DRAFT

Beyond eros: Friendship in the Phaedrus

Plato is often held to be the first great theoriser of love in the Western tradition, and
yet his account has been taken to be a resounding failure by many, if not most,
modern scholars working on this topic. Criticisms have been articulated forcefully by
Vlastos whose seminal paper „The Individual as an Object of love‟ charged Plato with
„cold-hearted egoism‟; his account, he argued, disdained persons in favour of abstract,
conceptual, objects – the so-called Platonic Forms, and advocates a „spiritualized
egocentrism…scarcely aware of kindness, tenderness, compassion, concern for the
freedom, respect for the integrity of the beloved, as essential ingredients of the highest
type of interpersonal love‟ (Vlastos (1981/2000: 642)). The evidence is roughly as
follows. In the Symposium Plato argues that the highest form of eros, roughly,
„passionate desire‟ is love for Forms, and beautiful bodies and souls are to be used „as
steps‟ towards this end. The Lysis appears to be the only exploration of friendship
(philia), and this is an inconclusive work. At best, it is held, the lack of an account of
love and friendship for persons compares unfavourably with Aristotle‟s detailed
account of philia, which occupies two books of his Ethics and is, arguably, central to
his account of human flourishing; at worst, this omission supports the view of Plato as
„a cold-hearted egoist‟ who disdained persons in favour of abstract objects. If Plato
thought philosophy could answer the question how should one live, in one crucial
area of his thought the life worth living is not, apparently, a life worth choosing; as
Aristotle made explicit, no one would choose to live without friends.
This paper challenges this view. I will argue that the view of love that Plato is
commonly taken to have held, and which is the target of this and other such critiques
is not, in fact, representative of Platonic love at all.1 I hope to reshape this debate, first
by arguing us out of a particular misreading of Plato‟s Symposium, and second, by
encouraging us to explore the largely neglected account of philia in the Phaedrus. I
argue that this work provides an account of love and friendship for persons, which
satisfies more of the criteria that we (including Vlastos) take to be central to love. In
exploring this account we shall also, I hope, go some way towards mitigating the
egoism many find so objectionable in Plato‟s ethics.

I Platonic Love: The Old Version and its Failures

It was Ficino who coined the phrase amor platonicus and he did so on the basis of
reading the Symposium. This is the text most people turn to when searching for
Plato‟s views on love, and it has influenced a diverse range of thinkers from Dante to
Freud.2 I begin, then, by laying out the basic framework of this account and its core
criticisms before arguing that we should not, in fact, be focusing on this text for
Plato‟s account of interpersonal love. The Symposium consists of a series of speeches
in praise of eros, „passionate love‟ or „desire‟, and its role in the good human life. At
its core stands an argument for the superiority of the philosophical life as the happiest
life (211d), and the central claim that the satisfaction of eros is to be had in the
contemplation of the Form of the Beautiful, or Fine (this translates the Greek term
„kalon’ which was a general term of appraisal with both aesthetic and moral

1
Scholars who inherit this debate from Vlastos‟ (1981) article include Nussbaum (1986), Kosman
(1977), Gill (1990), Price (1989), Rowe (1998).
2
On the reception of the Symposium and its influence on modern thinking about love, see Lesher, Nails
and Sheffield (2006).

1
connotations).3 In one of the most famous passage in the Platonic corpus Socrates
describes an ascent of desire through a hierarchy of different beautiful objects. He
argues that a lover should start by loving the beauty of one body (210a). He must
come to realise next that the beauty of all bodies is similar, and then that they are one
and the same (b4). Next one comes to love the beauty of soul, and then the beauty of
laws, practices and sciences, until one can finally know, and love, what beauty is, in
itself (211d1-3). This passage, and specifically the claim that eros is best satisfied by
union with an abstract intelligible object, is at the root of much unease about Plato‟s
view. The proper end of eros is the Form of Beauty and persons or things are loved
insofar as they instantiate that true beauty.

„This is what it is to approach love matters, or to be led by someone else in them, in

the correct way: beginning from these beautiful things here, one must always move
upwards for the sake of that beauty I speak of, using the other things as steps from
one to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, from beautiful bodies to beautiful
activities, from activities to beautiful sciences, and finally from sciences to that
science, which is science of nothing other than beauty itself, in order that one may
finally know what beauty is, itself (211c1-d1; trans. Rowe).‟

Various criticisms have been levelled at this as an account of love. First, the idea that
eros is a response to beauty seems to lead here to a state of affairs whereby beauty is
the real object of the lover‟s attention at every stage, rather than the person or thing
which possesses it. So Vlastos, for example, has argued that the lover loves only „a
complex of qualities answering to the lover‟s sense of beauty, which he locates for a
time truly or falsely in that person.‟ (1981: 28). The account is not about love for
persons: „What it is really about is love for placeholders of the predicates „useful‟ and
„beautiful‟‟(1981: 26). Second, the account assumes a homogeneity of value such that
one can exchange one beautiful object for another and come to view them as part of a
„wide sea‟ of beauty. If the qualities instantiated by a person or thing are repeatable in
this way then they become replaceable by any other person or thing that exhibits the
same, or more of, that desired quality. The upshot of this is that the uniqueness and
irreplaceability that some (e.g. Nussbaum (1986)) see as central to love for human
beings, at least, is lost.4 Third, love for the beauty of persons is ultimately
instrumental in the ascent to an understanding of the Form of Beauty: lower loves are
to be used „as steps‟ towards this goal (211c). This violates our notion that love
involves a recognition that individuals have intrinsic value. We seem to care that love
recognises the other, at the very least, as a centre of valuation and agency, and not just
as an object of arousal. At best, we think that love involves the idea that we love
another person „for their own sake, not our own‟. This, at any rate, is the measure
Vlastos uses as a standard for judging the Platonic material (and which he finds in
Aristotle). It is not always clear what is involved in the latter notion, but (since
Aristotle) it has involved a contrast with instrumental or utility love, whereby one
uses a person for the sake of some further end (e.g. pleasure, or wisdom here). „End
love‟, as it is sometimes now called, is taken to involve an active desire to promote
that person‟s good for their sake, not for ours.5 The notion that there is a degree of

3
On this issue see the detailed discussion of this term in Nehamas (2004).
4
See Nussbaum (1986) 165-95.
5
Vlastos write that „Aristotle‟s wishing another good for his sake, not ours, though still far from the
Kantian conception of treating persons as ends in themselves, is the closest any philosopher comes to it
in antiquity.‟ See Vlastos (1969) 10 n.24.

2
care and concern for the wellbeing of the loved person is central to many ancient and
contemporary accounts of loving relationships.6 All three of the claims made for the
Platonic account above, namely that it focuses on persons as „placeholders for
predicates‟, that loved qualities are repeatable and replaceable, and that loved persons
or things are treated instrumentally, violate many of our strongest intuitions about
love.
In much of the criticism of Plato‟s view a pivotal contrast is that between
„loving someone for their own sake‟ and loving them „as a placeholder for
predicates‟, as Vlastos puts it. Treating a person as a placeholder seems to involve
abstracting a quality of merit from a person and disregarding their individual worth.

„If A is valued for some meritorious quality, m, his individuality does not enter into
the valuation. As an individual he is then dispensable; his place could be taken
without loss of value by any other individual with as good an m rating…No matter
how enviable a package of well rounded excellence A may represent, it would still
follow that, if he is valued only for his merit, he is not being valued as an individual.‟7

Socrates does commit himself to the view that persons are desirable insofar as they
exhibit the quality of beauty. Eros recognises and responds to the perception of value
(201a8-10, b6-7, c4-5, 202d1-3). We might not find this much objectionable. Some
traditions reserve unconditional love only for God.8 The concerns with a value based
view of love are typically taken to involve the following: (a) if you respond to value
then individuals might be replaceable by other individuals who also exhibit the same
or similar valuable properties; (b) you are not loving the whole person, but their best
properties; (c) you might get something out of them, hence this does not count as a
real case of „end love‟.
Scholars have tried to extricate Plato from some of these concerns. Kosman,
for example, has argued that there are some valuable properties that are so
determining of who a person is that in loving them for those properties we are, in fact,
loving them as persons – for themselves (1976: 53-69).

„If I love A because of P, or love the P in A, I should not be said to love something
other than A if P is what A is. Thus, to love A for its beauty, it to love A for itself.‟ 9

If we assume (and there is reason to do so) that Plato and Aristotle held a teleological
view of nature according to which the real nature of a thing is revealed in its fullest
and best stage of development, then idealizing an object of love – seeing them as
beautiful, perhaps, - is to see them as they really are. So, to love someone for their
beauty is to love them for themselves. But even if we could explain the relationship
between the quality of beauty and an individual body or soul best expressed in some
such way, we would need to say more to silence Plato‟s critics. This might allow us to
say that persons are valued, but not yet that they are valued as unique and
6
See, for example, Frankfurt on the importance of „disinterested devotion to [the beloved‟s] well-
being‟ in „Autonomy, Necessity and Love‟ (1994) and „On Caring‟ (1999). Cf. Taylor „Love‟ (1976)
157: „If X loves Y then X wants to benefit and to be with Y etc., and he has these wants because he
believes Y has some determinate characteristics X in virtue of which he thinks it worthwhile to benefit
and to be with X.‟ Cf. Rawls on the relationship of love and other directed concern (1971) 190; Soble,
„Union, Autonomy and Concern‟, in (ed.) Lamb (1997) 65-92.
7
Vlastos (1962) 44.
8
On which, see Nygren (1982) 76-7.
9
See Kosman (1976) 64.

