Love and Beauty

Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but the desire or pursuit of wisdom and beauty. Love is expressed via propagation and reproduction, as in the exchange and development of ideas. Socrates in the Symposium best expresses this belief. Socrates' view of Love and Beauty was that one is the pursuit of the other, and that other is the greatest of all knowledge. Love is a driving force, a compulsion forward to a goal. Much as a moth is drawn to light, for its heat, people are lured to Beauty by Love.

Love is an emotion, and like all emotions, we are compelled to an action by it. As Anger might drive us to violence, against that which is hated, Love does lead us to adore that which is Beauty. Love has many forms as well. There is physical love, the attraction and appreciation of something for it's physical characteristics. This applies to both love for another person's physical beauty, or to other physical forms as well. A good example is one's love for a particular view of scenery in nature or, someone's love for a specific food. These things represent an aspect of Beauty, they are beautiful, and therefore incite love in the minds of those who behold them.

Emotions contribute to another form of Love. This is love for a person's inner beauty, the beauty of their person on an emotional level. This form is more limited, for example, it's difficult to form an emotional attachment to a painting or to a bagel. This form is also not as common as physical love in that it cannot be developed in an instant, but more it requires extended contact and familiarity. For this reason, emotional love is usually accompanied by physical love, for physical attraction to a person would allow for the time and experience required to develop a basis for emotional love.

Socrates believed that Love's goal was to reproduce itself in beauty. That is, a form of beauty in either an intellectual form or a physical form should be passed on and perpetuated, and things beautiful are things that are good. Through reproduction these things of beauty are given immortality. Plato reveals Socrates view through a dialogue between Socrates and Diotima:

"All of us are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. That's because when a man and a woman come together in order to give birth, this is a godly affair. Pregnancy, reproduction Ð'- this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it cannot occur in anything that is out of harmony, but ugliness is out of harmony with all that is godly. Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. Therefore the goddess who presides at childbirth Ð'- she's called Moira or Eilithuia Ð'- is really Beauty. That's why, whenever pregnant animals or persons draw near to beauty, they become gentle and joyfully disposed and give birth and reproduce; but near ugliness they are foulfaced and draw back in pain; they turn away and shrink back and do not reproduce, and because they hold on to what they carry inside them, the labor is painful. This is the source of the great excitement about beauty that comes to anyone who is pregnant and already teeming with life: beauty releases them from their great pain. You see, Socrates, what Love wants is not beauty, as you think it is." (Plato, 102)

Diotima makes a clear point that Love seeks immortality through reproduction, her analogy explains this well for the physical examples of love, but this also applies to ideas and thought. If an idea is Good, and Beautiful, then it is loved. A loved idea is one that is compelled toward immortality through reproduction. Thoughts and ideas reproduce themselves through discussion and education. Ideas are passed down to another generation and with each successive education, the life of the idea is extended, into infinity.

"Men who are pregnant in body, then, turn to women Ð'- to engender within their kind; while those who are pregnant in soul conceive and bring forth wisdom (the most important species of which are self-mastery and justice), together with other forms of excellence. Men pregnant in this way Ð'- poets, inventive craftsmen and the life Ð'- look for persons who are beautiful, and taking the education of these in hand,