Plato and Platonic Love. The theme of love in Plato's philosophy

Platonic concept of love as a problem

"Feast", together with another work of Plato - "Apology", as the famous researcher of antiquity P.Ado writes, "is a majestic monument erected to Socrates - a monument created with the greatest skill". It is difficult to disagree with this, but we can add that it was also a monument to Plato. Outwardly, the entire dialogue revolves around the theme of love. But what does Plato mean by Eros? Of course, everyone knows that Eros is the god of love. However, if we turn to Losev's comments on The Feast, then problems arise.

“Eros, or Eros,” writes A. Losev, “the deity of love. Hesiod has one of the first four cosmogonic potencies along with Chaos, Gaia and Tartarus. In Hesiod, “among all the eternal gods, the most beautiful is Eros. Sweetly languid, he conquers the earthly soul in his chest in all gods and people and deprives everyone of reasoning "... led to harmony and love and sowed everything with identity and unity, penetrating everything. Parmenides declares Eros the oldest of the creatures of Aphrodite; in his cosmogony, he writes: "The first of all the gods she created Eros." The Orphics in their theogony represent the "most ancient, self-perfect, wise" Eros in several faces. He is Phanet (“revealed”), the son of the beautiful Ether”, “great demon ... gentle”. Phanet - Phaethon ("shining"),

Protogon ("first-born"). The 58th Orphic hymn (Quandt) is dedicated to Eros, where we read: “I call on you, great, pure, beloved, sweet Eros. You are a bold shooter, winged, fiery-noisy, with a fast running movement, playing with gods and mortal people, highly skilled, with a dual nature, owning all the keys of ether, sky, sea, earth and even that goddess Rhea, green-fruitful, everything that gave birth, which nourishes mortal souls, and even that which reigns over the wide Tartarus and the noisy salty sea. You alone rule, as you can see, over all. But, blessed one, be numbered among the pure thoughts of those initiated into the mysteries and drive away evil and inappropriate ones from them ... "... Simonides of Ceos addresses him like this: "O child of Aphrodite, cruel, cunning, whom the goddess gave birth to Ares, brave in battles."

What can be understood from this comment? It turns out that the term "Eros" is ambiguous. Further, it is clear that Plato puts into the mouths of his heroes the most varied meanings of this term. For example, one participant in the dialogue Phaedrus speaks of Eros, referring to the statements of Parmenides. The statements of another member of Eryximachus correspond with the narratives of Hesiod and Pherecydes. Orphic motifs also appear in the speech of the third participant, Socrates. Here the following question also arises: how do the different understandings that we meet in the "Feast" relate to each other. On the one hand, love is an irresistible attraction of people to each other. On the other hand, only to their half (the myth of androgynes). The third is passion. From the fourth - rationality and reasonableness. On the fifth - the desire for spiritual perfection and immortality. And so on and so forth. Outwardly, all these interpretations of love look like incompatible, sometimes contradictory.

The next problem is related to the clarification of what, in its own words, the "Feast" is dedicated to. It seems that we are talking about love, because all the characters in the dialogue talk and talk about love. In terms of modern

science, then "Feast" can be defined as the very first attempt to build a theory of love (the science of love). But in the comments to The Feast, Losev writes something completely different: “As for the Feast, Plato uses here at least one very important possibility, namely, he interprets the idea of ​​a thing as the limit of its formation. The concept of a limit is well known not only to our present-day mathematicians. It was well known to Plato too... It is this interpretation of the idea of ​​a thing as its infinite limit that constitutes the philosophical and logical content of the "Feast"... being a poet and mythologist, being a rhetorician and playwright, Plato clothed this eternal desire of a thing to a limit in that which, of all everyday areas, is most distinguished by an endless aspiration, and by the aspiration of the most intense, namely, he attributed it to the area of ​​\u200b\u200blove relationships: after all, love is also an eternal desire and also always has a certain goal, although it reaches it very rarely and for a short time.

It turns out that love is only material for discussing a completely different topic - the concept of the limit. True, why then so many conversations are not on the topic? However, P. Ado believes that "The Feast" is a conversation not about love and not about the limit, but about what a philosopher is. “As in the Apology,” writes Ado, “the theoretical part is reduced here to a minimum: only on some pages, however, extremely important ones, we are talking about the contemplation of the Beautiful; basically, the dialogue is devoted to describing the way of life of Socrates, who appears as an example of a philosopher. The definition of the philosopher, formulated in the course of the dialogue, acquires a clear meaning ... in the course of the dialogue, and especially in the speeches of Diotima and Alcibiades, more and more new common features appear in the guise of Eros and Socrates. And if in the end they do get closer, then the reason for this is simple: both Eros and Socrates embody in themselves, the first - in a mythological form, the second - historically, the image of a philosopher. Such is the deep meaning of the dialogue. So we found at least

at least three different "deep meanings" of Plato's "Feast" (and in fact there are much more of them). Who is right?

Another problem is Plato's strange understanding of love. Judging by the literature, in ancient Greece there were three different forms (types) of love: love between spouses (“filia”), sensual love (“eros”, according to Plato, it is symbolized by Aphrodite vulgar, earthly) and sublime love (cf. later Christian “ agape"). Only love-philia was carried out within the framework of marriage between husband and wife. Sensual love is usually love "on the side", for someone else's wife, for a concubine, for a prostitute (the replica of the heir of the emperor Andrian (II) Aelius Vera, addressed to the lawful wife, belonging to the later Roman era, is known: “It is clear that I satisfy my passions with others: after all, the concept of "wife" means honor, and displeasure ").

Plato's invention is sublime love, symbolized by heavenly Aphrodite. Those who, according to Plato, followed such love, were inspired not by feelings, but by ideas of beauty, goodness, immortality. In addition, this love is most often not a man for a woman, but a man for a man, more precisely, for a beautiful young man, or a woman for a woman (a beautiful girl). Finally, Plato is inclined to think that sublime love does not require marriage, that marriage is, so to speak, contraindicated for her. In the Feast, Plato, through Pausanias, says:

“So, the vulgar Eros of Aphrodite is truly vulgar and capable of anything; this is precisely the kind of love that wretched people love. And such people love, firstly, women no less than young men; secondly, they love their loved ones more for the sake of their body than for the sake of the soul ... That is why they are capable of anything - good and bad to the same extent. The Eros of the heavenly Aphrodite ascends to the goddess, who, firstly, is involved only in the masculine principle, but not in any way in the feminine - it is not for nothing that this is love for

young men - and secondly, older and alien to criminal insolence. That is why those obsessed with such love turn to the male sex, giving preference to what is stronger by nature and endowed with a great mind ... Such is the love of the heavenly goddess: she herself is heavenly, she is very valuable both for the state and for the individual, since she requires a great love from her beloved concern for moral perfection. All other types of love belong to another Aphrodite - vulgar.

Isn't it a strange requirement - the "moral perfection" of the beloved. Is making love an exercise in morality? For Plato, of course. Moreover, he believes that love is a kind of human path leading directly to immortality. “But if love, as we agreed,” he writes, “is the striving for the eternal possession of the good, then along with the good, one cannot but desire immortality. So, love is the desire for immortality.

Objecting to accusations of immorality of men committed to the divine Aphrodite, Plato emphasizes their courage, intelligence, social value, and a special attitude towards marriage. “Some,” says Aristophanes, “truly, call them (beautiful young men.- V.R.) shameless, but this is a delusion: they behave this way not because of their shamelessness, but because of their courage, masculinity and courage, out of addiction to their own likeness. There is convincing proof of this: in mature years, only such men turn to public activity. Having matured, they love boys, and they have no natural inclination for childbearing and marriage; custom compels them to both, and they themselves would be quite content to cohabit with each other without wives. Always having a passion for the kindred, such a person will certainly become a lover of young men and a friend of those who are in love with him.

But maybe Plato's views on love are surprising only for us, while the Greeks themselves took them calmly? Indeed, A. Losev writes that “the theme of love for

to a beautiful young man, with which the dialogue “Feast” is so full, it should not seem so unusual if you approach it historically ... Same-sex love was especially widespread in Persia, and it was from there that this custom passed to Greece, when strong relations began between these countries. Hence the idea of ​​the highest beauty embodied in the body, and it doesn’t matter which one, male or female, but rather male, since a man is a full member of the state, he is a thinker, legislates, he fights, decides the fate of the policy, and love for the body young man, personifying the ideal beauty and strength of society, is beautiful.

