/lit/ - Literature

>>21601478

3.5 On Love

Plato thinks Love is a Spirit-being, as opposed to a state
The general opinion is that Love is either devotion of beauty in itself, or it's consummation in some vile act
- we should look for the source of Love in Beauty

Nature looks to the Good to produce the beautiful, so it can't procreate in the ugly
No problem enjoying earthly beauty if one has perfect self-control, just avoid carnality
As long as you understand beauty, and the less you desire procreation, the more enjoyable will be your love for the sake of Beauty

Two kinds of lovers
- one for the purpose of copulation, insofar as they perpetuate beauty
- the more nobler for the aesthetic ideal which reflects the Good

2
Love as a God
- Orphic teachers believe this
- Eros, child of Aphrodite

There are two Aphrodites, a higher and a lower
- higher heavenly daughter of Ouranos/Saturn/Kronos
-- Kronos is the Intellectual-Principle
- lower daughter of Zeus and the Dione

Love is a medium of desire and desire's object, it is the eye of the desirer

There is love for the All-Soul, a Love for the unmingled Soul, and a Love for the second Soul which presides over marriages

Each Soul has a form of Love
- responsible for giving people desire and their own Eros
- Aphrodite is considered the Soul, and 'we must conceive many Aphrodites in the all" which descend into the cosmos

5
Love in the higher Soul is divine/a God
Love in the lower Soul are celestial spirits (daimones)

Symposium covers this
- Love is thought to be homeless, bedless, and shoe-less

6
Gods are immune to passions
Celestials have passions and experiences
- Gods may preside from the Intellectual Realm to the moon, Celestials from the moon to the world

Each Soul entering our cosmos generates a Celestial Spirit which is assigned to it
If a Soul is pure, it instead generates a God
- Aphrodite is a pure Soul, who generated the God, Love

Some order of celestial enters body, but not the air or fire as is commonly thought

7
Love can never be sated so long as it has that ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited, and indeterminate nature in Matter
- Love has no resource in itself. It is poor after winning it's goal
- Good men only love the Absolute, Authentic Good, no following random attractions

Everyone has spirit guides

Plato calls Zeus royal in Soul and Intellect
- Zeus is the Intellectual Principle (not Kronos, as previously stated) and Aphrodite the Soul

We should Gods as intellects and Goddesses as souls, so Zeus' soul is Aphrodite
- other priests and theologians call her and Hera the same
- 'Venus' is known as the star of Hera

Love's parents (according to Diotima in Symposium) are thought to be Poros (Possession) and Penia (Poverty)
- (Aphrodite/Ares is another pairing, not mentioned)