5. Applying Plato’s theory of love to contemporary problems
I shall begin by stating the obvious: though I love challenges, I dislike impossibilities; in other words, I would not have chosen this subject unless I had thought that one can learn a great deal from Plato’s theory of love. Yet, I admit that the philosophical consultant for common problems of love might more easily apply any other philosopher’s view on love (with the possible exception of the Stoics) (Nussbaum, 1994, pp. 359-401; Nussbaum, 2001; Vlastos, 1973).
Before addressing the question of how Plato can be applied to counselling, I would like to address some preliminary questions. First, does the counsellor have to be a Platonist in order to use Plato’s theory of love in consultation? Second, does the counsellee have to endorse Platonism in order to be helped by Plato’s theory of love? If by ‘being a Platonist’ we understand knowing or believing that Plato’s account of the Forms is true, and therefore that the good is a metaphysical entity, then I believe that the answer to both questions is negative.
Allow me to answer the first question according to my own experience as a philosophical counsellor. I cannot know that Platonism is true any more than I can know, for example, that Spinoza’s or Schopenhauer’s philosophies are true. I do suspend my judgement about the truth of their metaphysics. But then, I have also to suspend my judgement about the truth of their respective ethics, and of the various other interesting insights on life they might offer. For, as philosophies are usually coherent theories, their respective ethics follow from their metaphysics. It is true that, with the help of experience and age, we seem to have more say in matters of ethics and of what I referred to as ‘other interesting insights on life’ than on metaphysics,. But we still don’t know if these are true. Nevertheless, I use in consultation not only Socratic tools aimed at giving birth to the counsellee’s own ideas; or analytic tools aimed at clarifying her thought. I also use philosophical theories from the general corpus of the history of philosophy, which I think are relevant to the issue at hand. I hope, by using these theories, to enrich the counsellee with interesting, deep and challenging views regarding the subject that we investigate. I might suggest some reading of these philosophies; we may challenge Plato’s or Spinoza’s metaphysical premises and discuss the relations they have to the ideas that the counsellee found interesting. But I cannot endorse any of these philosophies in the sense of saying that their metaphysics is true or that their view of love is true. Moreover, were I to believe that any of these philosophies is true, my opinion is that I ought not try to convince the counsellee of its truth.
This is one way of doing philosophical counselling. Of course, other counsellors might handle the problem of using speculative theories in philosophical consultations quite differently. They may even abstain from using them, because of the very problem of establishing their veracity. Yet, I still think that Plato’s views on love are important, even if false. Therefore, personally I have a negative answer to the question: does the counsellor have to endorse Platonism in order to make use of Platonic views in a consultation?
As to the second question, namely, does the counsellee have to endorse Platonism in order to be helped by Plato’s theory of love? I believe the answer is still negative. Some of the argument is similar to that presented in the previous answer: the counsellee no more than the counsellor can know if Plato is right in his account of the world. But she can tell if some of the things Plato says make sense to her, if they describe accurately the way she feels, if they disclose important aspects of her suffering or of her confusion about love. In short, she can know if she would like to listen to what Plato has to say, better, if she would like to begin a conversation with him, if his thought is worth the effort of communicating with it. This communication would take place through discussing his views with the help of the counsellor, through reading some of his texts, through thinking alone along some of his insights. But what if Plato is wrong? Is there any value in discussing with someone whose views are wrong? Does the sole value of such a conversation lie in disclosing the other’s errors? Or rather, are we enriched by having been challenged in our own views, by having been exposed to someone else’s views, and even more so if these views are deep, interesting and bearing on important aspects of the human condition? Plato might be wrong, but his mistake is profound in that it reveals some needs that we all share and makes a very ambitious attempt to meet them. As we do not know the truth about love, we might as well consider various views about it. Plato being the deep and wise thinker that he is, his view of love is not the last of them: neither in importance, nor relevance, nor interest, as I hoped to show above.
If neither counsellor nor counsellee have to endorse Platonism in order to make use of Platonic ideas, let’s ask the following practical question: which counsellees and which problems would best benefit from Plato’s views on love? And from which views? In my experience, there are many possibilities of introducing Plato’s thought on love in a consulting setting and of applying it to various predicaments. I will present three general contexts in which I have used Plato’s thoughts on love. Of course, as counsellors are required to be creative in their craft, other counsellors might use Plato differently.