I think Losev is only partly right. For antiquity, Plato's views were not only attractive, but doubtful and controversial. At the end of ancient culture, in the dialogue “On Eros”, Plutarch clearly argues with Plato’s “Feast”. The hero of his dialogue, Protogenes, first actually states Plato's point of view. Another participant in the dialogue, Father Avtobulus, on the one hand, agrees that one should not stop in love only with the satisfaction of bodily pleasures, that love attraction must be ennobled, turned into a smart and moral matter, but on the other hand, he proves, in contrast to Plato, that virtue and friendship are inherent in women and that these wonderful qualities are best realized in marriage and family.

“Not much time passes,” says the hero of the dialogue about the beloved, “and they, bypassing the body of their beloved, penetrate to the depths of their being, with open eyes contemplate their moral character and enter into communication with them in speeches and deeds ... It is absurd how I already said, to assert that virtue is generally alien to women. Is it necessary to speak, in particular, about their modesty and prudence, about their loyalty and justice, if many of them showed wonderful examples: courage, heroism and greatness of spirit? But, without denying their beautiful nature, in everything else, to deny them the ability for friendship is completely wild ... Such is the combination

which can truly be called a union as a whole, a union of spouses united by Eros, while the union of people who only live together can be likened to the contact and interweaving of Epicurean atoms, experiencing a continuous series of mutual collisions and repulsions, but not creating any unity, which creates Eros, present during marriage communication. There is no greater joy, more constant affection, such a bright and enviable friendship, as where one soul lives, guarding the domestic order, husband and wife ...

But love for a noble woman not only does not know autumn and flourishes with gray hair and wrinkles, but also remains in force until the grave monument. It is difficult to find examples of the lasting love of boys, but there are no number of examples of women's love.

There is another oddity in the Platonic understanding of love. In the speech of Socrates, love is practically identified with good. “Is not, in a word, love,” Diotima asks Socrates, “nothing else than love for the eternal possession of good? “You speak the absolute truth,” Socrates replies. The revelations of Alcibiades are also characteristic. He tells at length how he tried to seduce Socrates, but that nothing came of it. Socrates remains true to himself: accepting friendship and spiritual fellowship, he ignores sensual love. It turns out that love for Socrates-Plato is only a spiritual matter - friendship, personal improvement, striving for good and immortality. But then is it love?

I want to complete the problematization with the question of how the participants in the dialogue acquire knowledge about love. On the one hand, they, of course, talk about love. On the other hand, they tell some fairy tales-myths, for example, about androgynes. But for some reason, the conclusions from these tales are made completely

serious. Having finished the story of the androgynes, Aristophanes, as if he had proved something, says: “Thus, love is called the thirst for integrity and the desire for it.” But can a fairy tale, very similar to a freshly baked myth, be a source of true knowledge?

Plato's approach to the study of love

How should one relate to the three interpretations of the “deep meaning” of the “Feast” indicated here? Losev's first point of view I must reject, and here's why. First, the discussion of this issue, even if we agree with A. Losev, is given little space in the text. Secondly, speaking about the limit, A. Losev identifies the modern mathematical understanding of the limit with the concept of the limit used by Plato. But analysis shows (see, for example, the studies of P.P. Gaidenko) that Plato uses the concept of limit and infinity, and in just such a connection, in a completely different sense than they say about it in modern mathematics. P. Ado's point of view seems to me justified, as well as the third one, that the nature of love is discussed in the Feast. Now let me turn my attention to the next point.

At first glance, the individual ideas of love put by Plato into the mouths of the characters in the Feast are completely unrelated. So, for example, Phaedrus claims that Eros is a god, and Diotima denies this, saying that Eros is a genius and a philosopher. Eryximachus places Eros in nature, and Diotima shows that Eros is rather a special philosophical way of life, which the very word “philosophy” (love of wisdom) expresses. But upon closer examination, it can be shown that all these separate ideas about love do not contradict each other and are even somehow connected. After all, the philosopher just strives to possess beauty (harmony) and to reveal them in his life and

activities, as well as achieve immortality (that is, become a god). If one does not follow formal-logical criteria, but reads the dialogue meaningfully, there are no contradictions in it. Moreover, each speech introduces its own meaning and coloring into the understanding of love, forming a single Platonic concept of love as a whole.

Let us also recall the method of cognition of love applied by Plato, which includes the assignment of different ideas about love to one idea of ​​love. P. Gaidenko connects this method with the dialectical method developed by Plato, which made it possible to build what we call "a system of scientific concepts" in modern scientific language. However, Plato in his studies, of course, does not speak about a system of concepts (the concept of a system arose only in the New Age), but about “one and many”. To understand what Plato means, it is necessary to clarify his views.

Plato, as you know, proceeds from the belief in the existence of a true world of ideas and another, essentially unauthentic, world of things. He came to such a "picture of the world", resolving the situation of confrontation between the two camps that have developed in Greek culture - the sophists and the Eleatics. Both of them, arguing, came to completely different conclusions. The sophists were sure that knowledge and knowledge subjective that it is impossible to state anything definitely and any knowledge can be obtained about any thing, for example, that movement exists and does not exist, that the world arose and existed forever, etc. Objecting to such an understanding, the Eleatics argued that it only seems to people that something is changing in the world, but in fact, they said, nothing changes, but only whole that is identical to itself. In On Nature, Parmenides writes:

People with two heads.

Helplessly their mind wanders.

They roam at random, deaf and blind at the same time...

Thought cannot be found without the existent - it is expressed in the existent,

There will be no other and no: he is supposed to be rock -

Be still and whole.

Everything else is just names:

Mortals composed them, revering them as truth...

“Plato,” writes P. Gaidenko, “completely agrees with the Eleatics that without the presence of something self-identical (in other words, without the principle of identity), no knowledge is possible.” And then she quotes Plato: "By not allowing the idea of ​​each of the existing things to be constantly identical to itself, he (human.- P.G.) will not find where to direct his thought, and thereby destroy all possibility of reasoning. That is, it can be assumed that one of the meanings of Platonic ideas is that this word denotes contents that retain their structure in reasoning. For this, Plato says in the Phaedrus, definitions are needed to make sure that the one who argues has in mind the same thing, and not different things.

Aristotle in Metaphysics writes the following about the origin of ideas: “Plato, having assimilated the view of Socrates, for the indicated reason recognized that such definitions have as their object something other than sensible things; for no general definition can be given for any of the sensible things, since these things change (however, for the sophists, it is the change- the original fact and reality, and the identity of some object and content is nonsense. - V.R.). Following this path, he called such realities ideas, and as for sensible things, they are always discussed separately from ideas and in accordance with them; for the whole multitude of things exist by virtue of communion with ideas... But only Socrates did not ascribe separate existence and definitions to the common aspects of a thing; meanwhile, supporters of the theory of ideas isolated these aspects and called this kind of reality ideas.

In other words, according to Aristotle, Plato turned definitions or general representations (concepts) into independent entities (realities), interpreting them both as the source and cause of things. A. Losev says

a little differently. The dialogue "Phaedrus", from his point of view, is "the doctrine of ideas as a generative model" in relation to things and the world. It is the world of ideas that Plato considers authentic and divine (“intelligible”). The immortal soul of man, in principle, belongs to this world. But at birth, she forgot the true world and turned out to be dependent on the body, which sensually reacts to the world around the person; from this come changes and different ideas about the same things. These external and deceptive representations of the soul, Plato believes, the sophists just take for the essence and true reality.

In contrast to the sophists, Plato argues that ideas cannot change and form, as we would say today, a kind of system. Plato calls it "one". The condition for true knowledge of the world (“thinking”) is work aimed at understanding the one. According to Plato, reflection allows the soul to recall the world of ideas in which it was before birth. Another result of a person's cognition and work on himself, if they consistently go to the end, that is, to a complete recollection of the world of ideas, is the possibility for a person to "blissfully end his days." By this, Plato understands not only the overcoming of the fear of death, but also the possibility of literal immortality that opens up in this case.

Finally, the understanding of the world of ideas is a condition for the knowledge of ordinary things - "many". “Plato,” writes P. Gaidenko, “emphasizes that it is precisely because in the intelligible world that ideas are correlated with each other, that it is in the logical plan that the one is many, they can be correlated with sensible things and become the subject of knowledge. .. Among the Eleatics, after all, the one acts as a beginning not correlated with anything, and therefore opposite to the many, that is, the world of the senses. The sensual world is contradictory for them, because in it things "combine and separate at the same time." Plato shows that this

“union and separation”, that is, the unity of opposites, is also characteristic of the intelligible world (that is, what the Eleatics call one) and that only thanks to this can the one be named and knowable ... Plato, thus, puts ideas in relation to one to the other and shows that only the unity of the many, that is, the system, constitutes the essence of the intelligible world and it is that which can exist and be known.

