Introduction

Abstract

The theme of this book is Plato’s teaching about love or, to use his term, eros.¹ I take as a guide one particular puzzle in the statements of Plato’s Socrates about eros: his curious tendency to waver in his evaluations of it, his praising eros to the heavens on one occasion only to criticize it most harshly on another. It could seem that Socrates is confused about eros. If he were, he would not be alone in his confusion. As the poets attest, some ambiguity is common in our evaluations of eros. All who have had a taste of love sympathize with Romeo when he says:

Come what sorrow can,

It cannot countervail th’ exchange of joy

That one short minute gives me in her sight.

Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then love-devouring Death do what he dare—

It is enough I may but call her mine.²

But we are just as likely to find some truth in Benvolio’s assessment of Romeo’s love: “Alas that Love, so gentle in his view, / Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof”³ And we often hold two views of love at once, as Sappho eloquently testifies: “Eros loosener of limbs once again trembles me, / a sweetbitter beast irrepressibly creeping in.”⁴