Platonic love

Psychology

2022

We explain what platonic love is, its characteristics and how psychology understands it. Also, what did Plato think about love.

Platonic love has an important load of naivety, innocence and admiration.

What is platonic love?

Nowadays, when we talk about platonic love, we generally refer to an idealized feeling of attraction, devoid of sexual and erotic overtones, often unrealizable or difficult to materialize, sometimes even unrequited. Its name is due to the fact that it is an erroneous but popular interpretation of Plato's philosophical theories regarding love, which proposed a love based on love. virtue and not in the physical attractions.

Platonic loves are, as they are understood today, typical of childhood and adolescence, especially before the awakening of the sexuality. They are infatuations provided with an important load of naivety, innocence and admiration, which are usually felt by idealized figures such as stars of entertainment, popular artists or figures of authority, or by individuals with whom one is rarely intimate.

The expression "platonic love" was coined by the English poet and playwright William Davenant (1606-1668), author of the piece "The Platonick Lovers”, where he refers to the famous banquet of Plato, an ancient writing that posits love as the birth of TRUE and the virtues. The term, however, was later used as a synonym for courtly love or idealized love, whose sexual consummation is eternally postponed, and even throughout the nineteenth century as euphemism of homosexual love.

characteristics of platonic love

In general, platonic love is characterized by the following:

  • It is born of feelings of frank admiration, devoid of malice, selfishness Y desire sexual. That is, it is not a passionate and libidinal love, but an idealized form of romantic attraction.
  • It is associated with late childhood and early adolescence, and may or may not be reciprocated. The most common, however, is that they are idealizations that do not truly seek to become reality.
  • It is often synonymous with courtly love or gallant love, in which the purity of feelings is preserved by indefinitely postponing erotic or sexual consummation. That is to say, a high love, without a body.
  • Its limits with friendship are diffuse and can in many cases be a type of friendly relationship that prevents the appearance of eroticism (especially in the area Heterosexual).
  • It is not a faithful understanding of what Plato (c. 427-347 BC) expressed regarding love.

love for plato

For Plato, ideal love seeks beauty, truth and virtue.

According to what Plato, Greek philosopher of the Antiquity, he left written in his work The banquet, one must distinguish between erotic and sexual love and ideal love (that is, platonic love). The latter constitutes an entirely different type of attraction, based on the pursuit of beauty, truth and virtue, that is, of the knowledge.

For this, love must go beyond the mere observation of physical beauty, to transcend towards spiritual beauty and finally towards "pure" beauty, that is, knowledge itself, the beauty of Arts and the sciences. That is why it is called "ideal love", since it is a love that occurs on the plane of the mind and emotions. ideas, and not merely in the body. Platonic love is the love for the beauty and perfection of ideas, concepts and the shapes.

Plato puts in the mouth of Socrates the distinction between carnal love, which unites the human being and animals, and the love of the soul, typical of human beings and of virtue. For this, he speaks of two types of "pregnancy" fruit of love: the pregnancy of the body, which brings human children into the world, is the fruit of the love of the body; while the pregnancy of the soul, which brings virtue and beauty to the world, is typical of ideal love, that is, of what will later be called "platonic love".

Platonic love in psychology

In the psychology, platonic love is understood as a type of relationship typical of the childhood and adolescent stages of the human being, since shyness, introversion and emotional inhibition are typically manifested in them. On the other hand, its appearance in adult contexts may rather constitute a mechanism for dispersing sexual tension between two individuals, that is, platonic love relationships are built to prevent the eventual consummation of an underlying sexual attraction.

Plato's phrases about love

Some phrases about love that are attributed to this ancient Greek philosopher are:

  • "Love consists in feeling that the sacred being beats within the loved one."
  • "Love is the joy of good, the wonder of the wise, the wonder of the gods."
  • “…The right path of love, whether it is guided by itself, or guided by another, is to begin with the lower beauties and rise to the supreme beauty.”
  • "There is no man so cowardly that love cannot make him brave and make him a hero."
  • "Where the love reigns, laws left over".
  • "The gods have given us two wings to fly to them: love and reason."
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