This brief overview of Plato's views allows us to understand how the author of the "Feast" acted. He thinks of love as an idea - one thing, and different ideas about love expressed by the participants in the dialogue - this is a lot. By setting love as “the unity of many”, Plato, as we would say today, is building a theoretical subject. In it, various characteristics of love are consistently combined within the framework of a single idea of ​​platonic love.

Analysis of the "Feast" shows that these individual characteristics of love are identified and combined within the framework of a single idea, on the one hand, in the course of reasoning about love, but their role is not very great, on the other hand, on the basis of various schemes. For example, Diotima, entering into a conversation, conducts the following reasoning: since, she says, every desire is a desire for something that one does not possess, and Eros is a desire for beauty and good, then Eros in itself is not yet beauty or good. . If reasoning is generally familiar to us, then working with diagrams, on which the main load falls in the dialogue, requires clarification. In The Feast we find several schemes, which I will first enumerate (in this case, the scheme will be considered primarily as a source of knowledge).

First, in the "Feast" we find a diagram of two Aphrodites. Secondly, the scheme of the androgyne and its metamorphoses. Thirdly, a diagram describing the path of people who, as Diotima puts it, are resolved in love with a spiritual burden. These people, opposed to ordinary lovers, may well be called esoteric, of course, in Platonic

understanding of esotericism. Finally, fourthly, in the "Feast" one can find a scheme in which such qualities as harmony, prudence, wisdom, even the desire for immortality are attributed to love.

Why do I refer to the formations listed here as schemes? Because they are not derived from anywhere in Plato's text, but on the contrary, they themselves are sources of reasoning about love and obtaining knowledge about it; in fact, all the basic knowledge in the "Feast" is obtained on the diagrams. Each subject formation given by the scheme represents a certain integrity in relation to subsequent reasoning about love. Indeed, in telling the story of the androgyne, Aristophanes learns that lovers have an inherent desire to find their soul mate. The division of Aphrodite into vulgar and sublime allows us to attribute various virtues to a man’s love for a beautiful young man, and only a low passion to a man for a woman. According to the same goal, attributing to love unusual (when compared with the common, popular understanding of love) qualities - personal improvement, work on oneself, striving for immortality - are arguments about people who are resolved in love with a spiritual burden. Thus, with the help of schemes, the characters of the dialogue (and in fact Plato himself) receive various knowledge about love.

Another important feature of schemas is that, as a rule, they can become independent objects: they can be analyzed, others can be created on the basis of some schemas, and so on. Recall the above definition of a schema: a schema is an independent object that simultaneously acts as a representation (or image) of another object. It is clear that a schema can also be used in the function of a model (as you know, a model is an object used instead of another object), but the schema still does not coincide with the model. For a schema, it is objectivity that is essential: the schema is an independent object itself and represents another object,

it is, so to speak, an object squared. As the first subject (root), the scheme acts as a source of knowledge, as the second (the square itself) it allows you to transfer knowledge from one subject to another. Finally, no less, if not more essential characteristic of circuits - human activity and thinking are organized on their basis , in this case, methods of obtaining knowledge and organizing their understanding. Therefore, it makes sense to consider the way in which Plato receives new knowledge on the diagrams. Consider for this the story (argument) about androgynes.

First, the story itself is told, namely, how Zeus cut the androgynes in half. The androgyne halves are then identified with men and women, or with different men. Finally, men and women in love are credited with the desire to find their soul mate, since their androgyne descent requires the reunification of the whole. Kant would immediately cling to, for example, the categories "part-whole", "love" and "sex", to say that these are a priori principles, the application of which to real objects (people) required the androgyne scheme. Plato reasoned differently: with the help of a “plausible” story about an androgyne, the soul remembers the perfect idea of ​​love, which was created by the creator. And I, of course, see my own in the reasoning of the hero of the dialogue.

Where, one might ask, does Plato derive his new knowledge of love? He cannot study (contemplate) an object, because there was no Platonic love in culture yet, and the usual understanding of love was directly opposite to Platonic. Plato argued that love is the self-care of each individual person, and the popular understanding in the language of myth said that love does not depend on a person (it occurs when Eros hits a person with his golden arrow); Plato ascribes to love a reasonable beginning, and the folk - only passion; Plato considers love as a spiritual occupation, and the people - mainly as a bodily one, etc. Plato receives new knowledge precisely from the scheme, obviously he

and creates it in order to obtain such knowledge. However, Plato refers this knowledge, having previously modified it (here identification was required), not to the scheme, but to the object of reasoning, in this case, to love. The question arises: on what grounds, because the object does not yet exist? Plato would have objected: how is it, there is no object, but the idea of ​​love, its creator created simultaneously with the Cosmos and the soul contemplated perfect love when it was in the divine world.

But I am not Plato and must repeat. By the time the Feast was created, there was no platonic love yet. Therefore, I can assume only one thing: Plato believes (a modern engineer would say - designs) a new idea of ​​\u200b\u200blove, and for this he needs a scheme. It defines rather than describes a new object; the knowledge obtained in the scheme is attributed to this object, constituting it. The same can be said about other Platonic schemes.

Now the second topic is who is a philosopher and what is philosophy. Plato defines them, on the one hand, as a path, the desire to possess wisdom, goodness and immortality, on the other hand, as a “middle” between wisdom and ignorance, people and gods, death and immortality. “It would seem,” writes P. Ado, “there is nothing simpler and more natural than this intermediate position of the philosopher. He is in the middle between knowledge and ignorance. The conclusion suggests itself that by diligently studying philosophy, he decisively overcomes ignorance and attains wisdom. However, everything is much more complicated. Behind the opposition of sages, philosophers and ignoramuses, a strict logical scheme of division of concepts is visible, which opens up a far from so optimistic perspective. Indeed, by contrasting the wise and the unwise, Diotima thereby established a relationship of contradiction between them, which does not allow anything in between between them ... This division is comparable to another, very common in Plato's school, - the distinction between "good" and "non-good" . Between these two concepts

there is no middle ground, since they are in relation to contradiction, but in what is not good, one can distinguish between what is neither good nor bad, and what is bad. In this case, a relationship of opposition will be established between good and bad, and between them there will be something intermediate, namely "neither good nor bad" ... But what is intermediate is "neither good nor bad" or "philosopher" - allows gradation: the philosopher will never reach wisdom, but he can get closer and closer to it. So, in the "Feast" it is shown that philosophy is not wisdom, but a way of existence and discourse, determined by the idea of ​​wisdom. After Plato's "Feast", the etymological content of the word philosophia: "love, the desire for wisdom" - thus becomes the very program of philosophy.

On the whole, one can agree with P.Ado. Philosophy according to Plato is precisely way of life, way, work, allowing, however, at the very end to possess wisdom, goodness and immortality. This is love as a philosophical way of being, ascending from ordinary love for women to love for beauty, then to love for knowledge, and finally, to love for the world of ideas as such. It is also understandable why it is always the middle and the path. The fact is that if the world of ideas is obtained from the objectification of definitions and concepts, and the world of things (the sensory world) was set in opposition to ideas, if the dispute procedure itself is objectified, where some participants define the subject in one way, and others in the opposite way, then reality is fundamentally understood as being made up of opposites. Moreover, Plato believes that it is from opposites that all objects are formed during the transition from one to the other. In the Phaedo dialogue, Socrates says: “... let's think, is this not how everything in general arises - the opposite from the opposite - in any case, when there are two opposites ... Is there something between any two opposites, as it were, something intermediate? » .

Religious and mythological understanding of love

But philosophy is not only a philosophical way of being, as Plato himself says, it is also "thinking" and knowledge."Feast" is not only a discussion of what a philosopher is, but also what love is. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the understanding of love in early Greek culture differs significantly from that outlined and developed by Plato. Love at this time is understood mainly as passion. Love-passion has many features in common with archaic love: it is sacralized, practically unrelated to marriage, in form it is a scenario, but no longer a hunt, but a struggle-competition.

Reading the early Greek lyrics and myths, you always come to one picture: for love to arise, an external action is necessary - either the goddess Aphrodite or her son, the god of love Eros. This is emphasized by the very way love arises - Eros must hit a person with an arrow from his magic bow. If in archaic culture the father of the unborn child “shoots”, then in ancient times the god of love is now equal to both a woman and a man. But again, love is not the action and effort of the person himself, but what the gods send him, what captures a person like a fire with a bunch of dry firewood. We read from the poets of that time Sappho, Alkey of Messenia and Philodemus:

Eros again torments me exhausting -

A bittersweet, unstoppable serpent.

I hate Eros.

People hater, why is he

Without touching the beast, does he shoot an arrow in my heart?

Will he be rewarded for this?

Your summer is still hidden in the kidney. It's not getting dark yet

Virgin charm grapes. But they are already starting

Fast arrows sharpen erotica, and smolder

Stal, Lysidika, there is a fire hidden in you for a while.