I shall begin with a short account of how one aspect of Plato’s theory of love may be used in the context of parental love. More specifically, how it may help in easing the tension between parental love, as frequently encountered, and grown-up children’s expectations. Second, I shall briefly introduce some interesting Platonic thoughts concerning sex and its relation to beauty, and shall question the applicability of those insights to the case of the non-vulgar Don Juan. Finally, I shall dwell at length on what, in my opinion, is Plato’s strongest point: his criticism of the prevailing fashion in matters of love. I am referring to the Romantic tradition of love, which contends that we can all be saved by loving passionately another human being. Let’s begin with the relatively easy issue of parental love.
A) Parental love and grown-up children’s expectations
‘The relations between parents and children’, writes Bertrand Russell in the Conquest of Happiness, ‘are in nine out of ten cases a source of dissatisfaction for both sides, and in ninety-nine out of hundred a source of suffering and agony at least to one of the sides … The adult, who wants happy relations with his children, or wants to provide them with a life of happiness, must think deeply about fatherhood …’ (Russell, 1930, p. 120). Plato’s view of love as love of immortality, and love of immortality as the key to parental love can be helpful in discussing parental love, its ambitions, its shortcomings, especially the feasibility of its ideal unconditionality. Grown-up children often complain about the fact that their parents are too protective, do not see them as autonomous adults and generally fail to recognise that they have a right to live their life as they choose. What may appear at first sight as disappointing shortcomings of parental love, might be better understood as inherent characteristics of this love, provided that we see its essence or at least its main characteristic as love of immortality.
B) Sex and its relation to beauty: the extreme case of the non-vulgar Don Juan
According to Plato, sex is a completely natural but somewhat unimaginative device to get what we want. To act when we see beauty as if we wanted children is not the most intelligent response to it. Beauty awakes in us a much deeper longing, of which we should at least be aware and which we should at most fulfill. Plato proposes an interpretation of the meaning of beauty that cannot be exhausted by any amount of sexual relations. Even if we do not agree with him, his views challenge us to figure out for ourselves what is so disturbing in beauty.
More specifically, Plato can be helpful in the case of the non-vulgar Don Juan. He is the type of man that doesn’t look vulgarly for sheer conquest of an endless number of women, but for a je-ne-sais-quoi that tortures him. In Plato’s language, he is stuck in the second stage, moving endlessly from one beauty to another. As we have seen, Plato’s philosophy gives a compelling account of our fascination with beauty, by identifying our yearning as a desire to bring forth in beauty. Unfortunately, even experts on physical beauty, who should be delighted by the variety, will still be unsatisfied, or so Plato predicts. His diagnosis is that their yearning for absolute beauty will be frustrated. To quote Santayana on this second platonic stage: ‘all beauties attract by suggesting the ideal and then fail to satisfy by not fulfilling it’ (Singer, 1956, p. 99). Plato’s analysis sometimes rings a bell for the non-vulgar Don Juan and helps him clarify his real goal. When he realises that this goal won’t be achieved by the means he is taking, change might occur. This is especially valuable because as far as I know, we do not have too many philosophical sources for clarifying the phenomenon of Don Juan, the only other philosophical source being Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard, 1978).
C) Salvation through love of another person: the Romantic
The richness and depth of Plato’s theory of love allows us the choice of being impressed by its crudest aspects (the love of immortality as the key to parental love and as an explanation for a hero’s behaviour); or by its subtlest ones (the ultimate dissatisfaction linked with sexual relationships, even in a loving relationship). Yet its edge lies somewhere else. Though Plato’s theory might be irrelevant for anyone who happens to be in love, its importance appears as soon as there is trouble in paradise and even more so, when a love affair is over, or simply when the affair is not over, but love is. Allow me to explain this point by relying on the analysis of love of a great psychologist, Theodore Reik.
Reik viewed love as arising out of dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s lot in life. ‘People seek out love and especially passion’ explains R. J. Sternberg in summarising Reik’s view on love ‘when life is disappointing and when they need someone else to fill the void within’. Moreover,
Some people seek salvation in love, much as other people do in religion, hoping to find in another the perfection they cannot find in themselves. At first, they may well think that salvation is at hand. Early in a relationship, their partner may indeed seem to be just what they are looking for, and their being in love is tantamount to being saved – from the world and from themselves. But eventually disillusionment is almost certain to set in. They discover two facts. First, the other person has flaws: they cannot maintain the illusion of perfection is the face of ever more evidence that the partner is not, in fact, perfect. Second, no other human can save them, not even the love of their life.