3
irreplaceable.10 Nor does it deal with what is arguably the central problem that
beautiful bodies and souls have instrumental value in the ascent to ideal beauty.
Although scholars too readily assume that the relationship between particulars and
Forms is that between means and ends, so that particular bodies and souls necessarily
bear an instrumental relationship to the Form, the fact that all beautiful objects are
here, in the end, to be used „as steps‟ in an ascent to the Form of Beauty strongly
suggests that one‟s attitude towards these beautiful particular things at the very least
includes an instrumental role for them here.11 And if we accept Kosman‟s promising
account of the relationship between beauty and the real self, then in some sense the
account is worse. We are to be loved as persons – recognised as we really are – and
then seen as part of a „wide sea‟ of homogeneous value and used for the sake of an
understanding of the Form. Part of what we take to be involved in the concept of a
person (since Kant, at any rate) is that persons are treated as ends (idealized or not). If
Socrates is advocating a view of love according to which persons (however
conceived) are valued only instrumentally, then whatever interpretative moves that
are made will fail to address the central problem that an adequate account of love
must accommodate our intuition that this involves care and concern for individuals
who are recognised as subjects of experience and valued as ends in themselves. In the
account of an ascent to the form as the highest kind of eros Plato spectacularly fails to
do this.

II eros as the aspiration towards happiness

The account fails, I want to argue, because we have lost our sense of what the passage
is about. I want now to argue for two specific claims. The first is that Socrates makes
it plain that it is both a semantic and a philosophical confusion to think that eros
centrally refers to interpersonal love. It refers, more broadly, to the desire for good
things and happiness. All that Socrates is committed to, then, is the more plausible
claim that a desire for an individual per se is not a desire for a proper eudaimonistic
telos (that is, an individual is not a constitutive good of happiness, or its proper telos).
The proper telos of happiness is an intelligible object – the Form of Beauty – the
contemplation of which is held to be constitutive of the best human life (211d). An
implication of the first claim is a second, namely that the ascent in the Symposium
does not, as is commonly held, show us interpersonal love „sublimated‟ from earthly
to divine. All it shows is that the desire for happiness is (a) believed by Socrates to be
satisfied in the acquisition of wisdom of a certain sort, and (b) that within the context
of the acquisition of wisdom beautiful bodies and souls have instrumental value as
objects of understanding. Whether eros is the only response one might have towards a
person, or whether a person is reducible to a property like the kalon, are further
questions not addressed or answered by this text. We might well want to ask whether,
and how, personal affection, or loving relationships, are to be integrated within a

10
Arguably, though, the ancients were less concerned with such criteria for personhood. On this issue,
see Gill (1998).
11
The relationship between particulars and forms can be construed differently. Since particular things
embody, albeit partially, the intrinsically valuable character of the form, one might take it that they
exemplify the nature of the form. In this way they still have a relationship to the further end (the Form),
but this relationship need not be construed instrumentally; rather, it is a way in which that further end
(the Form in this case) is manifested. On this distinction, see Adams (2002) 153. Cf. Williams (2007)
122-3 who argues that the notion of an intrinsic good might better explain the role of the Form here,
and this is not one that can simply be mapped onto the distinction between a final good and an
instrumental one.

4
happy human life. But this is a further, different, question and one that is not easily
settled on the basis of an examination of the Symposium’s ascent.
There are two facts about the term eros that are relevant to Plato‟s use of the
term in the Symposium. First, in Greek literature eros signified any intense desire
aroused by the stimulus of beauty. It could be used of desires for persons, for food,
sex, or war.12 Plato did not strain the term beyond recognition in using it to refer
beyond an attachment to individual persons. Second, eros centrally referred to the
experiences of a desiring agent of some sort. One does not expect the love of other
persons for their own sake to enter into a discussion of eros, nor again the reciprocity
of affection that ideally characterises a relationship of philia, for example (often
translated as „love‟ or „friendship‟). In the Phaedrus Plato employs a new term:
anteros, to describe a sort of echo of eros which returns back from the beloved to the
lover (255d8). Furthermore, the tradition of pederastic eros which provides the larger
context for this discussion, did not traditionally include the love of other persons for
their own sake, but rather an exchange of benefit for both parties – pederasteia for
philosophia, as one of the speakers in this dialogue puts it (181c). Feelings of care and
concern may, of course, result from some of these interpersonal erotic attachments,
but they are not entailed by them. Given these considerations many of the criteria
employed in this debate are simply misplaced. If the discussion were concerned with
philia – often translated as friendship, or love, a term used to cover affection for
family and friends, for example - we might more reasonably expect the account to
cover those features of our interpersonal lives. But the Symposium is not (centrally at
least) about this phenomenon.13
Socrates clarifies how he conceives of the topic under consideration at the
start of his speech. He argues that eros is a response to value – perceived beauty in a
desired object – that aims at some good we currently lack and desire (206a12). We
desire good things because we believe these to be central to, or constitutive of, our
happiness. This is the telos of desire because no one would ask, as they might of other
desired good things, why we desire happiness (205a1-3). There is a question here
about how far this definition of eros as the area of desire concerned with good things
and happiness is a departure from standard Greek usage, and the agenda set in the rest
of the dialogue by his peers.14 Even if we concede that one would not expect a
discussion of reciprocal affection, or love of persons for their own sake, from a
discussion of eros, if Socrates‟ use of the term is a significant departure from current
usage then it may, after all, be argued that Socrates is transforming a predominantly
interpersonal phenomenon into something much broader and quite different. The fact
that Socrates claims that people have confused a part of eros for the whole
phenomenon and so they mistakenly use the term eros to refer to sexual love
exclusively, suggests that he does see himself as doing something distinctive (205b).
He argues that the extension of the term is wider, and applies to the love of money,
athletics and wisdom, indeed it applies to anything which we make a central object of

12
On this issue, see Ludwig (2002) 8.
13
On this issue see Halperin (1986) 60-80; Ferrari (1992) 248-9; Kahn (1996) 261. Kahn argues that
„In such a theory the object of desire is only initially or instrumentally a person. Reciprocal relations
between persons would have to be treated in an account of philia which Plato did not develop‟ (1996)
261. Vlastos (1981) was clearly sensitive to these nuances, but he believed (a) that Plato held a unitary
theory of love with philia and eros as distinct species and (b), that since the Lysis failed to deliver an
adequate account of love of other persons „for their own sake‟ in its discussion of philia, it was
legitimate to search for this notion in the account of eros in the Symposium. For detailed criticism of
this approach see Sheffield (2006) chapter 5.
14
I thank Peter Goldie for pressing me on this point.

5
positive concern in our pursuit of happiness (205d). Socrates presents himself as
making explicit something he takes to be implicit in current erotic practices. The
point, I take it, is this. If you ask most people why it is that they desire a certain
person or thing, they will, eventually, answer that they pursue such things for the sake
of happiness. Socrates is still explaining the very same phenomenon as his peers,
desire – of which sexual desire is a central case - but he is placing it in a larger
explanatory framework by arguing that the real end of this desire is a desire for good
things and happiness. And that is just to say that when we experience intense desires,
e.g. sexual desire for a person, we are groping towards the kind of good that will
satisfy our desire for happiness, and we believe this to be found in another person.
Whatever we make of these claims, it is clear that the terms of the discussion
are wider than the interpersonal. Socrates is concerned with whatever we deem to be
of value, or more specifically, those things that we consider to be central to our
happiness.15 In this respect Socrates is not making a significant departure from the
agenda of his peers either. All the speakers place their accounts of eros in the wider
context of a discussion of good things and happiness. On offer in the speeches is a
vast spectrum of different ideas available about the nature of happiness, and what
constitutes human excellence. In one account bravery on the battlefield is the
privileged value for human desire and this is somehow related to a love of honour
(Phaedrus). In another, wisdom is central to the excellence that should be cultivated in
an erotic relationship (Pausanias). Eryximachus prizes the virtue of the doctor, or seer,
who can promote a harmonious order (188d). Aristophanes highlights the virtues of
the politician (192a), and Agathon gives priority to poetic skill (196d). All the
speakers are concerned with the nature of human goods and happiness; and this for
good reason. The kinds of erotic relationships with the young with which all the
speakers at this symposium are concerned, and which provide the context for this
discussion, were ideally educational relationships, whose erotic practices were
justified ultimately by the social function they played in educating the young.
Pederasty was a respectable institution in certain social circles because feelings of
desire and (at best) concern for the welfare of one‟s partner were employed for the
socially productive end of furthering education.16 The fact that erotic relationships
had this educational dimension, and that the symposium was an important forum for
such relationships, goes some way towards explaining why Plato wrote this dialogue.
As we might expect from a philosopher whose works consistently focus on the nature
of the good life and how it is achieved, Plato has much to say here about the sorts of
values that lovers should transmit to their beloveds as they pass the wine cup. Since it
is on the basis of a certain conception of a flourishing life that certain sorts of things
are advocated to the young as worthy of desire and pursuit, the dialogue explores the
nature of eudaimonia, „happiness or „flourishing‟. And this is ultimately why a
dialogue concerned with eros is at its core an ethical work, which culminates in the
specification of “the life which a human being should live” (211d).
It is in the account of how human beings achieve happiness that the ascent
passage, with its claim that the highest object of eros is the Form of Beauty, plays a

15
Cf. Moravscik (1971) 290 who, in light of this passage, suggests that eros is best translated as
aspiration, since it refers to „any over- all desire or wish for what is taken to be good, …the wish or
desire for things deemed on account of their nature to be worthy of having their attainment become a
man‟s ultimate goal.‟ Cf. also Dover (1978) 157 who argues that within Socrates‟ circle „eros is not a
desire for bodily contact but a love of moral and intellectual excellence.‟
16
On pederasty as an important social institution in classical Athens, see Dover (1978); Bremmer
(1990).

