Bring Me a Higher Love

BRING ME A HIGHER LOVE

On Valentines’ day My friend resolved herself in believing that she is in love with the guy who she has been dating for couple of months, this poured in significance in that moment. Many people express their feelings of Love, unity and Trust towards one another through intimacy. Later, they may conceal that this bond what they called ‘Love’ was nothing but Lust that broke apart leaving behind nothing worth remembering. One can also call this temporary Love as “Love” but according to me it is Base love which is a bodily infatuation temporarily based and self-centered. In Plato’s Symposium, Plato speaks of many different types of love, love that can be taken as lust as well. I will concentrate on Pausanias, who is the life-long lover of Agathon and one of the guests at the party. He believes that there are two forms of Love- Common Love and Heavenly Love.

Common Love is the love felt by the vulgar: those who are attached to women as much as boys, the body more than the soul, and unintelligent partners as they care only about completing the sexual act (181b-c). when a man and a woman join merely to satisfy their sexual desires. This type of Love, works at random, and produces children, working solely for sensual gratification with men's feelings, for money, for loving physical bodies, boys, men and women. Common Love causes man to act irrationally, emotionally. It is this type of love that causes jealousy and anger in mates. On the other hand Heavenly Love does not "partake of the female." Exclusively homosexual (male-male); Comes only from the male and pertains only to men, who love them for their superior souls and minds and is more spiritual. It is not directed toward little boys (from whom one can derive only sexual gratification) but toward slightly older youths with whom an intellectual relationship can be fostered. Women, who are incapable of offering men the intellectual stimulation needed in love are, again, declared incapable of partaking in heavenly love. This type of Love is felt by those who are attracted to the male whose "cheeks are showing the first traces of a beard" and have "begun to form minds of their own", rather than to young boys or women. With this sort of love, one desires to spend the rest of his life with his beloved, and does not aim to deceive or take advantage of the beloved (181c-d). According to him Common love is that is performed improperly and shamefully, while Heavenly is that which is performed honorably and properly.

Pausanias says that when we consider an action in itself, we cannot tell if it is good or bad. It is good when it is for a good cause and bad when for a bad cause. For example, the pressing of a knife into someone’s chest. This is bad if done by a murderer and good if done by a surgeon. “Murder” is by definition a wrongful killing. So, it’s true by definition that murder is wrong. But this does not refute Pausanias’s point. For he will say: “Look at the action in itself.” The pressing of the trigger, the pushing in of the knife. This action can be good or bad depending on circumstances, ultimate and proximate goal, etc. So what Pausanias is claiming is that we can always describe an action on a level on which it is not morally loaded, on a level from which we cannot tell if the action is right or wrong. Moreover, Pausanias thinks that the word “love” is not morally loaded: love can be good or bad, depending on what actions are associated with it. (184de).

Pausanias says Love is only beneficial when it is directed towards the end of goodness. He believes that lovers should work on to improve their loved ones and help them gain wisdom and the loved ones should also reciprocate the learning. If the outcome is virtuous then what so ever the case may be either partners are justified and honored for their doings. It is only honorable to take on a lover if the beloved believes that the older lover will "make him better in wisdom or any other part of virtue" (184c); if the beloved is deceived in this and the lover is in reality lacking in virtue, it is still noble for him to have been deceived, as he has shown himself to be one "who will do anything for the sake of virtue" (184e-185b).

“The main purpose of love, then, is to produce virtue, and love pursued for any other means is wrong, regardless of the consequence. Pausanias gives an example by comparing a boy who is humiliated