Plato’s Phaedrus in emails – email 5

Socrates in his speech, rival to the speech of Lysias, addresses a fair boy as a non-lover:

“If we mean to deliberate successfully about anything, we must know what it is we are deliberating about.  The question before us is whether one should rather enter into friendship with lover or non-lover. We must therefore begin with a definition of Eros, what he is, and what power he has.

Everyone will agree that Eros is a desire, and we know that men desire beautiful boys without being lovers. How are we to distinguish the lover and the non-lover?

In each of us there are two guiding principles: 1/ an innate desire for pleasure, and 2/ an acquired judgement that aims at what is best. In the non-lover the 2^nd principle has mastery over the 1^st; he is guided by the judgement that aims at what is best. In the lover the 2^nd principle is overpowered by and subjected to the 1^st. He is dragged towards pleasure he derives from the beautiful boy he loves.

Eros is irrational desire, pursuing the enjoyment of beauty, which has gained mastery over the judgement that prompts to right conduct.

 

With this definition before us, let us discuss whether love is beneficial or injurious.

A man dominated by desire and enslaved to pleasure is a sick man. He will always seek to make his beloved weak and feeble. He debars him from the advantages of society, which would make a real man of him, and especially from society which would give him wisdom. No access to philosophy can he possibly permit to his beloved, for he dreads becoming an object of contempt. He is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. Making him totally dependent, he secures the maximum pleasure to himself, and does the maximum damage to the boy’s mind.

And as to the body, he will be pursuing someone soft rather than tough, brought up in a shadowed light rather than in the light of the sun, who for lack of natural charm makes himself beautiful with artificial cosmetics and ornaments.

A lover is disagreeable for a boy to spend his days with, as he sees a face which is old, and with everything else that follows on that, which it is unpleasant even to hear mentioned, let alone to be continually compelled to deal with.

A lover is harmful while his love lasts, and when it’s spent, he is untrustworthy for the days to come, for which he promised many things, and so barely held the boy to bear his company, painful as it was. Now, when he should be paying what he owes, he changes in himself, adopting sense and sanity instead of love and madness. His beloved demands a return for favours done in the past, and so he runs away. The boy runs after him, crying indignantly to high heaven, totally unaware that he ought never to have granted favours to a lover, inevitably demented, but far rather to a non-lover who is possessed of reason and is master of himself.

Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the attentions of a lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you. As wolves love lambs, so lovers love their beloved boys.