6
role. Let us explore the details. Along with all the other speakers in this dialogue,
Socrates takes it for granted that eros manifests itself in the pursuit of beauty. Beauty
dropped out of the account briefly because Socrates was unable to answer the
question why it is that we desire beauty (204d10); when good was substituted for
beauty he could see more easily why it is that we pursue good things: for the sake of
happiness (205a1-3). With this in place, he now returns to the role of beauty. Being
mortal, Socrates argues, we are subject to flux and change and cannot possess things
in any straightforward way. Much of our mortal life requires productive work, like the
replenishment of hair and skin and blood in our bodies (207d5-208s5). The upshot of
this account of mortal life is that if we want good things, these too must be produced
if they are to be had at all. And this is part of the answer to why we desire beauty;
beauty arouses the creative activity required to possess good things in the way in
which mortals are capable (206d). Socrates provides examples of this phenomenon.
Some people pursue beautiful women in whom they can be productive of a certain
perceived good for themselves – „memory and happiness‟ - which they believe comes
from the creation of physical offspring. Others seek beautiful cities or souls in which
they can be productive of the honour that comes from creating fine laws or educating
the young (209b). Others seek beauty of a different kind – the beauty of the Form – in
which they can be productive of their perceived good: wisdom (211d3). And these are
the philosophical types described in the ascent. Reflecting on the beauty of bodies and
souls here is a way of creating in beauty and thereby producing a desired good end
(wisdom in this case) in the distinctive way in which mortal beings are able. Put
differently, the cognitive engagement with beautiful bodies and souls in the ascent is
the way in which one comes to be in the creative environment required to produce the
desired good end in this case – wisdom. Compare the physical union required to be
with, and reproduce, in physical beauty.
The details of this account, many of which remain controversial, can be left
aside for now.17 But the context outlined thus far should make plain the following.
Socrates is providing an account of our desire for happiness, and then presenting and
assessing competing conceptions of happiness (honour and wisdom, in the so-called
lower and higher mysteries: see 208c3 with 211d1). If such considerations inform the
interpretation of Socrates‟ account then they significantly shift our perspective. For if
happiness is the aim of eros, and our pursuit of beauty is determined by that aim, it is
not just a semantic confusion to think that eros centrally refers to love for individuals,
but a deeply misguided idea to think that a person or persons can satisfy our aspiration
for good things and happiness, or that they are the proper objects of eros. Only the
most committed romantic would entertain such an idea. Indeed, it should come as no
surprise that it is only the comic poet Aristophanes who advocates such a model in
this dialogue. It is a sign of our modern romantic notions that Aristophanes‟ comic
fantasy of missing halves and two becoming one is the best loved speech in the work,
and one which is often used as the measure of how far Socrates has fallen from the
realm of the interpersonal. If we respect the focus on human aspirations quite broadly
conceived, and the things we pursue as central to happiness, then Socrates‟ move
away from individuals as the focus of a happy human life is laudable. We might want
persons to figure in our conception of a happy life, to share a happy life, but to be the
proper objects of our happiness, to be that on which our happiness depends, is not
only a heavy burden for an individual to carry, but a limited view of the rich

17
For a defence of these claims see Sheffield (2006).

7
possibilities for human aspiration. And that is one reason why Socrates welcomes a
more expansive encounter with things considered to be of value in the „ascent‟.
If one believes (as the majority of speakers do in this dialogue) that psychic
goods (such as wisdom) are central to a happy life, then Socrates‟ point is that we
need an expansive encounter with things we consider to be of value to ensure that we
attain them. We need a wide and reflective encounter with those things we deem
valuable (kalon) in the area of body and soul so that we may come to understand the
sorts of things that a good person should pursue and why. And this is the central
concern of the ascent passage. Given certain familiar Platonic assumptions about the
relationship between the human good (virtue) and knowledge of value, the fact that
Socrates advocates the practices of the ascent is not surprising. These practices are
designed to attain just that goal. This can be seen in the clear methodological
procedure, strongly reminiscent of those dialogues where Socrates searches for the
eidos, the common feature of a thing (210e3, cf. Charmides159-60, Gorgias 474d-e,
Meno 87e-88e). On each level one reflects on what it is that makes a body or soul a
beautiful body or soul, and considers what it is about such things that is „one and the
same‟ (210c4-5). The emphasis on intellectual engagement with the objects
encountered, and conversation at every level, is precisely the kind of activity that
characterises a search for the common feature of beauty, a search that for a Platonist
ends in an encounter with the Form.
There is little evidence that Socrates is here describing an eros sublimated
from an earthly attachment to persons towards an intellectual appreciation of the
divine form. It is only if one thinks that the beautiful bodies and souls are successive
objects of different kinds of love - the first of which is interpersonal and employed
instrumentally - that it follows that „personal affection ranks low on Plato‟s scala
amoris’ (Vlastos (1981) 31). On the above account all that follows is that beautiful
bodies and souls rank low as objects of understanding. Commentators too readily
assume that sexual eros is operative on the first stage of the ascent because of the fact
that this desiring agent experiences eros and the object of this is a beautiful body.18
But since Socrates has already made it plain that eros refers to any intense desire – for
sex, athletics, honour, or wisdom, for example - what needs to be clarified is the kind
of eros that is operative here. There is little reason to assume that it is, in fact, sexual
eros in operation here. If it were, then why does the desiring agent seek a reflective
kind of intercourse with this beautiful body? Searching for what is „one and the same‟
amongst a collection of beautiful bodies makes little sense as an expression of sexual
eros. An eros for wisdom is surely what motivates this desiring agent to reflect upon
what it is that makes this beautiful body an instance of that kind. And if it is an
intellectual eros that is operative even at the early stages of the ascent, then the ascent
provides no evidence that Plato thought that one could sublimate one kind of eros (the
sexual kind) into eros of another sort (an intellectual kind). Second, if the ascent is
about the pursuit of wisdom, believed in this case to satisfy the desire for happiness,
then treating persons along with other valuable things as „placeholders for predicates‟
begins to look less objectionable – epistemologically suspect perhaps, but morally
repugnant it is not. Providing an account of wisdom and how to get it as the climax of
an account of human happiness and how it is achieved is a perfectly respectable idea.
At least to the ancients, this would be considered a natural candidate for the sort of
good on which human happiness can depend.
18
A notable exception is Moravscik (1971) 290-1: „it is not mere sexual desire; rather, it is love of a
body for the sake of bodily beauty that can be abstracted and contemplated on a general level‟. Cf. the
discussion in Price (1989) and Patterson (1991) 197.

8
 Now, I do not mean to imply that a desire for wisdom is the only feeling one
has for the beautiful bodies and souls encountered in the ascent. One might well be
sexually attracted to the beautiful bodies under consideration in this context. Indeed,
one might experience a variety of interpersonal responses towards the persons
encountered in the ascent.19 The claim is only that the salient point is what the
desiring agent does with those responses in this context, and how he uses them „like
steps‟ in an understanding of the proper grounds and basis of human flourishing. And
this in turn is perfectly explicable, and not morally repugnant, in light of the content
he has given to his overall goal (the good, in which the acquisition of wisdom plays a
central role), and the larger context of this account (happiness as the proper aim of
eros). So, we can agree with Vlastos that Plato does not offer an account of love for
another „for their own sake‟, but this is not a criticism of Plato, or the Symposium,
given an informed sense of the overall aims of the work. Objections about persons
being considered as placeholders for predicates in the ascent passage gain force if the
ascent is read as an account of the proper object of interpersonal love. But this
interpretive assumption is a fiction of the literature. It arises when the passage is
divorced from its context. As an account of how we understand the grounds of human
flourishing in the area of body and soul, there is nothing morally objectionable about
the procedure at all. All the ascent shows is that human aspiration - the desire for
happiness – is best satisfied in the acquisition of knowledge of a certain sort. And
within the context of this search for knowledge of value beautiful bodies and souls –
persons – play an instrumental role.20

III The Transformation of Loving Relationships: ‘Utility love’ to ‘End love’?

Nothing so far, then, commits Plato to the views that have been so heavily criticised.
Nor has Plato lost sight of the value of interpersonal relationships in the good life.
This is the context, if not the focus, of the ascent passage. Socrates says explicitly that
he has been describing how to go about the correct love of boys (211b). The point
here is not that „correct love‟ involves sublimating interpersonal attachments into
more abstract ones, or that individuals are not proper objects of love, just Forms.
Rather, the point is that loving relationships of this kind are best informed by some
understanding of what is genuinely valuable and worthy of desire and pursuit.21 And
this is for the reason that such relationships were typically educational relationships,
justified, in part, on the basis of a lover‟s understanding of what made a good and

19
And there is evidence that other responses are in play: when the beauty of soul is encountered, for
example, the one making the ascent is said to „love and care for the person, and if he has even a little
bloom, even then this is enough for him‟ (210b6-c3; trans. Rowe). This fails to satisfy scholars looking
for evidence of love for another person‟s own sake because they see (rightly, I think) that ultimately
any sentiments had here are instrumental to an understanding of the Form. The experience of care for
the beauty of soul prompts the one making the ascent to explore laws and practices, and those things
that are responsible for the creation of beautiful souls, in order that he (the lover) may be turned
towards other bearers of beauty (211b). Cf. Price (1989) 56-7. This need not exclude concern for
others. Although this experience is an occasion for progress towards understanding beauty, the
conversations that are produced as a result of this understanding are delivered „ungrudgingly‟ (210d5).
This suggests that one is generous with one‟s insights, which in turn suggests that other people are
involved as the beneficiaries of an increased understanding (cf. Phdr.249a2). None of these suggestions
are explored in this text, however.
20
Socrates‟ argument for why the desire for happiness is best satisfied in the acquisition of wisdom of
a certain sort is outside the scope of this paper. For an exposition of this argument see Sheffield (2006)
141-152.
21
This is a theme of many dialogues which discuss eros; see, for example, Alcibiades I 122b5, Lysis
204b1-2 with Penner and Rowe (2005: 231), cf. Euthydemus 282a1-b7.