It's time for us, unfortunate ones, to run, while the bow is not yet stretched!

Believe me - soon a big fire will blaze here.

Amazingly, the Olympic gods were in the power of Eros, and Eros himself was in the power of his arrows. When the beautiful Psyche wanted to kill Cupid (the Roman equivalent of Eros) at the insistence of her evil sisters, he stopped her, saying: “After all, I, the simple-minded Psyche, contrary to the command of my mother Venus, who ordered me to inspire you with a passion for the most pitiful, last of mortals and doom you wretched marriage, he himself preferred to fly to you as a lover. I know that I acted frivolously, but, famous shooter, I wounded myself with my own weapon and made you my wife so that you would consider me a monster and want to cut off my head with a razor because these eyes in love with you are in it » .

However, among the Olympic gods, it turns out that there is an exception: three goddesses are not subject to love and arrows of Eros - Pallas Athena, Artemis and Hestia (the goddess of the hearth, that is, the family). Athena, probably because she is the antipode of Aphrodite ("reason", which denies "passion"); Artemis because she is the archaic rival of Aphrodite, because she is the goddess of hunting, and hunting in the archaic, as I show in the work, is a marriage relationship; Hestia because family and passion in the view of the Greeks were not very compatible. And one moment.

We know that one of the central plots of Greek mythology is the love of immortal gods for beautiful earthly women and young men. But why do the gods love them, what attracts them in people? It is clear that it is not intelligence, not virtue, not homeliness, but beauty and virginity, the ability to love and receive pleasure. However, for the people themselves, through the love of the immortal gods, blessings, strength, and birthright descended to earth. Thus the connection between the gods and

was conceived by man primarily through sensual love, through birth (children born from gods and earthly women). Greek sculpture, depicting beautiful naked gods, practically indistinguishable from people outwardly, grasped, artistically expressed this connection.

Plato's construction of a rational concept of love

So, love in the early Greek culture is understood as passion, as bodily pleasure, as an external action in relation to a person, in which he himself participates little. The question is, could Plato be satisfied with such an understanding of love? Probably not. The ideal of Plato as a personality, notes Michel Foucault, is a person’s concern for himself, conscious work aimed at his own change, transformation, transformation (if a person, like Socrates, acts independently and contrary to tradition, then he is forced to do himself). That is the complete opposite of love-passion. Further, love-passion is precisely passion, a state opposite to reason, knowledge, self-knowledge (not without reason that Athena Pallas came out directly from the head of Zeus and is not subject to Aphrodite and Eros), in this state a person forgets everything - both himself and the gods. Again, such love is the complete opposite of Plato's ideas that self-care, including, of course, love relationships, takes its form and completion in self-knowledge, that self-knowledge, like love, should lead to the discovery, discovery of the divine in a person. start. And if so, love-passion is not the path to the Good, not taking care of yourself. Unfortunately, if you follow the concept of taking care of yourself, you have to part with love for a woman. Why? Why, it is with this love that an ancient person associates passion (adultery, love for a hetaera or a prostitute), as well as everyday life, the birth of children, family problems and claims.

And so Plato begins an amazing event - he creates a new understanding, the concept of love, corresponding to his understanding of the life of a philosopher as a person. To do this, however, first it was necessary to "replace" the god of love; Eros, so beloved by the Greeks, behind whom stood Aphrodite, was clearly not suitable for the task set by Plato. Moreover, faith in the old gods has already been somewhat shaken. In the poem "Muses and Cyprida", and Plato, as you know, wrote poetry, we read:

Said to the muses Cyprida: “O girls, you, Aphrodite

Honor, otherwise I will send Eros on you in an instant!

The Muses answered: “Save this chatter for Arey,

We are not afraid, believe me, the winged boy is not at all.

In the Feast, the solution to this problem - the change of Eros - Plato entrusts Eryximachus to Agathon and Diotima, who consistently prove that Eros permeates all of nature, bringing harmony, order, goodness to them, that he is kind, reasonable, finally, wise. When Eryximachus points out that in nature, "and in music, and in healing, and in all other matters, both human and divine," Eros is present, which is manifested in the good arrangement of all these things, he, in fact, hints that love is not passion, but knowledge, science, art, healing, etc. When Agathon says that “Eros does not offend either gods or people”, that “Eros’s violence does not concern”, that “prudence is highly characteristic of him”, then Plato thereby transfers the “train of love” to a completely different path - to a clear consciousness, will and mind.

“After all, prudence,” says Agathon, “is, admittedly, the ability to curb one’s desires and passions, and there is no passion that would be stronger than Eros. But if they are weaker than he, then they must obey him, and he must curb them. And if Eros curbs desires and

passion, he must be recognized as extraordinarily reasonable. Isn't it true, from the point of view of love-passion, Eros is amazing, downright Eros-suicidal?

When Diotima tells Socrates that “wisdom is one of the most beautiful blessings in the world, and Eros is love for beauty, therefore Eros cannot but be a philosopher” (), then Plato, on the one hand, continues the same line - replacements Eros-passion, on the other hand, apparently, having forgotten, slightly reveals his personal interest in the whole event. After all, it turns out that Plato puts on a pedestal not just Eros, but the god of love for philosophers.

Plato then moves from god to man. He defines what love is to a mortal. At first glance, this definition is quite suitable for love-passion. “Love,” says Aristophanes, “is called the thirst for integrity and the desire for it.” However, the continuation of Aristophanes' speech and further the speech of Diotima show that Plato understands both integrity and the desire for it not so much as physical intercourse, but as a search for one's half (this makes sense primarily for the individual), the desire for beauty, goodness, creativity, improvement , immortality. At the same time, Plato introduces an amazing image - people who are "spiritually pregnant", resolving the spiritual burden in improving themselves and creativity.

Plato does not reject ordinary love, which is done, however, not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of birth. And yet he places spiritual conception and birth immeasurably higher than the ordinary, physical. “Those,” Diotima says to Socrates, “whose body strives to get rid of the burden, turn more to women and serve Eros in this way, hoping to acquire immortality by childbearing and leave a memory of themselves for eternity. Spiritually pregnant - after all, there are those who are pregnant with what is just the soul and befits to bear. What is she supposed to carry? Reason and other virtues ... everyone, perhaps, would prefer to have such children than ordinary ones.

Diotima's speech is revealing in many ways. First, it turns out that Plato limits ordinary love between a man and a woman to a very small area - childbearing; by the way, this turned out to be very valuable for the Christian church in the next culture - the medieval one. Further, he states that the object of love is not the body, but the soul; accordingly, the products of love are not passion and pleasure, but spiritual creativity and self-care. Thirdly, the natural object of love in this case is not a woman, but a beautiful young man. And it is clear why: a young man is easy to educate, prone to friendship and the assimilation of beauty. Finally, an important circumstance is that, on the one hand, a young man is not a woman with whom everyday life, the birth of children, love-passion are already associated, and on the other hand, he is somewhat similar to a woman (beautiful, plastic, not coarsened, like an adult man, etc.).

But what is this strange ideal of love, to which Diotima eventually comes - "beautiful in itself, eternal, knowing neither one nor the other"? In fact, this is the ideal of philosophical life, as Plato understands it: the discovery of the divine principle in oneself (it is eternal and cannot change), allowing everything to be understood, to live for the Good, to prescribe to others. The path to this and the way to go - merging together love and spiritual work. Here is an interesting, one might say, esoteric idea of ​​love that Plato created. Let's try to comprehend this material now.

Let's put the question again: did love exist in nature, given by the concept of Plato? What does Plato describe: the forms of love existing in his culture and the qualities of a person associated with them, or ..? Obviously, by the time the "Feast" was created, Platonic love and the corresponding mental properties of the new person did not yet exist. But they soon appeared, since the concept of Plato not only appealed to those philosophizing and simply educated Greeks who were drawn to the new, but also became for them

guidance in the practice of love. In other words, we can assume that Platonic love, as an important aspect of the modern Platonic environment of the new man, was constituted by the efforts of Plato himself and other participants in the new discourse. The means of such constitution were philosophical knowledge and concepts, dialogues of the "Feast" type, and finally, practical examples of the new Platonic love that spread in Greek life in the 5th and 4th centuries. BC.

