Will Bassing - Alexander Nehamas discussion of Plato's Symposium

Alexander Nehamas writes an interesting discussion regarding The Symposium.  In The Symposium, it is discussed that there are levels of love, and whatever falls below the ladder of love is discarded.  So if the first “rung” of the ladder is physical beauty, then when the love of the next rung is discovered, the love of the physical beauty is discarded, according to Plato.  This is quite controversial, because how can one discard and abandon love for a person, and then move on to love a concept.  Gregory Vlasots defines love as “first and foremost the love of individuals.”  Vlasots describes Plato’s explanation of love as “loving the ‘image’ of the Idea in them.”  Also, that according to Plato, we are only loving the Goodness and the Virtues that a person possesses, and since man is imperfect, if we were to find the perfect Form of the same goodness and virtues that the beloved person possessed, human nature would be to discard the imperfect and fall in love with the perfect.

I think both of these arguments are very extreme.  On one hand Plato is very logical and states that it is human nature to love the perfect form of something, and that as we grow older and wiser, our knowledge of more and more perfect things appears, so we discard the imperfect.  Vlascots is saying that we can only have love for individuals. I agree with Plato that as we find things closer to perfect we love them more.  If you had really bad tasting coffee, and then found really good tasting coffee, you would discard use of the bad tasting coffee.  It is a lower rung and therefore is discarded.  This example works, but I do not believe that the same can be said of love.  If a man love’s his wife because she is loyal, honest, and virtuous, then LOGICALLY speaking (following the coffee logic) when he meets another woman who is more loyal, more honest, and more virtuous, then he will discard his current wife for the other woman.  According to logic there is nothing wrong with this.  However I do not believe that love is a logical emotion.  I believe that individuals love other individuals for their faults as well as their positive attributes.  And since no man or women is perfect, it would be a very impossible task to keep leaving women for a “more perfect” women, since the ultimate perfect woman does not exist.  I believe that the “ladder of love” is not applicable to love for individuals.  I believe it is applicable to the forms.  If I find beauty in one individual, I should attempt to find the core of the beauty and apply it to other things, and then discard the idea of the beautiful person, and refine it to “the beautiful.”  Refine the idea, not discard the individual.