Platonic aspirations
Plato is famously dubious of the passions. This makes it surprising that the path to a meaningful life—the path to and through philosophy—described in the Symposium centrally involves an intense passion. This is the desire at the heart of eros—the desire to possess beauty.
To many, this sounds ethically suspect. Talk of a desire to possess suggests a desire to own, control, dominate. But this is not the sort of possession Plato had in mind. Instead, Plato had something more intellectual in mind. To possess a beauty is to understand it. Love, then, is a passion directed at understanding the beauty of the beloved. This might still be ethically suspect, but it is also romantic.
I regularly teach an introduction to philosophical aesthetics. One of my main goals for the class is to show the students how philosophical aesthetics can enrich their aesthetic lives—something that they all have. I try to achieve this goal through many means, but a central one is having them keep a weekly journal of reflections on particular objects of aesthetic interest. They can write whatever they want in these reflections. They just have to focus on a single item of interest.
Most of the students enjoy this exercise, at least eventually. But they almost all think it is hard. As we go, the Platonic aspiration becomes clear (although it isn’t fully revealed until the end). They become more and more focused on understanding why the objects they pick are the way they are aesthetically—usually, what makes this so compelling? Sometimes they write beautiful things that make me desire to possess the objects they are discussing.
I never follow my own pedagogical lead by writing such a journal—too hard! But I need to try to focus more on beauty. So, at least for time being, this will be a place where I will write about the things I love by trying to explain why they’re beautiful. My goal will be to write one a week. Hopefully, like my students, I will produce a bit of beauty myself.