”. It was written between 384 and 379 b.C, and talks about love and its conceptions from different points of view. From the poetic, hope, completeness, illusion; until the hard truth that the character of Socrates must unravel. Apollodorus narrates to some aristocrats the events that occurred at Agathon’s feast and, since Apollodorus was not present at which banquet, Aristodemus tells him the events in 416 b.C. (Lasaga J., Herrera J.M, 2017).

What I find interesting to analyze about love are the different conceptions of Eros that Plato presents us in Aristophanes and Socrates discourse. We will call it “platonic love”. The conclusion which I’ve reached is that reducing love to Plato’s conception excludes us from the possibility of being happy. If you have wondered more about the relation between happiness and love, ¡keep reading to know all what I’ve told you until! The principal question here is:

How can you achieve happiness despite the pessimistic notion that people have about love?

Eros, Philia and Agape

First of all, we must remember that, for the greeks, Eros is the god of love and symbolizes sexual desire. It is amorous passion (Comte-Sponville A., 2012). A concept that is defined throughout the entire dialogue “The Banquet”.

Eros is the passionate and young love that feels the absence, the longing for a loved one… the desire to possess what one wants. But, finally, he is the one Plato describes as the caretaker of beauty and goodness who, by divine nature, being the son of Penia and Poros, is free and homeless; You find it in the streets, between two points: the mortal and the immortal because, just as it withers, it blooms again.

Plato

On the other hand, the french philosopher André Comte-Sponville, in Neither Sex nor Death (2012), mentions other types of love. Philia love is what Aristotle designates as affection, tenderness, attachment or paternal; This also applies to marital love. It is the love that is happy for what we have in the present. It is enjoyed and seeks to preserve it. The last is Agape, divine, moral love, which cares for others no matter what they do.

Happiness today

We will be happy if, thanks to love, we each find our half and return to the unity of our primitive nature. And if this ancient state is the best, the one that comes closest to it in this world must necessarily be the best, and that is to possess a loved one as desired.

Plato’s Dialogues

Aristophanes, in his eulogy, tells the story of human nature to arrive at the premise: 

Each of us is therefore nothing more than a half of a man that has been separated from a whole…these two halves always seek each other.

Plato’s Dialogues

First of all, in order to form a complete notion, I am going to try to define what happiness is. The spanish philosopher Victoria Camps (1941), in “Filosofía para la vida moderna”, points out the search for happiness as a fundamental right in modernity.

Currently, it is established that there is no better life than another. Although it is a conception that is far from being true for the greeks or medieval times. However, in the 21st century you build your happiness despite adversity. So, to be happy “you must maintain the desire to continue living”, says Camps. That means that you must correctly manage your emotions and not worry about situations that are out of your control.

Relationship between platonic love with happiness

André Comte (2012) tells us that you can fall in love more than once and this can be not eternal, unlike Aristophanes’ speech. Or you may not be completely happy even when you have found a reciprocated love. The options are numerous and far from consistent with what Plato proposes; alternatives that, despite being multiple, do not stop feeling like love. Now, it’s understandable to think otherwise if you stick with greek myth (I don’t blame you). 

At this point, things get a little tangled. But, basically, Platonic logic tells us that since love is the lack of it:

(formula: love=desire=lack);

 there is never really love in a couple. And I find this argument by André Comte-Sponville very interesting. Because love cannot be possessed or achieved. We always run after it; You never get what you want in the present tense (but only what you wanted). And, therefore, more and more things are missing (also applicable to happiness). Here is the explanation for “loving, or being loved, was never enough to be happy… it is not true that love ends separation and loneliness” (p. 38).

It is inevitable to not agree with the french philosopher when he says that Aristophanes represents the deluded notion of love, since it is true that it is easy to believe in the story that represents the young and innocent part of the subject closes itself to other possibilities of living a life full of learning. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong; No one would dare to tell others how they should live, nor can anyone exactly name the keys that ensure the path to fulfillment and happiness. But it is the researcher’s duty to share information to invite them to develop their own reflection.

In any case, Victoria Camps maintains that “to be happy you must maintain the desire to continue living.” If we apply this as Plato does in Socrates’ speech, it boils down to:

Whoever desires, desires what he is not sure of possessing…what he does not possess, what he does not have and what he lacks. This is what desire and love is… love is love for something…of a thing that is missing.

Plato

That means that it is impossible to maintain something that is always out of reach if you never had it.

However, it is easy to relate both parts, because: ¿how can we preserve the desire (the one who’s always missing) of continuing living? It’s not easy to preserve the joy of enjoying what you have; we tend to be ambitious. But, given the direction that I’ve taken so far, perhaps we could infer that there is no other path than the one that Schopenhauer declares: “There is no happy love” (as cited in Comte-Sponville, 2012, p. 42), since what you want is missing, and what you want is love and happiness… then, how can you be happy?

Schopenhauer answers by saying that it is in the middle of lack: when you have what you no longer lack. Since we do not suffer and there is no desire, then we are in boredom (absence of happiness, sadness and suffering; as cited in Comte-Sponville, 2012, p. 52). Now, to avoid falling into these extremes, Comte-Sponville offers us other theories of love: Philia and Agape. Aristotle and Spinoza explain love as a process, in which friendship or affection must be cultivated so it lasts and thus reaches happiness.

Conclusion… ¿?

As we saw, “maintaining the desire to continue living” is related to pursuing that search for happiness. The one that is always absent when you think about it. For this reason, I recommend you to not take Plato’s or Schopenhauer’s position as the only one. Otherwise, you will always feel incomplete and condemned to be in constant search for the other half from which you were separated (in search of the “only” eternal love and happiness).

Remember that the relationship between the concepts of love and happiness is very close, but not necessarily mandatory! It is true that platonic love can encourage people to see life optimistically in certain areas.

Who doesn’t want a partner that complements the part of the soul that feels absent, and that only eternal love is capable of healing? Many will respond that it is what they’ve always been looking for but just haven’t found yet. To others, the idea that there is someone capable of complementing will seem ridiculous; it only corresponds to each one as an independent individual. Here is the problem, since it is just a concept (from here the famous “platonic love”) that lasts in the collective mind. Amyth (which is why they haven’t found it yet) that does not apply in real life. In real life we ​​experience more than what Platonic theory explains.

 

You meet and love more people (not just one), or you just feel miserable even when you love someone else. Human beings are accustomed to the eternal race of searching for what it is missing. On the other hand, love, rather than being the key to happiness and being a direct cause of it, is more one of the constitutive elements of happiness (but not the only one). The myth about half is perhaps one of the most famous conceptions with which we’ve grown up. However, we may expand this vision to answer the questions which emerge about love and happiness throughout life. Staying with the platonic conception would take us a little further away from the path towards one of the key pieces that make up happiness.

Here I leave you the references of this article: platonic conception of love!

• Aprendemos Juntos BBVA. (2019). Versión Completa. Filosofía para la vida moderna. Victoria Camps, filósofa. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/01XQzx6jv5M
• Comte-Sponville A. (2012). Ni el sexo ni la muerte. [Trad. Capel Tatjer A.]. Espasa Libros.
• Lasaga Medina J., Herrera J. M. (2017). Platón Diálogos. Austral
• Platón (2017). Diálogos. [Trad. Roig de Lluís L.] Austral.

I also attach the video about happiness, in case you want to see it: