Love and Beauty in Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium

Love and beauty is another theme that recurs in Greek discussion, especially in Plato’s dialogues. In the Phaedrus and especially the Symposium, Plato discusses the nature of erotic love and give the argument for the ultimately transcendental object of love: Beauty. In both dialogues, Plato presents Socrates as a quintessential philosopher who is a lover of wisdom, and through his great speeches we are able to grasp Platonism and Plato’s view on the interesting theme.

Let’s first focus on the Phaedrus, where Plato gives a detailed account of the psychology and the art of love. Socrates first introduces a thought-provoking analogy, comparing the soul to “the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer” (246a6). One of the horses represents modesty and self-control, while the other one is full of excessive appetite. The charioteer (which could be interpreted as human’s rational element as mentioned in the Republic) tries to suppress the bad horse so that he can leads the chariot “toward what is best and in control” (237e3). However, if he is unable to do so and let the bad horse take control, “appetite drags us irrationally towards pleasure and rules in us, its rule is call excess (hubris)” (238a1). If love is controlled purely by the drive toward pleasure, this kind of erotic love is bad, as Lysias rightly belittles in the Symposium. In Socrates' view, however, there is also another kind of love, namely:

“The madness of a man who, on seeing beauty here on earth, and being reminded of true beauty, becomes winged, and fluttering with eagerness to fly upwards, but unable to leave the ground, looks upwards like a bird, and takes no heed of things below—and that is what causes him to be regarded as mad.” (249d5-e1)

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...eauty of soul is more beautiful than the beauty of body, and as a result of this produce and express such thoughtful reflection that will make young men better. He becomes the lover of knowledge, turning toward the entire realm of beauty. Finally, he grasps a single form of most important knowledge: the form of Beauty, which is unchanging and unbecoming, eternal, non-perishing, and uniform. Just as the team of winged horses and charioteer flying through heaven in the Phaedrus, the lover eventually reaches the same end in the Symposium.

After studying the two dialogues, we’ve found that the concepts of love and beauty are inseparable in Plato’s philosophy. Love, despite not being beautiful in itself, is the love of beauty, and as love evolves, the lover ultimately acquire the ability to go through heaven to the realm of transcendental forms where Beauty lies.