Love and The Quest for Being Short Essay: CC 1

Nishita Jha

Why does man thirst for immortality?

The realm of mortals is ephemeral unlike that of the everlasting Gods.

Seasons, animals, loved ones, day and night…as man watches everything in the world around him be born, exist and cease to be; the fleeting transience of every moment makes him cling to life and fear being dissolved into nothingness himself.

The Greek notion of “Eudaimonia” or flourishing for instance, which Aristotle recognizes in the Nichomachean Ethics¹ to be the only human end worth striving for, does not refer merely to the temporary and subjective state of happiness. Eudaimonia is an end in itself, and the pursuit of it is common to all human beings.

A better understanding of the term is possible through the heroes of the Iliad², for instance, for whom a “eudaimonic life” involved a death that would ensure posthumous fame, the well being of future generations and their state. In other words, a death that would render them immortal through it’s glory.

Love, another prerequisite for leading a eudaimonic existence³, is a similar quest to transcend the world of Becoming and to glimpse the world of Being. The lover desires that his love should exist forever, that it should withstand the trials of time and inevitable fate. To love is to dare to fly in the face of transience, to tie up one’s impermanent existence with that of another, to wish to possess them forever.

Using Diotima (a remarkable woman, described as Socrates’ instructor on the art of Love) as his mouthpiece in the Symposium, Plato finds himself free to pronounce a beautifully simple resolution for the mortal quest to exist eternally: the act of erotic love, desired by “the footed and winged alike”. The survival of any species is hinged upon the continuing reproduction of their own kind, thereby ensuring immortality until the process continues.

“Why reproduction? It’s because reproduction goes on forever; it is what mortals have in place of immortality. A lover must desire immortality along with the Good, if he wants to possess the Good forever.…[A]nd in that way everything mortal is preserved, not, like the divine – by always being the same in every way, but because what is departing and ageing leaves behind something new, something such as it had been. (Symposium 207a-208b) “

However eros is merely one aspect of the way the word “love” is used. Everyone who loves essentially longs to possess the good and beautiful forever⁴ – whether through the love of an individual or music, art, philosophy (knowledge) etc.

The Ethica Nichomachea also lists the knowledge of “eternal and unchanging things” as an intellectual virtue necessary for leading the kind of self – actualized existence described by eudaimonia.

Plato’s theory of forms⁵ explains and enables access to such a realm of static knowledge through the theory of forms by seeking to bridge the gap between the perishing particulars directly knowable to us, and their immortal forms.

Beauty may be just a “beautiful girl”⁶ but her beauty, like that of everything else, will fade with time.

“…I shall return to our friend who denies that there is any beauty in itself or any eternally unchanging form of beauty, that lover of sights, who loves visible beauty but cannot bear to be told that beauty is really one….I shall turn to him and ask, “Is there any of these many beautiful objects of yours that may not also seem ugly?”

[479 a)⁷

What do we mean when we speak of Beauty in itself, as something separate and unchanging from the girl in question, all beautiful women and beautiful things, although they do seem to partake in different ways in this “form” of Beauty? This is the question Plato attempts to answer through the analogy of the Sun, Line and Cave.

By using a powerful image like the Sun as a metaphor for the form of the Good, Plato manages to convey it’s generative and causal nature perfectly. What the Sun is to things seen, the Good is to the domain of thoughts. The Sun, being the source of growth and light, gives visibility to the objects of sense and thus enables the eyes to see. Correspondingly, the Good is the source of reality and the truth, which make objects of thought intelligible, thus enabling the mind to know them.

The image of the line neatly illustrates this relation of the degree of clearness between the Sun and the world of sight and it’s analogue - the form of the Good and the world of things thought.

The allegory of the Cave is the most crucial of the three images Plato employs to explain the theory of forms. Each stage of the prisoner’s ascent out of the cave corresponds to a particular section of the line, and thus a realm of thought. His freedom from the cave finally leads to his glimpsing the Sun, the ultimate source of all that he encountered on his “journey”; a climactic moment because of the previous comparison of the Sun to the form of the Good.

