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cgod · 4764 days ago · link · · parent · post: TIL Plato didn't believe in Platonic love and supported erotica
Read "The Symposium," it's Plato dialog on erotic love. It's very dense and subtle, get a companion reader to go along with it if you hazard it on your own. "Plato didn't believe in Platonic love and supported erotica" is like summarizing the universe by saying that it has stars in it. If you are uptight about homo-sexuality then you probably shouldn't read this, it's pretends to be about erotic love between men. The whole dialog is based abound a bunch of leading Athenians getting together to have a wine party and then for each man to make a speech about the virtues of homosexual love. Plato turns the whole thing on it's head, you'll think it's about love between men and boys, then about how masculine bonds preserve the state and all of a sudden it's about god, all explained via erotic speeches and dialogs.
Not my favorite Plato, but very entertaining. If you have some kind of guide you can get a lot more out of it. There are definitely translations to get and others to avoid. Avoid stuff that says it makes it accessible to the modern reader ect ect. Plato was subtle and because of the homoerotic bent of the book there have been more then a few editions that were printed for other then academic pursuits.
But according to this article, what he wrote, even as "subtleties," might have been misinterpreted. It sounds like he was writing a bunch of this in code so that, if we read what he wrote through the musical and mathematical code, it might not be so subtle. In fact, it might be very clear what he was trying to say. I'm looking forward to reading this when it's fully decoded.