What are the options then? According to the same source,
Perhaps one can save oneself, but one cannot expect or even ask this of another. People have either to adjust to a new kind of love or else forever live with the disappointment of knowing that they cannot find salvation through love of another. Of course, some people take a third course: they try to find someone else to save them and once again reenter the cycle of high hopes followed by disappointment.
(Sternberg, 1998, p. 126; Reik, 1944).
What we can learn from Plato is that we do not need to give up our longing for salvation through love. The longing can be fulfilled if directed towards other objects, that is, not human beings. This hunger called eros should be acknowledged and could even be fulfilled when supplied with the right nutrition. We need not emphasise the contemplation of a metaphysical idea of the beautiful, the good and the true as the sole way to fulfilment. We may choose to stress the idea that the complete fulfilment of eros may pass, yet cannot be attained, through another human being. After all, Plato points to the transcendent nature of eros and love, a theme which, following him, Christianity will develop (Singer, 1984, vol. 1, chap. 9; Nygren, 1982). And of course, in order to see that Plato could make sense, we have to doubt the assumptions of the prevalent and fashionable tradition of love in which most of us partake, namely, the Romantic (Singer, 1984, vol. 2, chapts. 12-13; Gould, 1963, chapts. 1 and 9). That is, we have to re-evaluate a human being’s capacity of saving us, just by loving us and being loved by us. Allow me to elaborate.
According to my consulting experience, most people experience the end of a relationship or the death of love in a relationship as a failure. They blame themselves, or their partners, or both. However, when they recover from the mourning, they search for a new partner, hoping that this time the relationship won’t fail them or that they won’t fail the relationship. This hope is usually unfounded, because no real understanding has been reached, no real work done, nothing that would ensure that the ‘failure’ won’t repeat itself.
When confronted with Plato’s definition of love (‘love is desire for the perpetual possession of the good’), most people say: yes, this is exactly what I wanted; what I still want. Moreover, the ‘failure’ is described in those terms: the possession was not ‘perpetual’, or there was no ‘possession’ contrarily to what was expected, or the partner or the relationship was no ‘good’ any more.
What most people do not realise is that they cannot both hold this definition of love and expect a human being to fulfil it. If we keep in mind the stages of the ladder of love described above (section 3), we understand why changing partners will not help us in the long run. To repeat Plato’s argument, the love of one particular beautiful body is the first step towards fulfilling our desire that the good will be always in our possession. Our incapacity of being satisfied at this stage stems from the nature of the true object of our search, from that which we are really looking for, independently of the partner we chose. Therefore, sooner or later we will be out of love with this particular beautiful body, that is, beyond the first stage of the ladder.
Some of us repeat this stage, by falling in love again and again, but leave as soon as love is over. Some reach the second stage, by moving endlessly from one beauty to another, as we have seen above. Few people realise that there might be something beyond the second stage. Plato explains how transcending the limitations inherent in a relationship with a person might fulfil our desire for the good and the beautiful. When we truly understand the limitations of all human beings in fulfilling our needs, we stop resenting the particular specimen with which we are living. We adapt our expectations from human beings to that which can be obtained within the human sphere. For this very reason we can remain faithful to our original desire, which Plato’s analysis helped us clarify as aiming beyond what a particular individual can give us.
The limited capacity of human sexual passion, which we call love, to bring us everlasting love, can be a blessing if we understand why it fails us. For then we might look for fulfilment by transcending the relationship, without ending it unnecessarily. Moreover, only if we keep insisting on fulfilling our desire for the perpetual possession of the good, we have a chance of realising our dream of happiness. Yet, it is important to stress that we need not endorse Plato’s interpretation of what that good really is. Suffice it to feel that his characterisation of what we desire or his definition of love echoes our true needs. The rest might be a personal quest.
A last point is worth emphasising. In his theory of love, Plato gives us a diagnosis of human misery by explaining to us what we really want and how we err in searching for it. Yet, his diagnosis is optimistic in so far as he identifies ignorance and confusion as the sources of our suffering. For ignorance and confusion can be amended either through the compelling invitation of his philosophy or through our own determination to further our understanding of the human condition. In order to appreciate Plato’s optimism, let’s take another example of a diagnosis of why love fails us. Schopenhauer’s diagnosis, for example, is a pessimistic one, in so far as he sees in us a passive instrument of the Will that underlies reality. Our passionate love is no more than a device of nature for reproducing the species. Once our work is done, the love we had for our mate leaves us and there is nothing we can do about it (Schopenhauer, 1969, p. 241).
But, Plato tells us, everything begins where we used to think that everything ended.
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