9
flourishing individual. The ascent describes the proper goals and activity of an
interpersonal love relationship presented by someone with genuine care and concern
for the welfare of the young. This is manifested, if not philosophically explored, in the
behaviour of the guide who leads the ascent.
It is this larger context, rather than the specifics of the ascent, that should be
brought into focus in an account of Plato‟s view of love. If we do so we can
appreciate, I think, that Plato is transforming pederastic relationships in a way that
satisfies at least some of the criteria we take to be important in an account of
interpersonal love. In particular, there is enough suggestive material to indicate that
Plato rejects aspects of what has been called a „utility based‟ model of interpersonal
relationships which is based on the use one person has for another, in favour of a
model which recognises the value of individual persons as proper subjects of
experience, rich in potential, who deserve to be treated with care and concern for that
potential. For „correct love‟ involves thinking about human well being and not just
embarking on the sort of exchange of benefit for both parties which was taken to be
so central to pederastic relationships by other speakers in the dialogue (gratification
for wisdom, as Pausanias so delicately puts it (181c-185d), cf. Agathon (175d1) and
Alcibiades (217c7)). This is a model of interpersonal relationships that figures in the
account of those who love honour in Socrates‟ speech (the so-called lesser mysteries
of eros) and it is characterised by the dynamics of exchange. Such relationships are
employed as a way of acquiring honour for oneself by the production of educational
conversations (see 208c3 with 209b8-c2; cf. Phdr. 256c7-d1). This model is rejected
in the ascent to knowledge of the Form of Beauty in favour of a practice which leads
and turns a young man to develop the resources of his own soul (210a6, 7, c7, 211c1,
210d4). Rejection of the exchange model of pederastic relationships occurs in other
places in the dialogue. At the start, Socrates rejects the exchange flirtatiously elicited
by the beautiful Agathon who wants to recline beside Socrates and receive the
benefits of his wisdom (175d1). This theme is revisited at the end of the work.
Although some scholars have taken Alcibiades‟ speech as a critique of the abstract
other-wordliness of Socrates‟ account,22 considered differently Alcibiades‟ speech
explains that Socrates did not reject interpersonal relationships as such, but just a
particular kind of interpersonal relationship. What Alcibiades attempts to procure
from Socrates is his wisdom, and he offers his delightful body in exchange. His hopes
are dashed when Socrates spends the night with him like a brother. Socrates refuses to
enter into this kind of exchange, just as he refused Agathon‟s advances at the start,
which were also grounded in the dynamics of exchange. He nonetheless encourages a
relationship with Alcibaides and advocates a relationship of joint inquiry into how to
become a good man (219b1).23 Alcibiades must become a subject of inquiry himself
and develop his own intellectual resources. He must stop seeing himself as the passive
recipient of another‟s wisdom and his physical charms as a suitable exchange.
Socrates does not reject him as such but advocates a relationship grounded in a shared
aspiration for wisdom (219b1; cf. 174d3-4).24 Refiguring the dynamics of such
relationships to forge one based on sharing, not exchange, is also a key feature of

22
E.g. Nussbaum (1986).
23
Cf. Alcibiades I on the koine boule, the common search, between Socrates and Alcibiades, 191b,
124b10.
24
Socrates‟ rejection of this model of pederastic relations can also be seen in his role reversal where he
transforms himself from lover to beloved and thereby thwarts the active/passive dynamics that
typically characterised such relationships. See Symp. 222a8 with Halperin (1986).

10
Xenophon‟s account of Socratic friendship in the Memorabilia (1.6.13-14). Perhaps
this was a familiar Socratic theme.
Plato‟s insight in the Symposium was to see that an attachment towards
persons can be an occasion for reflection – not because individuals are mere stepping
stones to Forms, but because part of what it is to be a proper lover is to know about
the sorts of values that should inform such relationships. This requires knowing about
happiness, what it consists in (wisdom), and how it is achieved (developing the
resources of one‟s own soul in proper philosophical activity, viz. the ascent). That is
one reason why pederasty and philosophy go hand in hand for Plato.

IV Happiness and Interpersonal Relationships

One might object that the argument above just shifts the problem. Since the account
of happiness is one in which the Form is the highest object of human aspiration, one
might still ask why there is no account of how, or why, a life in pursuit of this goal
involves other persons.25 Even if we concede that the account is about eros conceived
as the aspiration towards happiness one still wants to know whether, and how, a
happy human life involves other persons. Some of the debate has shifted in this
direction.26 There are those who argue that though the account is focused on the
agent‟s acquisition of virtue and happiness these are goals that can only be achieved
with another person. More specifically, in order to secure the immortal possession of
his virtue, the philosopher must reproduce his virtue in other souls, just as the
educational pederast of the lower mysteries passes on his educational logoi to young
men. There are numerous problems with this reading, which I will only touch on here.
Even if one could show (as Price (1989) claims) that this does not reduce the other to
an instrument of the lover‟s own fulfilment, there is no evidence for this reading.
There is no other person mentioned at the top of the ascent. The philosopher
contemplates the Form of Beauty and this is said to be the telos. „Here is the life‟, we
are told, „contemplating the Form of beauty‟. If there was some further step required
here, such as generating virtue in other souls, then Plato has been spectacularly
unclear in his exposition. It will not, after all, be true that life is worth living in
contemplation of the Form; there will be some further activity required for a life
worth living. But such is not mentioned in the text. One cannot just import the model
from the lower mysteries without threatening the contrast with the honour lovers who
do indeed need others to secure honour. No such thing is even hinted at with the
philosopher at the top of the ascent.27
More promising, perhaps, is Socrates‟ earlier characterisation of eros. This
stated that eros fluctuates between the human and the divine realms, and back again
from the divine to the human realm (202e3-203a5), it is tempting to think that
cognitive contact with the divine form is not only compatible with eros for human
beings, but part of the proper functioning of our aspiration for good things and
happiness. Just what this state consists in, though, is not clear. It might be that one is
interpreting the world of human concerns in light of the divine Form, bringing
together the flux of particulars in a state of divine understanding, and not necessarily
that one is engaging with other persons. Or it could be that the guide in the ascent is
an example of a person who has attained a godlike state of understanding and yet
wants to persuade others of how to achieve wisdom, as Diotima evidently does. This
is perhaps exemplified in the relationship between Socrates and Diotima, but it is not
25
Though see the suggestive material mentioned in n. 20.
26
See Vlastos (1981) 31; Price (1989); White (2005).
27
For detailed arguments against this view, see Sheffield (2006) chapter 5.

11
philosophically explored here. In order to meet the demands of the critics we need the
sort of philosophical exploration that can answer, at least, the following questions:
does one guide another for that other‟s own sake, or for one‟s own, or both? Why
does such a person desire to educate others? What is the end in view in performing
such a task, and how do others relate to that aim? Is contemplation of the Form
something that requires constant work (as 207d-208c might suggest)? If so, is guiding
other persons instrumental to one‟s re-attainment of that end, or does interaction with
them provide a way of exemplifying contemplative activity and, if so, how? Answers
to these questions are not forthcoming here.
Such questions amount to asking how Plato conceives of the highest good
(wisdom) and what relationship, if any, it has to other good things (e.g. interpersonal
relationships). All we know from the Symposium’s explicit remarks is what the
highest good is. Notice, though, that this question is different from asking whether
and how an eros for the Form of Beauty includes an eros for other persons. This
beautiful object is the proper object of eros, and we should recall that one pursues
beautiful things for the sake of the good things (e.g. wisdom) that result.28 An answer
to this question will be determined by the contrast between beautiful particulars and
the beauty of the Form that structures the ascent. The particular beautiful things
pursued there are pursued „for the sake of‟ the Form of Beauty (211e). Such a
question is answered, then, on the basis of examining Plato‟s metaphysics.29 The
question about whether and how contemplation of the Form of Beauty is compatible
with love for other persons is a question about one‟s overall aims. There is no reason
to think that the parameters of this question are similarly determined by Plato‟s
metaphysical views. This is a question about a certain kind of activity
(contemplating), rather than a certain kind of object (Forms versus particulars). We
are asking whether contemplation is an activity that includes other persons and, if so,
in what sense.
To be precise then, Socrates‟ claim is that contemplation is the end of our
aspiration for good things and happiness: it is this that makes a life „worth living‟
(211d). This is not necessarily to claim that all actions have this end in view. It is
never said, for example, that all actions are justified in bringing about contemplation;
the point is that eros is the desire responsible for bringing about good things, and so
when good things are under consideration, contemplation is the goal. This leaves it
open whether there are actions, or interpersonal relationships, had without reference
to some good end. But insofar as interpersonal relationships are seen as good, and are
not entered into on the basis of, say, duty, or obedience to a higher power, then
Socrates is committed to the view that what makes such relationships worth having is
contemplation of the beautiful, or the fine (to kalon). The question then, is how to
construe this in such a way that other good things are not simply instrumental to this
end. For if Socrates is committed to such a view, then he would be falling into the
laps of his critics after all; for interpersonal relationships might have no value for

28
Recall that eros is not of the beautiful, but of creative activity in the presence of beauty (206d); for it
is the creative activity (e.g. child-bearing, law-making or philosophy) in the presence of beauty that
produces a desired good end (honour or wisdom).
29
Vlastos (1981), for example, argues on the basis of Plato‟s metaphysical views that „it would be folly
and even idolatry to treat them [persons] as worthy of love for their own sake.‟ Cf. Nussbaum (1990:
117) „we must take very seriously the claim that every property of objects relevant to practical
motivation will be homogenized qualitatively with every other. Now the question is what is left of
objects and persons in this scheme? Everything about an object or person that counts for desire and
action is flattened out into „the wide sea. So what is left for the body or person to be? What
individuates it, enables us to refer to it, trace it through time, identify and re-identify with it?‟

12
Socrates, or they might be valued only „for the sake of‟ wisdom and thereby count as
cases of a lesser „utility love‟. Or so an objection might run.
Socrates‟ explicit remarks here do not commit him to any such view. The
claim is that contemplation of the Form of Beauty makes that life „worth living‟
(211d). This is not necessarily to claim that there is one good that is pursued to the
exclusion of all other goods, but just to say that contemplation is what gives value to a
life, and particular things within it insofar as they are chosen as „good‟. Such a view
does not commit Plato to the view that wisdom is the end and everything else is a
means to that end; it is to say only that contemplation is what gives value to a life and
makes it one – however many goods it may include – that is „worth living‟. Put
differently, contemplation is sufficient for this, but it might not be the only thing
which is an end in itself (still, a life with other ends but no contemplation would not
be worth living).30
There are, in fact, numerous options here, which may or may not include the
above, and in teasing out some of these my point is simply to show that the text is
underdetermined on this issue. That Socrates, the seeker after wisdom par excellence,
does engage in interpersonal relationships is clear from his interactions with
Apollodorus, Aristodemus and Alcibiades. And that the person who has attained
wisdom continues to engage in interpersonal relationships is strongly suggested by the
activity of the guide who leads the ascent. This in itself, however, will do little to
decide the issue. What needs to be clarified is how exactly the two come together in „a
life worth living‟. All I have argued so far is that nothing in the Symposium commits
Plato to the views that have been attributed to him. The Symposium says nothing, for
example, about the proper objects of interpersonal love being Forms rather than
persons, nor does it imply that persons are to be valued only as imitations of Forms
and used „as steps‟ to an encounter with them. All it commits Plato to (to the extent
that Plato is committed to anything written in the dialogues) are the following: (a) the
proper object of the aspiration towards happiness (which is what eros, on this account,
is: 205d10) is a Form (for Form as telos see 210e2); (b) happiness resides in the
intellectual activity of contemplation of to kalon (211d1-3); this is why it is the telos
of eros; (c) within the context of a search for knowledge of this Form beautiful bodies
and souls have instrumental value (they are to be used „as steps‟: 211c4). Whether this
is the only value that persons have for Plato, or how exactly persons are to be valued
within a happy life are further questions not addressed by this text. There is good
reason for this. In an account of eros one does not expect to be able to answer such
questions along the lines that Vlastos and others have used in the interpretation of this
text. There may be all sorts of contexts in which individuals are valued – and for their
own sakes. This is just not the concern here. The aim is to show how eros plays a role
in the good life (the expressed agenda is to praise eros, 177c), and this amounts to
giving an account of the sorts of things that human beings should desire and pursue as
rational agents concerned with their own good and happiness. And that is precisely
what the ascent shows. We must let Plato off the charge that he has said something
objectionable about what we call love. He says nothing about it here at all.