Of course, in the practice of military education and "esoteric philosophizing" there were prerequisites that facilitated the formation of platonic love, but nothing more. In the end, platonic love had to be invented, intellectually constructed, introduced into the practice of life. In this sense, it can be argued that Plato in his dialogue does not describe some mental properties of a modern person that only he managed to see (although he pretends to be doing just that), but plans, projects these qualities. At the same time, Plato realizes, first of all, himself, his ideas about thinking, about modern man, about his life path, leading, as the great philosopher was convinced, to likening a person to gods, to immortality. It is also important that, as subsequent history showed, Plato's plan for love (in contrast to the Platonic idea of ​​an ideal society and state) was fully realized, that is, indeed, in ancient culture, the features of a new person, so convincingly described in "Pire". The same can be said in another way: in the "Feast" Plato as a person not only realizes his ideas about love, but also creates an image (concept) of love for the becoming ancient personality. Since Plato's own aspirations in this case coincided with the "cultural task" of antiquity, the "Feast" turned out to be so in demand.

9. Plato: the doctrine of love ("Feast", "Phaedrus")

Erotica as an illogical path to the absolute

The theme of the beautiful is in no way connected in Plato with the problems of art. The latter, as a simple imitation of visibility, does not reveal intelligibility beauty. The theme of eros and love is manifested in the discussion of the medium, the bridge connecting the sensual with the supersensible. Eros is the force that gives wings, carries through all the steps of beauty to Beauty in itself, to metaempirical essence. And since for any Greek the Beautiful is not conceivable outside of the Good, then Eros is the force that attracts to the Good, and erotica is another gateway, this is an illogical path to the Absolute. Love analytics is perhaps the most impressive of all written by Plato. Love is neither beautiful nor good, but a thirst for beauty and goodness. Love, therefore, is not God (after all, God is always good and beautiful), but not a person either. She's not mortal, but she's not immortal either. She is one of the demonic beings that bind man and God. .Love, therefore, it is philosophy in the fullness of the meanings of this term. Sophia - wisdom, only God fully owns it. Ignorance is the lot of one who is completely devoid of wisdom. " Philosopher "is, in the exact sense, one who is neither ignorant nor wise, but, not possessing wisdom, he is obsessed with a passion for it; drawn by this insatiable thirst, he is in an eternal impulse: everything, as in a true love adventure.

What people call love in the common sense of the word is only a particle of true Love, the essence of which is the desire for beauty, goodness, wisdom, happiness, immortality, the Absolute. Love knows many roads leading to different levels of goodness (any form of love is a thirst for eternal possession of the good), but only a true lover knows how to overcome them all and reach the highest point of the zenith in order to see that which is beautiful in an absolute way.

a) The lowest rung of the "ladder of love" is physical love, the desire to own a beautiful body and give birth to another body in it. And already here there is a desire for immortality, for "the path is in mortal conception, birth is eternity and immortality."

b) Then comes the stage of enamored fascination not with the body, but with the soul: it carries seeds that germinate in the space of the spirit. Among them we find, in ascending order, lovers of souls, obsessed with art, adherents of justice and law, carried away by pure science.

in) Finally, at the top of our ladder, the dazzling radiance of the idea of ​​the Beautiful as the Absolute awaits us.

In the dialogue "Phaedrus" Plato deepens the synthetic understanding of love as a connecting force, linking it with the theory of remembrance. The soul, as we already know, in its original life, following the Gods in everything, saw Hyperurania, i.e. world of ideas. Then, having lost her wings and gained a body, she forgot everything. But, with efforts, rising above itself, in reflection, little by little, the soul recalls what has already been seen. The specificity of the idea of ​​the Beautiful lies in the fact that the memory of it is "extremely visual and delightfully sweet." This glow of ideal Beauty in a living body ignites the soul, awakening in it the desire to fly, the indestructible will to return to where it was not destined to stay. This is the work of Eros with his longing for supersensible, which returns to the souls their ancient wings, attracting them to heavenly distances. Platonic love is nostalgia for the absolute, an overwhelming attraction to metaempirical, the power that returns us to our original existence among the Gods.

About beauty and love

... When someone looks at the local beauty, while remembering the true beauty, he takes wings, and, having gained wings, seeks to take off; but, not yet gaining strength, he looks up like a chick, neglecting what is below - this is the reason for his violent state. Of all kinds of frenzy, this one is the best in its very origin, both for the one who possesses it and for the one who shares it with him. A lover of beauty who participates in such a frenzy is called a lover. ("Phaedrus")

Thanks to memory, there is a longing for what happened then ... Beauty shone among all that was there; when we came here, we began to perceive its radiance most clearly through the most distinct of the senses of our body - sight, because it is the sharpest of them. ("Phaedrus") Isn't ... love nothing but love for the eternal possession of good? ... Well, if love is always love for good, ... then how should those who strive for it act in order to fervor and zeal could be called love? What should they do ?They are must give birth in a beautiful way, both bodily and spiritually... The fact is, Socrates, that all people are pregnant both physically and spiritually, and when they reach a certain age, our nature demands a release from the burden. But it can be resolved only in the beautiful, but not in the ugly ... Those who have a body that strives to get rid of the burden ... turn more to women and serve Eros in this way, hoping to acquire immortality and happiness by childbearing and leave a memory of themselves for eternity. Those who are spiritually pregnant are pregnant with what the soul is befitting to bear. What is she supposed to carry? Reason and other virtues. Their parents are all creators and those of the masters who can be called inventive. The most important and beautiful thing is to understand how to manage the state and the house, and this skill is called prudence and justice. He (the man-philosopher) rejoices in a beautiful body more than an ugly one, but he is especially glad if such a body meets him in combination with a beautiful, noble and gifted soul: for such a person he immediately finds words about virtue, about how one should be and to what a worthy husband should devote himself, and is taken to educate him. Spending time with such a person, he comes into contact with the beautiful and gives birth to what he has been pregnant for a long time. Always remembering his friend, no matter where he is - far or close, he raises his offspring together with him, thanks to which they are much closer to each other than mother and father, and friendship between them is stronger, because the children that bind them are more beautiful and more immortal. which way you need to go in love - yourself or under someone else's guidance: starting with individual manifestations beautiful, you must all the time, as if on steps, climb upward for the sake of the most beautiful - from one beautiful body to two, from two to all, and then from beautiful bodies to beautiful morals, and from beautiful morals to beautiful teachings, until you rise from these teachings to that which is the teaching of the most beautiful, and you will not know, finally, what it is- Excellent. ("Feast") "Feast" is a philosophical essay about love. The philosopher interprets everything broadly. And he talks about love differently than in the novel. "Feast" belongs to the genre of table conversations that Plato initiated and which had analogies not only on Greek, but also on Roman soil, not only in the literature of antiquity, but also in formative christian literature Middle Ages. Topics table conversations changed over time, but the conversation itself was the second stage of the feast, when, after a hearty meal, the guests turned to wine. Over a cup of wine, the general conversation was not only entertaining, but also highly intellectual, philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic. Entertainment did not interfere with a serious conversation at all, only helped to clothe it in a light, half-joking form, which was in harmony with the banquet atmosphere. "Plato's feast was called" speeches about love. The theme of the dialogue is the ascent of man to the highest good, which is nothing but the embodiment of the idea of ​​heavenly love. As true sins, they speak not of love in itself, but of one that owes its existence to one of the gods. His name is Eros .All the dialogue is a story about a feast arranged on the occasion of the victory of the tragic poet Agathon in the Athenian theater. The story is told from the perspective of Aristodem, who came along with Socrates and was present at the feast. The composition of the "Feast" is very easy to analyze due to the fact that it is easy to trace its structure: between a small introduction and the same conclusion, the dialogue contains seven speeches, each of which treats one or another aspect of the same theme - the theme of love. First of all, attention is drawn to an unusual logical sequence both within each of the seven speeches, and in the ratio of all speeches.

Introduction.

2. For a better understanding of the logic of the dialogue, I would like to give a plan for his speeches, indicating topics and speakers:

a) the ancient origin of Eros (Phaedrus);

b) two Eros (Pausanias);

c) Eros is spilled throughout nature (Eriksimachus);

d) Eros as a human desire for original integrity (Aristophanes);

e) the perfection of Eros ( Agathon);

f) the goal of Eros is the possession of the good (Socrates);

g) disagreement with Socrates (Alcibiades).

