溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
What Is It in the Person That I Love?
Do I love the person's outward form, or the person within?
You would give bronze and get gold in return.
Alcibiades's confession knots the whole Symposium's question of bodily and spiritual love into a person's story. Rather than lowering outward beauty, Plato sought to make it the first rung ascending toward the beauty of the soul. The later ascetic tradition pushed the distinction to its extreme, seeing bodily love as something to transcend entirely; the moderns doubted the hierarchy again and spoke of an integrated love. Does love begin in outward form and deepen into character, or must it aim at character from the start? The question still divides the heart that sees attraction as love's beginning from the heart that sees love as what lies beyond it.
In an age that picks and filters people by the image seen at a glance, Alcibiades's question — what in the person do I love — turns love's eye inward.
Arriving late and drunk, Alcibiades confesses his love for Socrates.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Arriving late and drunk, Alcibiades confesses his love for Socrates. He had tried to trade his own youthful beauty for Socrates's wisdom, but Socrates, unmoved by outward beauty, turned toward his soul. A youth who meant to bait wisdom with beauty instead learns what it is to be loved for the soul rather than the body. I feel this reversal is love's touchstone. What in the other does my love reach for — the outward form that will fade, or the person that will remain? I ask where in the one I love my eyes are resting.
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