V Eros philias: loving the good and loving individuals

Having seen that there is nothing that commits Plato to the views that have been
attributed to him, I want now to argue for a more positive thesis. For an account of

30
Cf. Broadie (2005: 45) who argues that the ancient perspective on the highest good is one that
consists in some relation of the highest good to other goods. Cf. McCabe (2005: 202).

13
how ethical achievement and interpersonal relationships come together we should
turn to the Phaedrus. This is a dialogue that explores the relationship between eros
and philia, and in so doing it promises to deliver material about how our aspiration for
the good (eros) relates to our interpersonal relationships (philia attachments). This
dialogue suggests not only that these notions are related for Plato, but, more
specifically, that the best kind of loving attachments (philia based relationships) are
those that are grounded in a proper orientation of eros towards wisdom; they are not
excluded by it.31

(a) A theory of philia?

The Phaedrus is a work deeply concerned with philia, and with the proper valuation
of persons within relationships of philia. Friendship between Socrates and Phaedrus is
emphasized throughout (235e2, 228d6, 228e1; Phaedrus and Socrates repeatedly refer
to each other as friends (phile): 227a1, 228d6, 229e5, 230c5, 235e2, 238c5, 243a3,
264a8, 271b7, 275b5, 276e4, 279a9, 259e7, 236b9),32 and each of the three speeches
contributes to a theoretical account of philia. The expressed concern of each speech is
whether a young man should gratify a lover (erastes) or a non-lover, a question which
hinges on who will provide the most benefits, an issue decided on the basis of the
likelihood of a philia relationship developing between the pair (on whether eros is
compatible with philia, see 231b7-c7; 232d1-4; 232d7-e2; 233a1-4; 237c6-8; 253c5;
255b5-7). The assumption here is that it is in a relationship of philia that the beloved
is benefited. So, if a loving relationship is incompatible with philia, then a beloved
should not gratify a lover. If, as will be the case, Socrates argues that eros for wisdom
is the highest kind of eros, one expects an account of how this too is compatible with
philia and so benefits the beloved. This is exactly what we get in his second speech in
the dialogue, which explains how an eros for wisdom involves the love of other
persons, and for their own sake; or so I shall argue.
The term eros is variously defined in the speeches, and philia is not explicitly
defined anywhere in the dialogue, though an account of this phenomenon emerges
from a close reading of the speeches. The first two speeches take it that eros is an
irrational desire which aims at some form of gratification for the lover (237b7-c4 with
238c1-2) and it is on this basis that they deny that erotic relationships provide a good
context for the development of philia relationships. Lysias‟ speech is presented as
novel and rhetorically artful because he attempts to sever the connection between eros
and philia by arguing against the thought that „philia cannot occur unless a man is
actually in love‟ (233d).33 This is explored as a question in Socrates‟ first speech
(„whether one should enter into friendship (philia) with a lover or a non-lover‟
(237c6-8) and, armed with a different account of eros as a form of beneficial madness
which aims at the good, Socrates argues in his second speech that it is, in fact, only
the friendship (philia) of a lover (erastes) that brings great blessings (256e3). In each
of the speeches the claims about philia are made on the basis of a certain conception
of eros, and the lover (erastes). This is significant. As we shall see, different
31
Though the Symposium explores the nature of eros, and the Phaedrus embeds its discussion of philia
within its accounts of eros, this does not amount to a proof that these accounts provide, or were
supposed to provide, a unitary theory of love. So, one might question the legitimacy of reading these
dialogues together in a way that suggests as much. I am committed to no such view. I am concerned
simply to establish that Plato had an account of interpersonal love and its place in the good life.
Whether this is enough to extract a unitary and exhaustive theory of love is a separate question that will
not concern me here.
32
And for hetaire see 227b2, 230a6, 234d1, 262c1, 270c6, 273c9 with Griswold (1986) 26 n10.
33
All translations of the Phaedrus are from Rowe (1986).

14
conceptions of eros’ nature and aims inform and determine different interpersonal
relationships.
According to the first speech of Lysias, although it is alleged that „those in
love show a greater degree of affection (philia) to those they love‟ (231c2-3), lovers
are unstable creatures, subject to a sickness; they are unable to deliberate about what
is best (231a3-4, 232a5). They are so consumed with the satisfaction of their own
irrational desires that they deprive the beloved of goods such as property, family and
friends, in order to increase their dependency on the lover (232c5-e2). Since many of
those in love desire a person‟s body it is unclear whether they will want a friendship
to continue when desire for the body ceases (e6). One has a greater chance of finding
someone worthy of your affection (philia) from the many, rather than the group of
insane lovers (231e1-2). The (apparent) non-lover, by contrast, has lasting friendship
for the boy (233a1-4), which consists in providing more benefits to the boy than a
lover (230e6-7). Profit comes to both (234a6-7), through an association with those
who promise to „share [their] advantages‟ (234a5), and „render services with regard to
their own capacity to render them‟ (231a3-4). It is not altogether clear what these
benefits consist in: the non-lover appears to be someone who achieves his ends
„though merit‟ (232a5); he is not just interested in the other‟s body (233a) and they do
not neglect what is best (233b). This description suggests that perhaps the benefits
received here are like those of the educational pederast familiar from the Symposium:
moral improvement for the sake of the honour it brings.34 It is clear later that those
whose friendship is based on „pledges given and received‟ are indeed honour lovers
(256c7-d3). The implication is that one or both parties in this case desires to further
his ambitions, or gain some status, with this association.
Socrates‟ first speech is also concerned with „whether one should enter into
friendship (philia) with a lover or a non-lover‟ (237c). Since eros is defined as an
irrational desire, pitted against judgement in its pursuit of bodily beauty, it is no
surprise to find that much here accords with Lysias‟ speech. Such a person is ruled by
desire and „enslaved to pleasure‟ (238e). This sets the parameters for the nature of the
relationship. The lover wants to make the beloved as pleasing as possible, and what is
most pleasing is what does not resist him. A man who is in love will therefore deprive
the beloved of benefits in order to make him more dependent and accessible to the
satisfaction of the lover‟s needs (238d5-e5). Since the lover guards such dependency
and accessibility dearly, his relationship towards the beloved is marked by envy
towards any positive associations the beloved has forged (phthonos, 239a7, 240a5,
241c2; cf. 243c6, 232c4-d4). There is no genuine goodwill (eunoia) in the philia of a
lover (241c), and the result of such a relationship is the gradual debilitation of mind,
body and possessions (239b-d).
Socrates‟ second speech recants these ideas. He does this, in part, by
challenging the central claim that eros is a form of irrational madness that aims at
pleasure. He argues that eros is a form of beneficial and divine madness (245b-c),
whose aim is the good, or more specifically, the return of the soul to its original state,
when it was whole, winged, and traversed the heavens in possession of knowledge
(249d, 250c). One satisfies eros by making proper use of earthly reminders of beauty
to recollect the objects of our lost knowledge - the Forms (249c): „When he partakes

34
Compare the Symposium which discusses those who educate young boys alongside poets and
lawgivers as those who desire cults and shrines set up in their honour (208c3, 209e1f. for the love of
honour which characterises this section of Socrates‟ account). The boy receives and education and you
receive honour from educating a fine young man (that there is also a hint of sexual gratification may be
suggested by the lover‟s interest in the combination of a beautiful body and soul: 209b-c).