The Divided Line:⁸

“I see that you wish to lay down that a clearer perception of real being and the world of mind is given by a knowledge of dialectic, than by the so called “arts” which start from pure assumptions…it is true that those who view them through these are compelled to view them with Reason and not the senses”

[511 – c,]⁹

“ Then we must apply the image, my dear Glaucon, to all we have been saying. The world of our sight is like the habitation in prison, the firelight there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of mind; out it so and you will not be far from my own surmise…”

[517 – b,]

The Prisoner’s Ascent and it’s Correspondence to the Divided Line:

1. The prisoners are depicted as having been inside the cave since they were born. Immobilized by chains, they stare at that same spot on the wall. A walkway stands behind those bound, and behind this wall burns an everlasting, towering flame. As puppets of plants, animals and other things recognizable to us in the non metaphorical world are moved across the walkway, the prisoners are enthralled by the shadows that appear on the walls. While fettered in the cave the shifting shadows are the only truth the prisoners know. They name the shapes according to their forms or sounds, judge and compete with one another according to the names each chooses for the shapes

The world of shadows represents the world of conjecture, where everything is at best a surmise, caused by the reflections of manufactured things.

2. Suddenly, one of the prisoners is freed. As the pain subsides a strange new world opens up before him. He turns around to see the three dimensional forms, the puppets and the everlasting fire that caused the shadows and realizes that they are “more real” than the world he once knew.

Coming in contact with the objects that caused the shadows, creates beliefs. These remain prone to truth and falsity, as they still belong to the realm of Opinion (doxa). The prisoner does not know the true nature of the puppets or the fire – i.e. that they are manufactured, but knows that the reality he once knew has been caused by them.

3. Someone drags him up the steep ascent of the cave now, into the harsh light of the Sun, and there is chaos once more, as he enters this “new stage of knowledge”.

One day at a time, the din of noise and colour seeps into him. At first he can only bear to look at shadows and reflections in water. Then he learns to love the somewhat less fierce light of the moon and the stars.

The shadows and reflections (images) of real things outside the cave are still more real than anything the prisoner knew inside the cave. Yet they are mere images of objects themselves. The prisoner sees them but does not understand what causes them – much like one uses mathematical Knowledge (Episteme) based on assumptions without exploring the assumption itself. This then, is the realm of Understanding.

4. And finally, when his eyes adjust to the brightness and details around him, he is able to look up at the sky...at the source of it all- the Sun.

The path of Dialectical thought, leads to a first principle free from assumptions and images from the changing world of the senses. It is through the exercise of Reason that the Ideals are grasped.

The prisoner who is freed from the allegorical cave represents the philosopher. As the exercise of reason enables him to go beyond each of the initial stages of thought and access the Ideal - the form of the Good that makes everything that is known intelligible, he is no longer welcome inside the cave, for all his efforts to free his fellow prisoners. Everything he says about the “real world’ seem like the ramblings of a lunatic. He is considered dangerous and shunned. The philosopher’s state mirrors that of Socrates before he was sentenced to death, on account of corrupting the youth.

Why don’t the prisoners want to be freed?

Plato answers the question in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium:

“No one who is ignorant will love wisdom either, or want to become wise. For what’s especially difficult about being ignorant is that you are content with yourself, even though you’re neither beautiful and good nor intelligent. If you don’t think you need anything, of course you won’t want what you don’t think you need.”

[204 – a]

But while a mysterious stranger is responsible for dragging the philosopher out of the cave to glimpse the real and the true in The Republic; to Diotima, Love is the medium between the realms of Becoming and Being.

“He is a great spirit, Socrates. Everything spiritual, you see, is in between God and mortal. (Spirits)…are messengers who shuttle back and forth between the two, conveying prayer and sacrifice from men to Gods, while to men they bring commands from the Gods and gifts for the¹⁰ir sacrifices. Being in the middle of the two, they round out the whole and bind fast the all to all.”

[202 – e]¹¹

She also appears to be familiar with the idea that there exists a realm between ignorance and wisdom, (that of grasping the real without being able to transcend assumptions and images necessary to fully understand it) when she demands of a still- faltering Socrates:

“Do you really think that if a thing is not beautiful, it has to be ugly? And if a thing is not wise, it is ignorant? Or haven’t you found out yet that there is something in between wisdom and ignorance…it is judging things correctly without being able to give a reason.”