The introduction begins with a story about the meeting of a certain Apollodorus from Phaler with a certain Glavkon, as well as the latter's request to tell about the feast in the house of Agathon and Apollodorus's consent to do this from the words of a certain Aristodem from Kidafin, who was personally present at the feast .Further follows the story of Aristodemus about the circumstances that preceded the feast: the meeting of Aristodemus with Socrates, his invitation to the feast, Socrates' lateness, the kind meeting of Aristodemus in the house of Agathon and the proposal of one of the guests, Pausanias, not just to take up the feast, but to each of its main participants to make a commendable speech Eros, the god of love. * With the consent of all the other participants in the feast, Phaedrus begins the conversation about Eros, and moreover, quite logically, since he talks about the ancient origin of Eros. "Eros is the greatest god, whom people and gods admire for many reasons, and not least because of his origin: it is honorable to be the oldest god. And the proof of this is the absence of his parents ... Earth and Eros were born after Chaos ," that is, existence and love are inseparable and are the most ancient categories. Phaedra is still devoid of analytical power and exposes only the most general properties of Eros, which have been talked about since the time of the undivided dominance of mythology. Since the objective world in antiquity was presented as concrete and as sensual as possible, it is not at all surprising that all movements in the world were conceived as a result of love attraction. Universal gravitation, which seemed obvious even in those days, was interpreted as exclusively love gravity, and it is not at all surprising that Eros is interpreted in Phaedrus's speech as a principle that is both the most ancient and the most powerful. He speaks of the greatest moral authority of Eros and the incomparable vitality of the god of love: "He was for us the primary source of the greatest blessings ... if it were possible to form a state out of lovers and their beloved ... they would rule it in the best way , avoiding everything shameful and competing with each other friend", for "... He is most capable of endowing people with valor and granting them bliss during life and after death." In this regard, Phaedrus begins to develop the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe highest value of true love, reinforcing his reasoning with a story about the attitude of deities towards it: " The gods highly value virtue in love, admire more, and marvel, and do good in the case when the beloved is devoted to the lover than when the lover is devoted to the object of his love. inspired by God, and the beloved is grateful for his devotion to the lover.

* Discourse on the nature of love continues in the second speech - the speech of Pausanias. The theory of Eros, set forth in the first speech, even from the point of view of that time seemed too general and alien to any analysis. Indeed, in Eros there is a higher principle, but there is also a lower one. Mythology suggested that the higher is something higher in space, that is, heavenly; and the traditional doctrine of the ancient world about the superiority of the masculine over the feminine suggested that the highest is necessarily masculine. Here Plato approached a very delicate topic, requiring caution in assessments. We are talking about same-sex love, therefore, the highest Eros is love between men. In ancient Greece, this was not a deviation, but rather the norm. .To specific the images embodying higher and lower love, in the speech of Pausanias are two Eros and, by analogy with them, two Aphrodites. Since nothing in itself is either beautiful or ugly, the criterion of the beautiful Eros is his origin from the Heavenly Aphrodite, in contrast to the vulgar Eros, the son of Aphrodite the Vulgar. Aphrodite Vulgar is involved in both the masculine and the feminine. Eros of Aphrodite Vulgar is vulgar and capable of anything. This is exactly the kind of love that worthless people love, and they love, firstly, women no less than young men, and secondly, they love their loved ones more for the sake of their body than for the sake of the soul, and they love those who are dumber, caring only about getting his own way. "" The Eros of Heavenly Aphrodite goes back to the goddess, who, firstly, is involved only in the masculine principle, and not in the feminine, - it is not without reason that this is love for young men, - and secondly, older and alien to criminal insolence. "So, heavenly love is love for a man who is more beautiful, smarter than women. For lovers, everything is allowed, but only in the sphere of the soul and mind, disinterestedly, for the sake of wisdom and perfection, and not for the sake of the body .About generalizing and the following statement seems to be a not too concrete conclusion of this speech: “About any business, it can be said that in itself it is neither beautiful nor ugly. Whatever we do, it is beautiful not in itself, but depending on how this is done as it happens: if the thing is done beautifully and correctly, then it becomes beautiful, and if it is wrong, then, on the contrary, it becomes ugly. be in love".

* The third speech is the speech of Eryximachus. He says that Eros is not only in man, but in all nature, in all being: "He lives not only in the human soul and not only in its desire for beautiful people, but also in many of its other impulses, and in general in many other things in the world - in the bodies of animals, in plants, in everything that exists, for he was great , amazing, comprehensive, involved in all the affairs of people and gods. The idea of ​​Eryximachus about love spilled over the whole world of plants and animals is typical of Greek philosophy. In my opinion, his idea is interesting and astronomy is related to love. * Aristophanes, who speaks fourth, again returns in his speech to man, but not to his soul, but to the body, moreover, the prehistoric body. Aristophanes invents a myth about primitive existence simultaneously in the form of men and women. The people were of three genders. Since these people were very strong and plotted against Zeus, the latter cuts each into two halves, scatters them around the world and makes them look for each other forever to restore their former fullness and power. Therefore, Eros is the desire of the dissected human halves to one another for the sake of restoring integrity: "Love is the thirst for integrity and the desire for it." The speech of Aristophanes is one of the most interesting examples of the myth of Plato's creativity. In the myth created by Plato, both his own fantasies and some generally accepted mythological and philosophical views are intertwined. The generally accepted romantic interpretation of this myth as a myth about the desire of two souls to reciprocate has nothing to do with Platonic myths about monsters, divided in half and always thirsty for physical connection. * Then the word is taken by the owner of the house - Agathon. Unlike previous speakers, he lists individual specific essential properties of Eros: beauty, eternal youth, tenderness, flexibility of the body, perfection, non-recognition of any violence, justice, prudence and courage, wisdom in all arts and crafts and in ordering all the affairs of the gods. * And Now it's Socrates' turn. His speech in The Feast is, of course, central. Socrates leads it in his usual manner, in his own way. He does not utter a monologue, but asks questions and listens to them. Agathon is chosen as a partner. Socrates' speech has its own peculiarity, since he immediately says that he will tell the truth about Eros. It turns out that everyone else was telling a lie. At the beginning of the conversation, Agathon, agreeing with one of Socrates' remarks, says: "I am unable to argue with you, Socrates." To which Socrates replies: “Neti, my dear Agathon, you are not able to argue with the truth, and arguing with Socrates is not a tricky business.” Next, Socrates switches his speech about Eros to a story about a woman named Diotima .Further the simplest concept follows: the goal of Eros is the mastery of a good, but not any individual, but every good and the eternal possession of it. And since eternity cannot be mastered at once, it is only possible to master it gradually, i.e. conceiving and giving birth to something else instead of itself, then Eros is love for eternal generation in beauty for the sake of immortality, for generation as bodily. A mortal being longs to overcome its mortal nature .Further develops the theme of immortality. For the sake of it, love exists, as much evidence as you like can be cited. For example, take ambition. “You will be surprised at its senselessness if you do not remember what I said and lose sight of how obsessed people are with the desire to make their name loud,“ in order to gain immortal glory for eternity, ”for which they are ready to expose themselves to even greater dangers than for the sake of their children, spend money, endure any hardships, finally die.” Another way to achieve immortality is to leave bodily offspring, that is, to multiply oneself. Many say: “I live for my children”, these people seek to establish themselves in genes and thoughts, for this love exists .Now about the path of love. There is something like a science of love. It is necessary to begin in youth with the aspiration to the beautiful. In the contemplation of the beautiful in itself, only the person who sees it can live. In my opinion, we must strive for the best from the very beginning, gradually climbing "up the steps higher and higher." “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). This is where the meaning of love is revealed.

PLATO (C. 428-347 BC)

Plato is a philosopher, a prominent representative of ancient objective idealism, an ideologist of the slave-owning aristocracy. Plato was born around 428 in Athens and belonged to an ancient Muathenian family. From about 408, he became a student of the philosopher Socrates. After the process of Socrates and his death, Plato had to leave Athens; he lived in Megara and traveled a lot. Returning to Athens, he began to teach at the Academy, where he founded his own school .FROM Having tried his hand at poetry in his youth, Plato also clothed his philosophical teachings in the form of artistic dialogues, in which he subtly outlines the various nuances of the characters of the characters, introduces vivid, sometimes quite poetic descriptions, and generally shows himself to be an artist, a master of words. The artistic dialogues of Plato influenced the development of the philosophical dialogue of Voltaire, Didro and others. We give excerpts from two dialogues - "Feast" and "Phaedrus". In these dialogues, Plato reveals his aesthetic ideal, which stands in connection with his doctrine of ideas. Plato appears here not only as a philosopher, but also as a writer-poet.

The great Plato is a worthy disciple of the great Socrates, who did not leave his writings. Plato and Socrates were like-minded people. No wonder Socrates is the main character in Plato's famous dialogues.

Plato reveals the levels of love in the dialogue "Feast". He writes: “Who wants to choose the right path ... must begin by striving for beautiful bodies in youth ... then he will understand that the beauty of one body is related to the beauty of any other<…>After that, he will begin to appreciate the beauty of the soul more than the beauty of the body ... thanks to which he will involuntarily comprehend the beauty of manners and customs, and, seeing that all this beauty is related to each other, he will consider the beauty of the body to be something insignificant. From morals he must pass to the sciences and, striving for beauty already in all its diversity ... turn to the open sea of ​​\u200b\u200bbeauty ... until, finally, gaining strength and improvement here, he will not see that only knowledge that concerns beauty<…>

Whoever, guided on the path of love, contemplates beauty in the right order, having reached the end of this path, he will suddenly see something amazingly beautiful in nature ... eternal ... This beauty will appear to him not in the form of some face, hands or other part of the body, not in the form of some kind of speech ... but in itself, always in itself uniform<…>And in the contemplation of the beautiful in itself ... only the person who sees it can live,<…>because he understands the truth<…>the love of the gods is given to him, and if any of the people is immortal, then it is he.