15
in this madness [viz. recollection] the man who loves the beautiful is called a lover‟
(249e). By implication, other so-called lovers are imposters. The genuine lover is one
whose eros is directed towards its proper object: the Form of beauty, which can be
seen imaged in a beautiful boy (251a). But – and crucially - it is not the case that the
boy who occasions such a process is reduced to a mere instrument of the lover‟s
reflection. On the contrary, the value of the relationship between them is enhanced by
the philosophical orientation of the lover‟s desire (eros) in this case. Herein, then, lies
an opportunity to explore how interpersonal relationships and ethical achievement
come together.
Let us explore the details. A philosophical orientation provides this lover with
an interest in the beauty of soul. He selects a beloved appropriate to his philosophical
orientation and chooses someone „naturally disposed towards philosophy‟ (252d7-e3-
4), as he himself is. Though he (like the pleasure-seekers) has a sexual response to the
boy (the dark horse is aroused: 254a3-7), his attention remains focused upon the soul
and the beauty imaged there (252e). Instead of wanting to mount the other „in the
manner of a four-footed beast‟, he desires to understand the arresting experience of
beauty. As a reflective person, who values wisdom, he is reminded of his vision of the
Forms when he encounters the boy (249e4-250a4, 254a5; 250e1-251a5). This enables
him to realise the inappropriateness of a sexual response and he treats the beloved
with reverence and awe (254e). He values the other‟s good nature as something „god-
like‟, and not as something to be possessed for the sake of his own pleasure, or
advantage. The lover promotes the other‟s good by trying to „make him of such a
kind‟ as he is naturally disposed to be (i.e. to make him philosophical, 252e4-5). This
benefits both lover and beloved: for „if they have not previously set foot on this
[philosophical] way, they undertake it now, both learning from wherever they can and
finding out for themselves; and as they follow the scent from within themselves to the
discovery of the nature of their own god, they find the way to it through the
compulsion on them to gaze intently on the god‟ (252e-253a). Since they are
philosophically inclined their own god was Zeus, whom they followed in the celestial
circuit, and the process of discovering the nature of their god is partly achieved by
gazing intently on the god imaged in the philosophical disposition of the boy, an
image one brings into sharper focus by cultivating the disposition characteristic of the
god. The beloved is stunned by the goodwill from the lover, and realises that „not
even all his friends and relations together have anything to offer by comparison with
the friend who is divinely possessed‟ (255b-c). Because the lover holds the beloved
responsible for „the discovery of the nature of their own god‟, he does not abandon
him, but loves him more (agaposin, 253a5). And so begins a relationship of mutual
benefit: they both draw inspiration from their philosophical god, Zeus, which the
lover sees reflected in the boy, and the boy sees reflected in the lover‟s gaze. The
lover experiences an abundance of desire for the beloved, and like an echo which
rebounds to its source, „the stream of beauty passes back to its possessor through his
eyes…and fills the loved one in his turn with love (eros)‟ (255c5). The beloved, too,
is now in love, but in a confused state; his wing feathers have begin to sprout (255d),
i.e. he is beginning to recollect his own vision of the beautiful. The beloved is
„unaware that he is seeing himself in his lover, as if in a mirror‟ (255d8-e1).35 This
reflects the initial response of the lover who is: „amazed and beside [himself], but
do[es] not know what is happening to [him] because [his] perception is too weak‟
35
As Nussbaum (1986: 219) notes, „They are both mutually active and mutually receptive: from the
one the other, like a Bacchant, draws in the transforming liquid; and he pours liquid back, in his turn,
into the beloved soul‟.

16
(250a5-b1). In perceiving and desiring the beauty imaged and reflected back in the
other their memory of the Forms is aroused, but unclear. Their philosophical natures
were the proper subjects of that previous experience when they saw beauty itself, and
they too are elicited in the presence of the beauty of the other which prompts the
recollection of the Form. The couple try to understand their experience together, and
spend their time in devotion to philosophy (256b), cultivating the disposition they see
and value in the other. There is genuine goodwill (eunoia, 255b, 256a), and no
jealously (pthonos, 253b7cf. 247a7), as they lead a life together „of one mind‟
(homonoetikon, 256b1). Since this experience brings the soul near to its proper good,
Socrates concludes that it brings happiness from the lover – also called a philos – to
the object of his philia – because of his eros (253c). So, (contra Lysias) the friendship
of a lover is a good thing (256e).
Although a theory of philia is not explicit in the speeches, each of them
provides a particular characterisation of philia relationships, shaped by different
conception of eros. These are ranked: the philia of the philosophers is said to be
superior to that of the honour lovers, whose relationship is based on pledges given and
received (256c7-d3). It is also superior to the philia had between the beloved and all
his other friends and relations together (255b7). We also know that both of these types
are superior to those that figured in the speech that Socrates recanted (and which
adopts the views of Lysias), that is, those whose philia is based on the acquisition of
pleasure for the lover. The key to understanding the ranking of relationships lies in
appreciating how the goodwill (eunoia) between the pair is affected by the overall
orientation of the lover‟s eros in each case. For Lysias, the relationship of philia is
based on sexual pleasure, and it is because the lover wants to be gratified sexually
that any goodwill towards the beloved is stunted by his desire for easy access from
him (232c5-e2). The result is that the beloved is deprived of family, friends and
possessions (232c5-e2, 239b-d). Socrates‟ first speech explores a similar relationship.
The lover‟s desire for his own gratification (he is „enslaved to pleasure‟: 238e)
determines the relationship between them: what is most pleasing to him is what does
not resist him, so a man characterised by this eros will deprive the beloved of benefits
(238d5-e5). Furthermore, the lover‟s desires, being as they are for physical
gratification, are fleeting (232e6), and so the lover is likely to be untrustworthy and
not „pay what he owes‟ in exchange for the beloved‟s gratification (241a). Though the
beloved „demands a return from the lover for favours done in the past‟, the lover, once
sated, gains control of himself and is „compelled to default‟ (241b4). So, there is: (i)
restricted goodwill, (ii) jealousy, and (iii) inconsistency of affection, in an association
with those dominated by pleasure.
The philia of the honour lovers is based on the exchange of pledges and,
though this couple spend their lives as friends, their philia is not as great as the
philosophical types (256d). Such types have an eye on „profit‟ not „pleasure‟, which is
no guarantee of continued goodwill towards the beloved. One does not wish well to
another properly speaking when the end in view for the sake of which one acts is not
the other‟s good, but „future profit‟. Once each has got what it wants from the other
(the honour that comes from educating a promising youth, for example, cf. Symp.
209cf.) the relationship will end. Such a relationship is based on an asymmetry of
needs typically outgrown once a youth has entered manhood. So, even if there were
reasons for bountiful goodwill in the first instance, which is doubtful if one‟s eye is
on profiting from the partnership, the relationship will not endure. So, (i) less
goodwill and (ii) less consistency characterise this relationship.

17
The third type, by contrast is generated by a different eros. This motivates a different
focus, response, and aim, in the relationship. The catalyst for the relationship is the
beauty of the other‟s soul, the investigation of which leads to a relationship based on
the recognition of a shared good - philosophical - nature. (cf. „for it is fated that evil
shall never be friend to evil, nor good fail to be friend to good‟, 255b). Their
developing relationship of philia is grounded not in the opportunity he provides for
profiting or honouring you, or pleasing you), but in his nature (phusin, 252e3). 36A
philosophical orientation generates a desire to understand the experience of beauty,
followed by an attempt to promote the good nature that forms the focus of attention.
The philosopher values the other as –„god-like‟, which, I take it, is to say that he
values the other as such. And since the lover is like the beloved in the relevant
respects, there is no asymmetry of their good qualities. Their goodwill is returned and
there is no jealously between the pair. This pair spend their lives as friends. There is
no asymmetry of needs outgrown once each has got what it wants from the other. The
appreciation of the good that grounds the relationship has more potential to endure.
This is both because a good nature, as opposed to some accidental feature of the other
is more lasting, but also because one‟s attraction to this good nature is rooted in an
overall evaluative orientation dominated by reason. And that evaluative orientation is
the only one that provides a unified and consistent framework for binding concern
over time. So, in this relationship there is (i) increased and mutual goodwill (255b),
based on the fact that the other‟s good is the focus of the attraction; (ii) no jealously
because they are genuinely concerned with the other‟s good, not their own pleasure;
(253b); and (iii) consistency of affection (256c).
The speeches, then, outline three kinds of philia relationship, strikingly similar
in many respects, to Aristotle‟s account of friendship in Books 8 and 9 of his Ethics:37

(a) pleasure based philia;

(b) philia based on some kind of exchange;
(c) philia based on the mutual recognition of beauty and goodness in
the other.38

The previous analysis of the ranking suggested key features of philia conceived here,
and the reasons for the ranking. An eros of a certain sort is not just a context for the
development of friendship in each case; it determines its nature. Presumably this is
why it is said that the association with such a lover brings happiness from the philos,
to the object of his philia, because of his eros (253c). Compare Aristotle: „People who
love each other wish good things for each other in that respect in which they love’
(NE 1156a9-10). It is the degree of goodwill that is affected by the agent‟s eros,

36
Cf. Alcibiades I where Socrates claims that he can correctly be described as a lover of Alcibiades
because he loves his soul. Those who love his body do not love Alcibiades, but something that belongs
to him. The Phaedrus point is similar just insofar as it also claims that loving another in the true and
proper sense also requires loving their soul, and this is because the soul is where the real nature of the
other resides.
37
Those familiar with Aristotle‟s account of philia in Nicomachean Ethics books 8 and 9 will
recognise the division I am outlining here, and the ranking, as a familiar one. I have learnt much from
Cooper (1999) 312-336.
38
There is no indication that this needs to be complete or perfect goodness. One sees beauty in the boy
and a glimpse of the god in whose train one followed in the celestial circuit, and seeks to make him as
like that as possible (253a). Notice too that the boy naturally disposed towards philosophy‟ (252e3), a
disposition not actualised until his association with the lover. The fact that each discovers the nature of
his own god makes it plain that one is not perfect and god-like already.

18
which provides the initial motive stimulant for the developing philia relationship. The
philosopher‟s concern with the good grounds his interest in the good character of the
other, and brings with it a desire to promote that good character by bringing it into
sharper focus. This is not valued for the sake of his own pleasure or honour, but
valued as something „god-like‟. Moreover, this concern with the good means that he
selects someone who has a good character, and is, in this respect, like himself. This
facilitates a relationship of equality and reciprocity. Such details suggest that Plato did
indeed have an account of philia, which he conceived roughly as follows:

A relationship based on the mutual recognition of goodness, which is

characterised by reciprocal well wishing towards the other („eunoia’), actively
trying to bring that about (reinforcing and cultivating the other‟s philosophical
disposition), and an absence of envy („pthonos’), as the pair lead a life
together sharing in thought („…of one mind‟).

