柏拉图式的爱情

Platonic love Love is an eternal topic in human life. When it comes to love, it always raises the biggest emotion, reaction and passion. But what is love? I think love is that feeling you get when you meet your Mr. or Ms. Right. Just like sentence “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.” We are twenty-something. This is a time when we feel confused about love. We have different opinions about it. After know about the platonic love, I begin to take a new look at love. Plato is the founder of objective idealism so he believes that there is something outside the material world. There exists a spirit world where lives a goddess of love who pursues nice and pure love. Platonic love is a type of love that is chaste and non-sexual. It contains three love views: ideal love, spiritual love and equal love. Ideal love Plato says “every man is a poet when he is in love”. If a person is touched by goodness of love, he will become a poet. Even if he used to be a coward, now he can brave enough to express his love. But as far as I can see, ideal love just exists in secret love stage. That is to say, when we are ignorant of love, we begin to imagine a perfect figure which we are desperately eager for in our mind. That’s the reason why prince charming and snow white show up. Long before, I believe that there exists fairy tales love in the world and wait for appear of my love and Mr. Right. But gradually I realize I am wrong. In fact, ideal love is virtually nonexistent, but it will be of great significance and be conducive to our love view. It reminds us of looking for practical love rather than ideal love. Nowadays many girls want to marry a kind of men who are tall, rich and handsome. Maybe she’s just not that into him, she just likes his reputation, status and money. This kind of love is not chaste. The true meaning of love is changed. Spiritual love Plato gives more emphasis to spiritual love, which expresses that spirit communications outweighs physical contact. He admitted the existence of the world of physical things, but he believes there is a higher, spiritual realm, composed of eternal form of ideas which only the mind can conceive. He thinks that when humans don’t have strong demand for sensual things, our mind is peaceful. When the soul and the body have been separated, the body has lost its ability to give commands to the soul. He claims that spirit communications is beautiful and moral. If two people have the same spiritual world, they will love each other. What they really do are exchanging their ideas and expressing what they think rather than talking about sex. The thought of Plato about love is all concentrated in “Symposium”. In “Symposium”, He refers to a controversial issue—homosexual. There is an interesting statement about it. It said that people used to be a meat ball which actually included two people, so there were three possibilities: two men, two women or one man and one woman. Because humans were much too smart, so the god split humans into two parts to weaken them. That’s the reason why we begin to look for another part when we come to the world. Naturally, homosexual appears. In “Symposium”, he stresses that in a pure, spiritual love, it has no gender distinction. He put a higher priority on spiritual communication rather than sex. This point perfectly encompasses Plato’s spiritual love. Nowadays, there are a lot of gays and lesbians. But I think they are different from what Plato has put forward. Most of them even lack of spiritual communications. I think it’s a freaky love. Love has always been two things. The most important thing is that two people must have common interests and thoughts. That’s the basic of love. But I don’t believe that pure, spiritual love really exist in our real life. Sexual passion is natural and belongs to love. Sexual love is a rather central part of anybody’s love. In turn, sexual love can further their affection and spiritual communication. Equal love Platonic love is an equal love. There is no attachment or ownership. Both sides are voluntary. He stresses that love begins with a specific person, but it ultimate love is goodness. In the process of pursuing truth, goodness and beauty, two people who have the same spiritual though can help each other. They are mutually reinforcing relationship. In some sense, they are equal. Nowadays, because of the influence from history, women’s oppression, discrimination and gender inequality still exist in real life. The relationship between men and women should be equal in love and everyone has right to pursue their true love. I have learnt a lot from platonic love. I will try my best to put it into my love in future.