Platonic love

Platonic love (often lower-cased as platonic) is a type of love, or close relationship, that is non-romantic. It is named after Greek philosopher Plato, though the philosopher never used the term himself. Platonic love as devised by Plato concerns rising through levels of closeness to wisdom and true beauty from carnal attraction to individual bodies to attraction to souls, and eventually, union with the truth. This is the ancient, philosophical interpretation. Platonic love is contrasted with romantic love.Platonic love is examined in Plato's dialogue, the Symposium, which has as its topic the subject of love or Eros generally. It explains the possibilities of how the feeling of love began and how it has evolved—both sexually and non-sexually. Of particular importance is the speech of Socrates, who attributes to the prophetess Diotima an idea of platonic love as a means of ascent to contemplation of the divine. The step of this ascent is known as the 'Ladder of Love'. For Diotima, and for Plato generally, the most correct use of love of human beings is to direct one's mind to love of divinity. Socrates defines love based on separate classifications of pregnancy (to bear offspring); pregnancy of the body, pregnancy of the soul, and direct connection to Being. Pregnancy of the body results in human children. Pregnancy of the soul, the next step in the process, produces 'virtue' – which is the soul (truth) translating itself into material form. ' virtue for the Greeks means self-sameness in Plato's terms, Being or idea.'(106) 'Eros is a moment of transcendence in so far as the other can never be possessed without being annihilated in its status as the other, at which point both desire and transcendence would cease (84) 'So this is how I assert that Eros is the oldest, most honorable, and most competent of the gods with regard to the acquisition of virtue and happiness by human beings both when living and dead.' (180c, 8) – Plato's quoting of Phaedrus' eulogy on Eros ' what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is good ' ' decent human beings must be gratified, as well as those that are not as yet decent, so that they might become more decent; and the love of the decent must be preserved.' (187d, 17) - Eryximachus' 'completion' of Pausanias' speech on Eros 'Now, if both these portraits of love, the tragic and the comic, are exaggerations, then we could say that the genuine portrayal of Platonic love is the one that lies between them. The love described as the one practiced by those who are pregnant according to the soul, who partake of both the realm of beings and the realm of Being, who grasp Being indirectly, through the mediation of beings, would be a love that Socrates could practice.' In the Middle Ages arose a new interest in Plato, his philosophy and his view of love. This was caused by Georgios Gemistos Plethon during the Councils of Ferrara and Firenze in 1438-1439. Later in 1469, Marsilio Ficino put forward a theory of neo-platonic love in which he defines love as a personal ability of an individual which guides their soul towards cosmic processes and lofty spiritual goals and heavenly ideas (De Amore, Les Belles Lettres, 2012). The first use of the modern sense of platonic love is taken as an invention of Ficino in one of his letters.'Platonic love in its modern popular sense is an affectionate relationship into which the sexual element does not enter, especially in cases where one might easily assume otherwise.' 'Platonic lovers function to underscore a supportive role where the friend sees her or his duty as the provision of advice, encouragement, and comfort to the other person and do not entail exclusivity'