Caution is required with talk about „actively trying to bring about some good for the
other‟. If the contrast with those who give and receive services is to be upheld then
even doing good for the other might not be the correct specification of the
characteristic activity of these types. This implies inequality and possibly even
deficiency in the other at odds with the emphasis on mutuality and equality in this
relationship. Perhaps this highlights a difficulty for Plato, who uses the context of
erotic relationships, which are characteristically asymmetrical, to forge his account of
philia. Such were typically conceived as relationships of inequality structured by the
dynamics of exchange. Changing such dynamics was one of the features of Socrates‟
pursuit that Alcibiades found so baffling in the Symposium. The Phaedrus, too, is
concerned with remodelling such relationships. Though the relationship between
lover and beloved here is initially one of inequality, and certainly one with a youth,
the selected young man has a similar nature and experiences a similarity of desire.
Though it would be quite shocking for Plato‟s contemporaries to conceive of a youth
experiencing anteros, as he does here, careful attention to the text shows that Plato‟s
remodelling of such relationships remains sensitive to such traditions. The proper
object of the eros experienced by the youth is the Form of beauty, not the older lover,
which the beloved sees reflected back in the desiring gaze of the lover. It is, more
appropriately, philia which he experiences for the older lover, as he is stunned by the
goodwill received from him, and comes to appreciate the other‟s good nature. Their
shared nature grounds the relationship of philia, and their shared experience of desire
for the image of the Forms grounds the similarity of erotic experience. Since this
facilitates a relationship of equality, it would perhaps be better to say that philia is not
characterised in terms of benefits given or received, but sharing in thought. It is not
entirely clear from the Phaedrus itself what homonoia consists in exactly, and what
activity characterises this shared life. In the Clitophon homonoia is distinguished from
homodoxia on the grounds that many shared opinions are harmful but friendship is
wholly good and the idion ergon of justice (409d-410a). The requirement that
homonoia, as a characteristic feature of friendship, be something good motivates the
restriction of homonoia to knowledge – as Kamtekar, has argued.39 Knowledge is also
a characteristic feature of homonoia and friendship as it is conceived in Alcibiades I
(126c). This makes good sense of the fact that the friends in the Phaedrus are rational

39
R. Kamtekar, „What‟s the good of agreeing: Homonoia in Platonic Politics‟, OSAP (2004) 131-171,
esp. 135.

19
agents concerned with the truth. We need not say that the friends actually possess
knowledge, and reflect this in their unity of mind; that would be at odds with the
characterisation of the pair as philosophers. Homonoia will, perhaps, reflect shared
insights in the pursuit of truth. It is tempting to think that the second half of the
Phaedrus provides an account of the dialectical activity that structures a life of shared
perception and thought. Exploring this would be the subject for another occasion. The
purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether Plato had the notion of love of another
„for their own sake‟, something that would meet the concerns of his critics. To this I
shall not turn.

(b) Love for another ‘for their own sake’?

The superior nature of philosophical philia can be illuminated well in terms of a
contrast between „utility love‟, and the love of another „for their own sake‟. Although
the latter notion is an Aristotelian term that does not appear in our text, the highest
form of philia in the Phaedrus appears strikingly similar to that notion in Aristotle.
For Aristotle, wishing someone well for their own sake involves a contrast with
wishing something well for one‟s own purposes (as in NE 1155b29-31), and it
involves a contrast with wishing someone well because of incidental facts about him
(e.g. 1156b7-11), such as his pleasantness or usefulness. A friendship grounded in
excellence, by contrast, is a friendship based on what someone essentially is (8.3.
1156b9, 1157a18; cf. 1156b12). To say, then, that you love someone for their own
sake, is at least partly to say that you love someone for their essential properties.40 If
we begin with this notion of what it is to love another „for their own sake‟, then the
Phaedrus fares well. The first two kinds of friendship are characterised by the use one
person has for another: „pay[ing] what he owes‟ to the lover in exchange for the
beloved‟s gratification (241a) in the first case, and an exchange of pledges in the
second (255b7). Any goodwill between the parties concerned is restricted by the
parameters of their utility, or advantage, and that is why it is of limited benefit. The
goodwill increases in philosophical friendship because their interests create the proper
conditions for valuing another person: they motivate the focus on the soul, prompt
reflective activity, and thereby create the conditions for focus upon, and cultivation
of, a „god-like‟ nature. Since this god-like nature is the other‟s original and true nature
(252d), we can say (i), that one loves the other for his nature (phusin, 252e3), as
opposed to some accidental feature (as in the first two types of philia). This nature is
not valued because it is the other‟s nature, however; it is valued as something „god-
like‟, that is, something good. So, we can say (ii), that one loves the other for his
characteristic goodness.
Since this is something the lover recognises, and values, as god-like, and treats
with reverence and awe, we are also inclined to say (iii), that the other is loved as an
end. To call something godlike for Plato is a mark of the highest value. But caution is
required here. For it is as he cultivates the philosophical and god-like disposition that
forms the basis of his fascination with the other that the lover discovers the nature of
his own god („one finds the way to it through the compulsion on them to gaze
intently…‟, 253a).). The notion that the other is a way in which one can acquire the
self-knowledge necessary for one‟s own happiness is borne out further in the image of
the mirroring of souls used to describe the similar experience of the beloved as he
sees his own godlike reflection in his lover (255d). The implication is that just as one

40
On the variety of ways in which the phrase „for his own sake‟ can be construed in Aristotle, see
Broadie and Rowe (2002) on NE 1155b28-9, and Penner and Rowe (2005) 318.

20
can see oneself best in a mirror, so one can see oneself best in another who is
similarly like oneself and reflects this image back.41 This suggests that the more the
lover benefits the other („makes him of such a kind as he is disposed to be‟), the more
he benefits himself by creating the appropriate reflecting image in which to know
himself and the god-like nature in which he himself shares. Since the lover benefits, it
is not clear that the good of the beloved is, in fact, an independent reason for action,
nor that he is valued as an end, and not (at least also) as a means to the well-being of
the lover. If so, then we are not entitled to draw the conclusion that Plato does
embrace the notion of love of another „for their own sake‟; for the beloved would be
valued for the sake of a god-like quality which has instrumental value for the lover.
Though the knowledge gained about the nature and value of his own self is
clearly a feature of the relationship, it does not seems to be what motivates the lover
to form the association in the first instance. A selection is made „from the ranks of the
beautiful according to his own disposition‟ (252d), which I take it means that his
philosophical disposition orientates him to value of a certain kind. The other is valued
not because he shares a similar nature, but insofar as that nature is seen as good. If so,
then seeing the other as a mirror in which to see one‟s own character reflected more
clearly is not what grounds the relationship.42 Nor is the lover‟s own benefit the end
in view for the sake of which he acts in promoting the godlike qualities perceived in
the other. He does not benefit the other in order that he can see the divine image in
sharper focus. He values philosophical, god-like, activities for themselves, and desires
to promote such goods. Though it may be true that he himself benefits by promoting
such activities, it is never suggested that this is the reason for the sake of which he
engages in the other benefitting activity. It would seem that we have not just other
benefitting action here, but a situation where the other‟s good is an end in view for the
sake of which the agent acts. This is supported by the contrast with the motivational
states of other agents. If the philosopher were to act for the sake of his self-
knowledge, then the distinction between who act for the sake of pleasure, or pledges
given and received, would be threatened and the reasons for the superiority of
philosophical philia would remain unclear. Furthermore, it is only if he appreciates
that the good qualities in the other are divine and worthy of reverence and awe – that
is, it is only if he values the good perceived in the other for non-instrumental reasons
– that he comes to exemplify his own philosophical character, and in so doing bring
that into sharper focus. If that is the case, then Plato does have a notion of loving
another for their characteristic goodness (i), their nature (ii), and (as philosophers and
lovers of the good) this is valued non-instrumentally, as an end (iii). How much of
this is unfamiliar to the Aristotelian notion of love of another „for their own sake‟?
It may be the case, and surely is, that one can come to know oneself more
fully in a relationship of this kind (see 253a5 and 255d8-e1).43 Self-knowledge has

41
In the Alcibiades 1 a relationship with another is described as crucial in coming to an awareness of
oneself as a knower (133b7-10). Another soul can be like a mirror in which one perceives oneself more
clearly. If the other is a mirror this presupposes that the other will be similar to us in relevant respects –
as a knower, something made explicit in the Phaedrus. On this passage in the Alcibiades, see Denyer
(2001).
42
Compare Aristotle: „The good man is a lover of the good (philagathos) not a lover of self
(philautos); for he loves himself, if at all, because he is good‟ (Magna Moralia II.14 1212b18-20). Cf.
Socrates‟ rebuttal of Aristophanes in the Symposium which employs a distinction between the oikeion
and the agathon: no-one, it is held, desires what it oikeion unless it is good; the good is the central
motivator here.
43
Cf. Cooper (1999) on the best form of philia in Aristotle. He turns to the Magna Moralia (II. 15
1215a7-26) to explore NE IX.9 1169b18-1170a where it is said that the good man wants to theorien

21
been on the agenda from the start.44 In the opening conversation with Phaedrus,
Socrates claimed that he is not yet capable of knowing himself in accordance with the
Delphic inscription; he wants to find out whether he is „a beast more complex and
more violent than Typhon, or both a tamer and a simpler creature, sharing some
divine and un-Typhonic portion by nature‟ (230a). In seeing the value of another god-
like soul, the philosopher is compelled to investigate the basis of this attraction, and
the intensity and reverential nature of his response. In so doing he recovers his own
philosophical nature and learns that one is the kind of being that „shares some divine
portion by nature‟.45 The point is just that this is neither the reason for cultivating the
relationship, nor the end in view for the sake of which the agent acts.
There is a remaining concern. In the account that I have outlined it philia and
eros are related, but distinct. It is not just that erotic relationships provided a context
for the development of philia relationships for Plato, as they did for his
contemporaries. Plato‟s account of philia is developed in terms of the motivational
structure of the agent‟s concerned, and this is where eros plays a key role. It is a direct
result of being a certain kind of person or lover, that is, someone who loves (eros) the
good, that one learns to value others in the right way. And this is not just an incidental
consequence of a love of wisdom, but its cause.46 The point of keeping them distinct,
however, is just as important. For it as clear from the Phaedrus, as it is from the
Symposium, that eros, properly speaking, is a response to value – beauty – and a
desire for the agent‟s own good and happiness. The proper object for eros in both
texts is the Form in which beautiful bodies and souls participate. Though philia of a
certain sort of generated by eros, it has a different object: the good character of the
other. Hence we can conclude that Plato does view persons are genuine ends of care
and concern. The problem is that the lover is described as an entheon philon (255b6-
7), and the description of him as inspired suggests a source of inspiration above and
beyond the boy. Is the proper object of philia really the god in whose train the lover
followed in the celestial circuit and not the boy? Two features of the text are
promising here. First, it is said that the lover holds the beloved responsible for „the
discovery of the nature of their own god‟, and this increases his affection for the boy
(agaposin, 253a5). Second, this pair spend their lives as friends. It does seem as if the
other person remains in focus in this relationship, even as their eros is directed
towards the Forms. There are features of the relationship here that make it difficult to
imagine forming with the gods. The gods exist in a state of complete knowledge
based on a continual feasting on a vision of the Forms, and experience no
motivational conflict of the sort that humans have to struggle with. By their very
natures, even the best human characters only glimpse the Forms, struggle against an
unruly nature, and require work to re-attain that vision of unity in multiplicity. Given

good actions and one cannot so easily study one‟s own actions as those of another. In the MM passage
it is said that self-knowledge is necessary for eudaimonia, and that friendship is the best way to achieve
self-knowledge.
44
On this see Griswold (1986).
45
Cf. Ferrari (1987) 147: „You can learn who you are by considering your unconsidered reaction to an
encounter with someone beautiful, and thus gain the opportunity to foster and justify the life
appropriate to the kind of character you take yourself to be.‟
46
Arguably, this is also why eros is the springboard for the discussion of philia in the Lysis. I have
deliberately avoided the Lysis, not only because it is an aporetic dialogue which brings with it a host of
interpretative issues, but also because the Phaedrus has been neglected as a source of insight into
Plato‟s views of philia. My conclusions here, though, fit nicely with those of Penner and Rowe (2005:
8, n.22; cf. 190-1), who have argued (with reference to the Lysis) that the discussion of philia there is
grounded in an account of desire more generally.

