LITERATURE: Phaedrus – Equality in Love

One of the things I’d noticed in Symposium, and that Phaedrus elaborates upon in his opening statements to Socrates in Phaedrus, is a further separation of form of love into lover and beloved.  This notion has become foreign to us in this day of equality, of choosing partner by love that is mutual (although by no means is this a fact in all relationships).  But another point that Phaedrus makes is more relative; that of the honesty between non-lovers becoming of more importance in its very freedom:

Further, I say that you are likely to be improved by me, whereas the lover will spoil you. For they praise your words and actions in a wrong way; partly, because they are afraid of offending you, and also, their judgment is weakened by passion. Such are the feats which love exhibits; he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no pain to others; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied. But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath-unintentional offences I shall forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent; and these are the marks of a friendship which will last.

This to me brings up the notion of more perfect love.  The unions formed by friendship rather than romance or lust.  It doesn’t depend upon gender, and as a matter of fact, should not be affected by it.  While in Plato’s time the man/youth relationship was a strong and loving one, it was affected eventually by sexuality, just as still today we see the bonds of male/female relationships and the possibilities negated often by the implied physical form of love. 

I’ve always fought this notion; even when greatly proven wrong time and again.  My greatest friends in largest number have always been male.  Unfortunately, my partners have almost always needed the inclusion of a sexual relationship to comprehend the friendship.  So it is not hard to understand the bond of man to man, woman to woman, in the comprehension of the way of thinking, and yet the gender places boundaries on that love–for it is often truly love that brings the minds together.