Plato names four levels of love. It is the love of the beautiful human body in youth; love for human mores, customs; love for the sciences and, finally, love for the beautiful, beauty that exists eternally by itself. Plato's last level of love is the sweetest and most important. When contemplating the beautiful, a person comprehends the truth - knowledge - wisdom. He acquires the love of the gods, necessary for him to live. It is to the knowledge of this, the last level of love, that a person should strive.

This question is the main one in the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, and it is revealed in many ways. Let's remember the popular expressions of Socrates: "Know thyself"; "I know that I know nothing" ; "I wish to die many times". To understand these winged expressions of his, it is necessary to consider the important aspects of Plato's philosophical worldview.

The main concept in Plato's philosophy is "one". One - non-existence, nothing, exists infinitely, eternally, is the cause of the Universe. The One is incorporeal and is not life. "... this reason is endowed with reason and divine knowledge ...". The divine unity contains the program, the laws of development of the future Universe. This knowledge is of natural origin. It exists on its own. The reason for this is unknown. The One Before Being.

Non-existence with being formed a bizarre plexus, writes Plato. Plato defines the divine unity as beautiful. The divine unity at the beginning of the development of the Universe passes into the idea of ​​"good" - the first level of being (the world of intelligible ideas), which also, it turns out, is not life. "... the good itself is not existence." The first level of being is divine, existing as beautiful - beauty, which is identical to justice.

The idea of ​​"good" is a genuine, true being. It receives from the eternal idea a "single" knowledge - a program, the laws of development of the future Universe. The idea of ​​“good” will permeate everything that is born and become a divine essence, the same in everything (both in nature and in man), containing the knowledge of the future Universe. "... if I know one thing, then by the same token I know everything."

“... the thought of every soul ... having seen [genuine] being, even if only for a short time, appreciates it, feeds on the contemplation of truth and is blissful ... it contemplates justice itself, contemplates prudence, contemplates knowledge - not that knowledge, which is inherent in the emergence ... but true knowledge contained in true existence. Having enjoyed the contemplation of all that is true being ... ".

The idea of ​​“good” will become cognizable by man, and the knowledge contained in it, which has passed from eternity, will be absolute truth, that is, such knowledge that will not change with time. “... the idea of ​​the good is the most important knowledge.” Plato connects the knowledge of the idea of ​​“good” with science, “by studying which we would live the rest of our lives with dignity” and with the help of which we could make others worthy people.

If you know yourself, then you will acquire knowledge about the Universe, about its laws of development, of which the moral law is the main one. The knowledge of oneself becomes the highest destiny of a person, since the knowledge of the natural moral law has the power to lead a person through life. “The majority believes that knowledge has no power and cannot lead and command<…>knowledge is beautiful and able to control a person, so that the one who knows good and bad, nothing will force him to act otherwise than knowledge commands<…>there is nothing stronger than knowledge, it always and in everything overpowers pleasures and everything else. This is how nature strives for man to live according to her laws.

All those who in history became a Buddha, a sage, a blissful person or were initiated into the mysteries, recognized their divine essence, which is the same in everything, acquired knowledge of the laws of the nature of the Universe (the law of unity in diversity - the divine in everything, the moral law). They understood the meaning of life and could help people to go in their cosmic evolution.

In ancient Greece, love was called by different words: “eros”, “philia”, “storge”, “agape”. And this has a definite advantage. Perhaps the ancient Greeks had less reason for misunderstanding than we have today, since in ancient Greece all kinds of love had a certain name, and if people talked among themselves, everyone knew exactly what the other person meant. Today, when someone talks about love, and they listen to him with understanding, and, in the end, it turns out that one interlocutor meant love for one's neighbor, and the other, for example, erotica.

"Eros" among the ancient Greeks is mainly sexual, passionate love. Love that borders on insanity. People who are prone to this type of love can do crazy things. There are even cases where people commit suicide because of love. However, passionate love is insane and short-lived.

A calmer love is philia. This love has a very wide range of meanings than "eros". It is also not only love, but also friendship. "Filia" is more like love than amorousness. "Filia" is also called love for parents, for comrades, for one's city, for a beloved dog, for brothers, for one's homeland, love for knowledge, love for God, as well as erotic love, since "eros" is one of the types of "philia". ".

"Agape" is even softer love than "philia". It is based on sacrificial and condescending love for the “neighbor”. It was this understanding of love that Christianity praised. Christians used to have "agape" - fraternal meals. “Storge” is love, affection, especially it, prevails in the family, when people are already so attached to each other that they cannot imagine life without each other. But I want to note that such love happens not only in the family.

Plato's doctrine of love deserves attention and appreciation, not only because Plato stood at the origins of erotic philosophy and later had followers, but also because his doctrine of eros contained a wealth of “points” and “lines” of the possible that he outlined. understanding of both love itself and the phenomena associated with it, including reason, knowledge, up to the person himself and being in general. That is why it is important and relevant to identify all the potentialities of Plato's erotic philosophy that can enrich other areas of philosophy, including ontology, anthropology, and epistemology.

In ancient Greek thought, there is almost no attempt to understand what love is. The exception is the myth of androgynes, told by one of the characters in Plato's dialogue "The Feast". And also another explanation of the nature of love voiced by Socrates, in the same Plato's dialogue "Feast".

The myth of androgynes tells that once upon a time people were of three sexes, and not two as they are now - male and female, and there was also a third sex that combined the signs of these both sexes. People then had a rounded body, the back did not differ from the chest, they had four arms and legs, two faces that looked in different directions, there were four pairs of ears and there were two shameful places. “Such a person moved either straight, to his full height, just like we are now, but either of the two sides forward, or, if in a hurry, walked on a wheel, bringing his legs up and rolling on eight limbs, which allowed him to quickly run forward.”

Having strength and power, they wanted to overthrow the gods and take their place. When the gods found out about this, they thought for a long time how to prevent this. At first they wanted to kill them, but this was not beneficial for the gods, since there would be no one to honor them. And then Zeus said: “It seems that I have found a way to save people and put an end to their rampage by reducing their strength. I will cut each of them in half, and then, firstly, they will become weaker, and secondly, more useful for us, because their number will increase. And when the bodies were thus cut in half, each half rushed to the other half, they hugged, intertwined and, longing to grow together again, died of hunger. And when one half died, the survivor looked for the other half and intertwined with it. So they slowly died. Then Zeus took pity and rearranged the shameful places forward, which used to be behind, so that people could continue their race.

“So, each of us is a half of a person cut into two flounder-like parts, and therefore everyone is always looking for the corresponding half,” says Plato. However, it is not easy to find exactly your half, so people find consolation at least in a temporary connection not with their half of the suitable sex. That is, if a man was previously part of a bisexual androgyne, he is attracted to a woman, and, accordingly, a woman, separated from the male half, to a man. “Women, who are half of the former woman, are not very disposed towards men, they are more attracted to women, and lesbians belong to this breed. But men, who are half of the former man, are attracted to everything masculine.

When the two manage to meet their halves, they are seized by an incredible feeling called love.

For Plato, eros is the motivating force of spiritual ascent, aesthetic delight and ecstatic aspiration to contemplate the ideas of true existence, goodness and beauty. Plato is the first consistent representative of objective idealism in Europe, the founder of this philosophy. Plato's objective idealism is the doctrine of the independent existence of ideas as general and generic concepts. Plato preached universal harmony all his life. Plato believed that only love for beauty opens one's eyes to this beauty, and that only knowledge understood as love is true knowledge. The harmony of the human personality, human society and all the nature surrounding man - this is Plato's constant and unchanging ideal throughout his entire career. Ideas are eternal, unchanging, identical, independent of the conditions of space and time. The world of things is the world of eternal emergence and death, movement and variability, in it all properties are relative, limited by the conditions of space and time.

Knowledge is remembrance. Prior to its entry into the shell, the soul dwelt in heaven and contemplated the truly existing there. Having united with the body, the soul forgets what it knew, but in the depths this knowledge remains. Perceptions of material objects remind the soul of forgotten knowledge. Ideas are known through intuition, independent of the senses of perception, the senses of a thing are reflected only in opinions, which do not give true knowledge. The middle between imaginary and genuine knowledge is occupied by mathematical knowledge.

