Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity

2 First Truths

2 first truths Desire and longing—what the Greek world called eros—don’t fare too well in Plato’s political dialogues. In the Republic and the Gorgias, the dialogues in which the relation between eros and politics is most extensively addressed, eros is presented as a tyrannical passion that easily leads to political tyranny and almost always leads to civically destructive selfishness and injustice. Eros is disparaged even in the private sphere, in which it is depicted as enslavement to insubstantial and evanescent pleasures. The possibility of a more benign eros is acknowledged, but such an eros turns out to be unlike anything to which most of us would attach that name and unlike even what the Greeks, with their broader conception of the term, would have recognized as eros. For a happier view of eros we need to turn to two of Plato’s nonpolitical dialogues, the Phaedrus, in which Socrates sings the praises of eros as ‘‘divine madness,’’ and the Symposium, Plato’s most extensive and sustained treatment of the subject in which six and arguably seven speakers eulogize Eros. Or so it seems at first glance. In fact, things are more complicated than this. First, the dialogues’ respective stances toward eros are considerably more ambiguous than I have suggested. Eros is not altogether denigrated in the political dialogues, nor is it simply lauded in the other two. Second, the themes of the dialogues are less simple than the labels I have affixed to them. The Republic is not simply about politics. The Symposium, conversely, is about politics, in part. (So, for that matter, is the Phaedrus.) Yet the initial impressions do reflect something real, having to do with the dialogues’ respective perspectives or starting points. The Republic views even the nonpolitical from the standpoint of the political, so that, for example, philosophy comes to light as ‘‘justice’’ in the soul and enters the conversation because of the question of political rule. The Symposium, by contrast, views the political from the standpoint of the nonpolitical, from the standpoint of individual need or longing. Indeed, the Symposium views the political from the standpoint of the most fundamental need or longing, and for this reason it enables us to see things 52 platonic eros—the effectual truth about politics that a reading of any of the more overtly political dialogues, including the Republic, does not so readily reveal. In this way the Symposium not only introduces new themes, but also leads us to view those of the Republic in a new light. (Perhaps it will lead us, or should lead us, to view those post-Platonic works that owe so much to the Republic in a new light as well.) My goal in these next chapters is to discern from the Symposium, sometimes in conjunction with the Republic, important features of Plato’s political teaching , features of what one might call the effectual truth of Platonic eros—that is, the political implications of this not-essentially political passion. And because the political is addressed from the perspective of the needs of the soul, we may also hope to learn something about those needs themselves. The present chapter will be devoted to opening the question of eros and preparing for Chapter 3’s analysis of what I take to be the most far-reaching of Plato’s responses: Socrates’ speech in the Symposium. Chapter 4 will turn to persons —particular persons, though exemplary ones. Whether divine or daemonic , after all, eros is emphatically a human thing, and it needs to be understood as a powerful practical and political force in the world. This exploration should better prepare us to raise the question whether and how the Platonic teaching on eros provides or points to a principle by which we might determine and rank human goods. This question will be treated in Chapter 10, where I will also put the same question to our other two thinkers. Understanding that the question of goods inevitably turns on the vexed question of the Good, we mustn’t hope for much more than a few provisional and incomplete observations. But if the Good as such is too bright for most of us to look at or even to see, there still might be a possibility to judge the brightness of life’s many particular goods. No one dialogue contains the whole of Plato’s teaching on eros or even on the political ramifications of eros. A full understanding of these...