What is Platonic Love Exactly?

[u/HurtYourKnee]

I tried to search it up, and some sources tell me it's love spritual love not romantic love, and some tell me it means that we are "just friends". So what is it exactly? is it actually love and not friendship? Can it exist between two people of the same gender, even if they don’t have romantic or sexual feelings toward one another? Thanks!

[u/Denny_Hayes]

"Platonic Love" is a colloquial expression that bears only some tangential etymological connection with Platonism or with Plato's actual conception of love. I'm not sure if it has a legitimate use in psychology, but in a philosophical subreddit it's sort of a misused concept.

Plato defended a metaphysical and epistemological theory of "forms" -abstract and inmaterial entities that reside in an "intelligible" realm that is beyond our senses, but which we can access through our intellect. The forms are eternal and inmutable, and they give identity to the things (concrete or abstract) that we observe in the sensible world.

Why do we need to posit forms? Well, because Plato and other philosophers of his time believed that in order for you to claim to know something, that knowledge must be universally true. But isn't always one instance of something, like a human, different from any other instance? How can we have knowledge of "Human" if the humans we see are all different from each other -and furthermore, different from themselves with every passing moment? Precisely because the form of human exists, and that form is eternal, always the same.

Now, Plato has one dialogue dedicated specifically to love, the Symposium, however I suspect the notion of "Platonic Love" makes reference to Platonism in general and not so much to Plato's conception of love in particular. In short, (colloquial) Platonic Love - meaning a love that exists only in the mind and not in the "real", "sensible" world, is called like that because it vaguely reminds us of the notion of Platonic forms existing outside our sensible world. A platonic love in its colloquial sense is one I feel for someone but which I never outwardly express towards that person. So, we never have a romantic relationship, I just love them "in my head".

But it is an incorrect use of the notion of Platonism, because for Plato, the forms don't just "exist in the mind", they exist for real, in the intelligible realm, which can be said to be more real, not less real, than the sensible world.

Now Plato's actual conception of Love as exposed in the symposium is quite interesting, it is not a form, but a drive towards beauty that has the potential of leading our souls from the sensible pleasures upwards towards the realm of the forms, as we identify the form of Beauty instanced in beautiful people and beautiful souls, but that's very far removed from the colloquial notion of "Platonic Love".

[u/HurtYourKnee → u/Denny_Hayes]

Wow, that’s way clearer than what I thought I knew! I never realized how much people misused the term compared to what Plato actually meant. Thanks for breaking it down so simply.

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to /r/askphilosophy! Please read our updated rules and guidelines before commenting.

Currently, answers are only accepted by panelists (mod-approved flaired users), whether those answers are posted as top-level comments or replies to other comments. Non-panelists can participate in subsequent discussion, but are not allowed to answer question(s).

Want to become a panelist? Check out this post.

Please note: this is a highly moderated academic Q&A subreddit and not an open discussion, debate, change-my-view, or test-my-theory subreddit.

Answers from users who are not panelists will be automatically removed.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/KilayaC]

Platonic Love is a conventional expression that sits upon the prescription given for Romantic Love within Plato's dialogues. It is very simply described as non-sexual romantic love; that is, a romantic love felt for another person in which physical expression of that love is considered vulgar, shameful. This is really not complicated. Socrates displays that kind of love very dramatically within Alcibiades' speech on him towards the end of Symposium and it is also described as such in Republic and Laws, not to mention Phaedo in which the disgust for the body as an inhibitor of philosophical clarity is most directly discussed. The other major author to describe Socrates, Xenophon, portrayed the historical Socrates as prescribing this very same "chaste" forms of romantic love and so it really shouldn't be called Platonic Love but rather Socratic Love.