Plato's theory of knowledge: a person has innate ideas, he discovers the world for himself, remembering them. Before knowing a thing in all manifestations, one should know the meaning of a thing, i.e. contemplate ideas with the mind. The stimulus for knowledge is love for beauty, i.e.:

a) love for a beautiful body in order to give birth to a new body and satisfy the desire for immortality;

b) love for the soul - a thirst for justice, legality, passion for art, science;

c) love for knowledge - for the world of ideas (Platonic love), the return of a person to the bosom of the One Good. Knowledge = meaning, not feeling: a foreign language is perceived, but the meaning is incomprehensible. Knowledge is not true opinion, because truth is related to falsehood. A lie is something that does not exist, a non-existence that is impossible to know. Therefore, it is not known what truth is.

Cognition is the process of contemplation by the mind of higher entities. 2 stages:

1) Cognition is carried out by a pure soul before birth.

2) After entering the body, the soul retains, but does not realize knowledge.

In the process of birth, the soul remembers the knowledge that it saw before. The main means of recollection is the method of dialectics, conversation.

In Plato, knowledge is inherent, or in philosophical language, immanent, to the spirit of man - Hegel. Socratic schools of the subjective form of philosophy (which dealt with the education of a person so that he acquires wisdom and thus becomes happy) questions of knowledge take the form of the question of whether it is possible to teach virtue? For the Sophists (Plato's teachers), the question of knowledge was the question of whether sensation is true, this question of the Sophists about knowledge is connected with the question of the difference between science and opinion (only opinions are based on sensations). Plato goes further, arguing that knowledge does not come into the consciousness of a person from outside, but is already contained in it (consciousness), so to learn, according to this, means to be aware of one's own essence. Therefore, the deep meaning of the word remembrance is this: remembrance is withdrawal into oneself or inwardness. Plato thus believes that ideas have always existed in time, they are not created by the human mind, and truth has always existed in the old days. Plato conveys this not as a philosophical teaching, but as a legend or tradition that he received from priests and priestesses. According to these traditions, the human soul is immortal, and again periodically returns to existence.

Plato's dialogue "Feast" also gives an explanation of the origin of the god Eros. It says that Eros is the son of a god and a beggar woman. And that is why he is always poor and, contrary to popular belief, not at all handsome and gentle, but rude, untidy, not shod and homeless; “He wallows on bare ground, in the open air, at doors, in the streets, and, like a true son of his mother, he does not get out of need. But on the other hand, he is paternally drawn to the beautiful and perfect, he is brave, bold and strong, he is a skillful catcher, constantly plotting intrigues, he longs for rationality and achieves it, he has been busy with philosophy all his life, he is a skilled sorcerer, sorcerer and sophist ". Eros is by nature mortal from his mother, but immortal from his father: one day he can die and come to life. This explanation is given by Plato to the origin of Eros. Another explanation of the nature of love voiced by Socrates in the same Plato's dialogue "Feast" sounds something like this. People do not strive for wholeness at all, but they want to achieve immortality. He says that there are people who are pregnant in the body and pregnant in the spirit. When two spiritually developed people meet, a spiritual offspring is conceived. “Always remembering his friend, no matter where he is - far or close, he raises his offspring together with him, thanks to which they are much closer to each other than mother and father, and the friendship between them is stronger, because the children connecting them are more beautiful. and more immortal. And everyone, perhaps, would prefer to have such children, and not ordinary ones ... ". The children of the soul are various works of art, literature, architecture, and the like. People who give birth to spiritual children become immortal, they are always remembered, and their names pass from century to century, from century to century. This is another explanation of love in ancient philosophy.

An essential role in the teachings of Plato is played by the theme of love attraction (eros). For his merit in the philosophy of love, he was even called the "philosophical chief apostle of Eros." Indeed, Plato, perhaps, most of all dealt with the issue of love. There is also an opinion that "love analytics is perhaps the most impressive of all written by Plato."

The very concept of love in ancient times rarely became the subject of research (although it did happen). But about how it happens, a whole classification was built. For ancient philosophers, love as a cosmic force was the foundation that explains the entire universe and world order. This is reflected in the mythological images, first of all, of Aphrodite (Venus) and Eros (Cupid).

Eros in Plato regarded as the desire of the soul for the good.

Plato comes out with the exposure of bodily love, which significantly narrows the horizon and strives, firstly, only for pleasure, and secondly, leads to a possessive attitude in relationships, essentially wanting to enslave, and not make free. Meanwhile, freedom is an unconditional good that love can give in human relations.

In its simplest form, it is expressed in passion for a beautiful person and the desire for immortality, achieved by the birth of children with this person. A higher form of love involves spiritual union and the desire for sublimity, the creation of a public good. The highest form of Platonic love is the love of wisdom, or philosophy, and its apex is the comprehension of the mystical image of an idea. good.

“This is the path you need to go in love - yourself or under someone else's guidance: starting with individual manifestations of the beautiful, you must all the time, as if on steps, climb upwards for the sake of the most beautiful - from one beautiful body to two, from two to all , and then from beautiful bodies to beautiful morals, and from beautiful morals to beautiful teachings, until you rise from these teachings to that which is the doctrine of the most beautiful, and you will not know at last what it is beautiful "(Feast, 211 c-d).

Love helps to quickly take the first steps on the philosophical path:

here we experience that very surprise (after all, it is the beginning of philosophy), which makes us stop and recognize in some person, one of many, unique and unique;

it helps to know why deep feeling and personal experience cannot be expressed in words, or at least in ordinary words;

she teaches what it means to strive for a favorite subject, thinking only about it and considering it the most important, forgetting about everything else.

These lessons of sensual love, in any case, help to better understand Plato's philosophical metaphors associated with true knowledge, aspiration, focus on the essential and rejection of the unimportant.

Plato argues that in love, it is not the search for a soul mate that is realized, but the desire for goodness and immortality, the preservation of oneself in eternity through procreation. And it's not just about childbearing as such. In addition to "pregnant body" Paton specifically highlights " pregnant spiritually", i.e. giving birth to virtues, discoveries, creations. It is precisely such "offspring" that is immortal.

"Isn't ... love nothing more than love for the eternal possession of good? ... Well, if love is always love for good, ... then how should those who strive for it act so that their ardor and zeal can be call love? burden. But it can be resolved only in the beautiful, but not in the ugly ... "(Peer, 211 s-d).

Those whose bodies are trying to get rid of the burden ... turn more to women and serve Eros in this way, hoping to acquire immortality and happiness by childbearing and leave a memory of themselves for eternity. Those who are spiritually pregnant are pregnant with what the soul is befitting to bear. What is she supposed to carry? Reason and other virtues. Their parents are all creators and those of the masters who can be called inventive. The most important and beautiful thing is to understand how to manage the state and the house, and this skill is called prudence and justice.

Plato, considering earthly love a step on the path to heavenly love, not rejecting the "lower eros" (and not only theoretically. Athenaeus, for example, exclaimed: "Aristotle (Plato's student) had a son, Nikonachus, from Hetaera Herpellis, and he loved her to the very death, because, as Hermippus said, he found in her the complete satisfaction of his needs, and did the beautiful Plato not love Archanassa, the hetaera from Colophon ... "

As wisdom gains, a person begins to value spiritual beauty above bodily beauty and "ripens" to a higher love, which is the essence of creativity. In fact, that's where the name comes from. platonic love- from the Platonic theory of eros.

One of the difficult tasks of the Platonic philosophical view is to see in the world a single principle, which is precisely good, is solved by analogy with the theme of personal love of a person for a person. But, according to Plato, the tragedy of personal love will always be that it often obscures the main thing: the body obscures the soul, the individual and his beauty - the beauty of truth and being.

The truth of love will always be in following the path of love as the path of philosophy and seeing behind the body the soul, behind the transient beauty - the enduring beauty of virtue and ideas, which in turn cannot but lead to goodness and God.

Plato's ideas about love could not but have a strong influence on society. It manifests itself in the concept of sublime love, so popular with the troubadours of the early Middle Ages. Some even tend to see Plato's understanding of eros as an early sketch of Freud's shocking sexual fantasies.

Today, platonic love has been reduced to a very narrow sense, meaning an almost extinct form of attraction between opposite sexes. Even the theory ideas of Plato, aimed at the mystical comprehension of Beauty, Truth and Good, has now lost most of its ethereal grandeur. She claims that the world is arranged in the same way as the language with its abstractions and concepts, which are based on even higher abstractions. This position may be controversial, but at the same time it is difficult to refute it. Plato assumed that the real world is not the way we perceive it and describe it through language and experience. And why, in fact, it should not be so? In fact, it doesn't look like he was any different. But will we ever know?

What is the result of this complex Platonic concept of love? Where does Plato end up?