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    Carmelics

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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Plato recognized that Erôs can act as a force that retards rather than promotes philosophical development.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Diotima's ladder in the Symposium presents Erôs as structurally necessary for philosophical ascent, not merely incidentally helpful.
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    • 2.If Erôs were capable of retarding development by its own nature, Plato would need a separate faculty to initiate the ascent, which he never posits.
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    • 3.The absence of such a faculty suggests Plato viewed Erôs as univocally directed toward the Beautiful, with failure located in the lover's character, not in Erôs itself.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Alcibiades' failure in the Symposium is framed by Plato as a failure of self-mastery (akrasia), not evidence of a retarding function intrinsic to Erôs.
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    • 2.Martha Nussbaum's reading in 'The Fragility of Goodness' argues Plato uses Alcibiades to indict attachment to particular persons, not to qualify the directional force of Erôs itself.
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    • 3.Attributing retardation to Erôs conflates a contingent biographical failure with a structural feature of the passion, which the text does not license.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Alcibiades is presented as a case where love does not lead to love of the beautiful itself.
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    • 2.Diotima's account omits the retarding function of Erôs not because Plato denied it, but because her story focuses only on successful love.
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