[202 – d]¹²

Diotima describes Love, the son of Poros (whose name means “resource”) and Penia (“poverty”), as one who is among other things- brave, impetuous, intense, resourceful in his pursuit of intelligence and

“a lover of wisdom through all his life (a philosopher)” [ 203 – d]¹³.

This is similar to Socrates’ portrayal of the qualities of the philosopher king must possess:

“[A] philosophic nature must include courage, greatness of mind, quickness to learn and a good memory...” [490 – d]¹⁴

The similarities between the two are not incidental. The philosopher is truly the lover of wisdom. He does not love one aspect of the truth, but all of eternal, unchanging reality. Like the lover, he longs to possess knowledge and all his desires and actions are governed by this urge. Matters of the flesh are of little interest to him since pleasure for him is linked with the mind.

Delving deeper into the purpose of the rite of love, which she claims is “the final and highest mystery” Diotima explains to Socrates how the lover and the philosopher come to be one and the same. Carried out in the correct order, the rites of love allow the lover to glimpse that which is far more fulfilling than the pursuit of any physical pleasure, the form of Beauty itself. The rites of love are not unlike the prisoner’s ascent out of the cave in the sense that the lover draws further and further away from the particular – the love for a single individual to ultimately understand the form. The “correct order”¹⁵ then, is as given below:

1. “A lover who goes about this matter correctly must begin in his youth to devote himself to beautiful bodies…he should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is the beauty of any other and that if he is to pursue beauty of form he’s be very foolish not to think that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same. When he grasps this, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies…”

Making a jibe at Glaucon in the Republic¹⁶, Socrates humorously tells his listeners how the lover will find any pretext to be swayed by the beauty of his loved one(s). From the odd charms of a snub nose to the commanding beauty of a Roman one, the “manly” charm of a dusky complexion will mysteriously co-exist with the love for a divine pallor. He points out that the presence of passion for a particular thing will lead to the unstinting desire for it in every form possible, be it women, wine or knowledge.

2. “After this he must think that the beauty of people’s souls is more valuable than the beauty of their bodies…the result is that the lover will be forced to gaze at the beauty of activities and laws and to see that all this is akin to itself, with the result that he will see that the beauty of bodies is a thing of no importance…”

Moving on from the directly perceivable to the soul that animates these beautiful bodies, Diotima explains that the lover must learn to look beyond mere physical attributes to something deeper. Of course it is not necessary that all lovers seek this beauty of the soul, but remaining unacquainted with the desire to know the eternal and immutable form of Beauty, they are not true lovers either. Socrates calls them “lovers of opinion rather than lovers of wisdom”¹⁷

3. “…he (the lover) must move on now to various kinds of knowledge. The result is that he will see the beauty of knowledge and be looking mainly not at beauty in a single example…but he is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom (philosophy), until having grown and been strengthened there, he catches sight of such knowledge..”

No longer enamoured by a single individual or trait, he learns to appreciate and love the beauty of knowledge. He reflects and creates ideas of his own, although he does not yet know what causes these to be, or what causes him to Love. He is like the prisoner outside the cave who is enthralled by the world before him but ignorant of the form of the Good.

4. “The man who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving…”

The Beauty that the lover now glimpses, having come to the ultimate goal of his pursuits is not the transitory beauty of individuals, traits etc. that he once knew. Like all forms, it is eternal, unmoving, unchanging and thus ever satisfying for it’s lover.

To conclude, the true lover is not one who lusts after the transitory instances of beauty, pursuing pleasures of the senses and passing on when they cease to satisfy him. While Plato sees nothing wrong with this pursuit of physical gratification, it is impermanent and thus will only enable it’s seeker to access temporary and subjective happiness.

The lover seeks immortality for his love, so that he may reflect upon it forever. This is only possible if like the prisoner in Plato’s cave, he set free from the illusory shifting shapes of the sensory world and taken to the world outside the cave. Even here he may spend his time marveling at the images and shadows of real objects, never seeking their cause – and while he will certainly be better off than the remaining prisoners in the cave, he will never have the fortitude of knowing that ultimate realm of the mind – the knowledge of the unchanging that results in Eudaimonia.

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