22
these facts no relationship of mutuality and equality would be possible with the gods.
The fact that the kind of philia relationship outlined here can only occur between
human beings does not settle the worry that ideally it would not be so. After all, Plato
does conceive of philia with the gods as an ethical ideal elsewhere (Symp. 212a6).
Ideally, we would like some sense that the proper object of such a relationship is
another individual because it is best that it be another individual and not that, given
facts about our nature and an asymmetry with the gods, we cannot have such
relationships with gods, though ideally we would if we attained the knowledge and
virtue possessed by them. But such considerations do not require us to say that the
boy is valued for the sake of the god in whose nature he shares. Plato seems
concerned here to provide an account of a relationship in which another person is the
end of the philosopher‟s care and concern. And that is why Socrates can draw his
conclusion that a relationship with a philosophical lover would provide the most
benefits to a young man.

VI Back to the critics

Plato‟s accounts of eros and philia in the Symposium and the Phaedrus suggest the
following: eros grounds the account of our orientation towards good things and
happiness (and of which the proper objects are Forms), and philia that towards
persons who, if our desires are orientated correctly, can be valued „for their own
sake‟. So, how far have we come from the critics of Section 1?
We noted three central problems that were raised in relation to the Symposium:

(i) Persons seemed to be valued as placeholders of predicates of value;

(ii) Valuable qualities were repeatable and replaceable;
(iii) Persons had only instrumental value;
(iv) There is no notion of love for another for their sake and not for ours.

Does the Phaedrus fare better? On the one hand, appreciating the relationship
between loving someone for their goodness, and loving someone for their nature
should help to alleviate the concern that the account is concerned only with the
other‟s best qualities and not the individual whole person (Vlastos (1981) 31). As
Kosman replied with reference to the Symposium, there may be some qualities that are
so defining of who a person is that in loving them for those qualities we love them for
themselves.47 The Phaedrus makes this point explicitly: loving the goodness of the
other is to love them for their original and true nature (252d). But on the other hand,
we might ask to what extent do we love someone as a particular individual, if what
grounds the love in this case is the person‟s essential nature, some goodness that is
shared with other (philosophically inclined) human beings? This is part of problem
(ii). There is, in principle, no reason why one should be exclusive in one‟s love for
other persons on this account. It may be a contingent fact that I cannot love more than
one person at any given time, but it is not a necessary feature of such love. Arguably
the ancients were less concerned with individuality than we are today, and it might be
worth our while to consider why we think this to be of central importance. We cannot
say that the problem is that we are not loved for who we are on this account for we
have seen that that is evidently not the view of the Phaedrus. Perhaps the issue is that
if we are not loved as a particular, and exclusively, then there will be a lack of
commitment in the relationship. But, again, the Phaedrus would disagree. It is

47
Kosman, ibid.

23
precisely because the relationship is grounded in someone‟s essential nature and not,
say, „pledges given and received‟ that this friendship is more enduring than others.
For (we infer) a nature is something lasting.48 We might not have particularity, then,
but we do have some notion of love for another person for who they really are, and
the suggestion that such love for another person will be enduring.
Though we have identified a notion of love for another individual for their
own sake (to meet problem (iii)), our most pressing problem (iv) remains. The friend
is motivated by the good of the other in a way which is compatible with his own
interest, and even promotes it, as we have seen. The life of shared aspiration towards
the good envisaged in the highest kind of philia is of joint benefit to both parties. And
this fact might remind us that the critics are left standing; cornered, I hope, but
standing nonetheless. Vlastos, at least, wanted some evidence that the account
provided evidence of a purely altruistic kind of love, encapsulated by the notion of
love „for their sake and not for ours’, or what he also termed „disinterested
affection‟.49 If the highest kind of relationship Plato envisages is of joint benefit to
both parties (and they surely are), are we not in danger of the taint of egoism after all?
There is no pure altruism here, but a life of shared life of virtue and mutual benefit.50
So this is their corner, and it is distinctly Kantian in flavour.
The grounds of the highest kind of friendship did not seem to be tainted with
egoism. We provided an account that made no reference to the good of the lover, or
the benefits he would receive (such as increased self-knowledge). This was not to say
that he did not receive such benefits, but just that they were not the lover‟s reason for
entering into the friendship, nor did self-concern motivate the other benefitting
actions. If one still wants to object that though egoistic concerns do not ground the
love in this case they are nonetheless involved as part of the characteristic features of
the relationship, then we might add the following remarks. We should be cautious
about the applicability of such Kantian criteria here. For it is not clear that the notion
that the lover develops his own good in the relationship is at odds with at least some
of what Kant wanted to exclude from the domain of ethics by expunging the
satisfaction of the agent‟s desires from ethical accounts. Kant wanted to distance his
ethics from the idea that we might satisfy our own desires, in part because he held a
conception of desire as a non-rational inclination (see, for example, Groundwork of
the Metaphysics of Morals: 398-9). Part of the need to distance ethical behaviour from
the taint of any satisfaction of the agent‟s own desires has arisen because this appears
to exclude rational assessment of those desires, since desires, as commonly conceived
by philosophers since Hobbes and Hume at any rate, are (non-rational) affections or
inclinations to which one is either subject or not.51 Such motivations are particular
and emotional and held in contrast to those which are universal and rational. On such
a view, these cannot ground actions that form the basis of our ethical achievements,
for these must be rationally grounded and of universal applicability. But desires for
Plato (and Aristotle) are not Kantian inclinations. It is important to their ethical

48
This point is explicit in Aristotle NE 1156b12, but suggested in the Phaedrus too: see 232e6, 241a
and contrast with 256b, d)
49
For this notion, see Aristotle Rhetoric Book II with Broadie and Rowe (2002: 318).
50
Cf. Gill (1998) who argues that notions of reciprocity and shared life replace notions of altruism in
much of Greek ethics. See „Altruism or Reciprocity in Greek Ethical Philosophy‟ in (ed.) Gill
Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (OUP) 303-328, esp. 314: „other benefiting motivation is best explained
by reference to a combination of the social ideals of solidarity and reciprocity‟. Cf. Annas, The
Morality of Happiness (1999) who avoids all talk of egoism /altruism for similar reasons and talks
instead of self-concern and other-concern.
51
On this issue see Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Oxford, 1970) p4.

24
theories that some desires are open to rational assessment, can be rationally justified,
and are not just given inclinations. Some desires – those for the good – are
deliberately and actively cultivated through the leading of a certain kind of rationally
reflective life. These are desires for which we can be held responsible, and which can
be rationally assessed, as an important part of our ethical lives. Since both the
Symposium and the Phaedrus in different ways make it clear that the highest kind of
interpersonal relationships are those that are grounded in precisely this kind of
rational desire, the idea that we might love another person „for their sake and for our
own‟ does not have some of the implications from which Kantians desire to maintain
their distance. To say, that we love someone for their own sake and for ours, is not to
admit that we love other persons for their sake and for the satisfaction of some non-
rational inclination; rather, it is to say that we love other persons for their sake and for
the sake of our rational grounded orientation towards things of real value. For both
Plato and Kant, other directed concerns are freely chosen and rational, and at least in
this respect can fall into the category of the morally praiseworthy. Furthermore, the
motivational structure of the Platonic agent who acts from this kind of desire is
reliable, and not transient and capricious, and it can motivate him to act contrary to
inclinations of an appetitive kind. The distance between Plato and Kant need not be so
great if we bear in mind that for neither thinker basic inclinations are determining our
ethical actions. We need not accept a moral psychological framework that groups
motives in categories of duty versus inclination and then views the latter as primarily
egoistic. Part of the virtue of Plato‟s analysis of philia in terms of its motivational
structure in the Phaedrus is that it highlights this discrepancy between a Kantian
moral psychology and a Platonic one. Nor, then, do we need to accept the remaining
criticisms of Plato which are grounded in such assumptions. If so, perhaps Vlastos‟
Kantian objection need not cut so deep either.

Conclusion
I have argued that the Symposium does not provide, and was not meant to provide,
Plato‟s account of interpersonal love; it is an account of the desire for happiness, and
individuals are not proper objects of that particular desire. This is a perfectly
inoffensive conclusion. We might still want to know whether persons have any role to
play in the acquisition and cultivation of the good life. Plato, like Aristotle, explores
that issue in an account of philia. I have argued that we can reconstruct an account of
philia from the Phaedrus. Moreover, in showing how eros and philia work together
the Phaedrus shows how an eros for wisdom (forms) functions together with our
attachments to others. Plato had, in fact, a deeply rich and humane account of
interpersonal love that requires us to take responsibility for our own selves and to
properly orientate our own desires before we embark a life with significant others.
That, I submit, is fundamentally why his account of eros is not the end of his account
of interpersonal love, but its proper beginning.

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