When someone says they lived through a platonic love, everyone understands the exact same thing: a love that remained purely a longing, that never actually came to pass and, for that very reason, stayed flawless in memory. It is a meaning so settled that it needs no explanation. The only catch is that the text that gave birth to the expression says, practically, the opposite. That text is Plato's Symposium, and in it love begins, precisely, with a body: with a face that someone found beautiful.
The common meaning, and where it comes from
The common meaning did not emerge out of nowhere. The notion of a love content to gaze from afar holds a grain of truth: it preserves the intuition that there is a beauty greater than possession. What got lost along the way was movement. In ordinary speech today, "platonic" means stationary. In Plato's text, it means the reverse: a love that has not stopped.
To see this, it helps to recall the setting. A tragic poet, Agathon, had just won a tragedy contest in Athens in the year 416 BC, and he gathers his friends at home to celebrate. Because everyone had indulged in too much wine the previous night, they agree on a curious arrangement: tonight no one drinks heavily, and each person delivers a speech in praise of love. The speeches ascend. One speaks of love as an ancient god, another distinguishes noble love from vulgar love, the physician claims that love harmonizes the opposing forces of body and nature. Everyone praises love, yet no one explains what it is. The answer is left for the final speaker, Socrates.
What the Symposium says: love begins with the body
Socrates does not deliver a standard oration. He asks questions, as always, and brings his host to admit what seemed obvious yet remained unsaid: we desire what we lack. Then he recounts that he learned the rest from a woman, Diotima, a priestess of Mantinea, and it is she who describes the ascent that centuries later would take the name of platonic love.
And she begins with the body. According to Diotima, everything starts with someone loving a beautiful body, and there is no shame in that at all, because that is where the journey begins. Then that person realizes that the beauty of this body is kin to the beauty of another, and the attachment to one alone loosens. The lover then discovers that the beauty of a soul is worth more than that of any face, and advances to the beauty of customs and laws, and only then, only afterward, to the beauty of knowledge. In passage 211c, the text describes the ascent as a climb that uses these things as steps: from one beautiful body to two, from two to all beautiful bodies, from beautiful bodies to beautiful pursuits, and from pursuits to the beautiful sciences.
Notice what the passage does not do: it does not command abandoning the body. The body is the first rung, and no rung is despised. Diotima adds a condition that is almost always forgotten: this climb requires someone who guides well, because no one climbs entirely alone.
The mistake is not beginning: it is stopping
Here is the turning point. If the body is merely the first step, the flaw in a love is not having begun there. The problem is stopping there, assuming one has already reached the summit. Whoever does this feels that something is still missing, and it truly is, because that was only a step.
That is why the emptiness felt after attaining what one wanted is not, for Plato, a failing on the part of the lover. It is the sign that desire still has somewhere to go. High up on the ladder, Diotima says, the one who arrives suddenly perceives an astounding beauty, which is no longer a beautiful body, a beautiful law, or a beautiful idea: it is Beauty itself, that by which all things are beautiful. And the word "suddenly" matters, because no one fabricates this vision. One climbs from step to step, and at the end, it is given.
Platonic love, infatuation, and romantic love: what is the difference?
Anyone looking for the difference between platonic love and infatuation, or between platonic love and romantic love, usually expects a comparison between two emotional states. The Symposium does not deal in these terms, and it would stretch the text to claim that Plato distinguishes them this way. What he offers is a distinction of movement, and from that an honest answer can be drawn.
What current usage calls platonic love is a love that never happened. What the text calls love is that which happens and does not stop: it loves a body, recognizes beauty in others, and climbs. Meanwhile, the attachment that locks onto a single person, mistaking the beloved for the top of the ladder, is precisely the step where Diotima tells us not to halt. The conclusion to draw from this is the opposite of an excuse to abandon the person one loves: climbing is not leaving someone behind, it is loving them without demanding that they be the summit of your ladder.
Which step are you on?
Returning to the start, the lecture sums it up this way: platonic love in the everyday sense is a love that was never fulfilled, while in Plato's sense it is a love that has not stopped. The question the text leaves behind is simple and uncomfortable: if all beautiful things are steps, which one are you on right now, and might you be mistaking the step for the summit?
The complete exploration, following Diotima's speech in the order Plato wrote it, is in the Nous lecture on the Symposium. And if you wish to read the dialogue itself, it can easily be read in an evening or two, and its heart beats within the speech of Socrates.
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See the recommended reading listFrequently asked questions
What does having a platonic love mean, according to Plato?
In the Symposium, it is not a love that never came to be. It is an ascending love: it begins with the body, with a face someone found beautiful, moves on to the beauty of souls, of practices, and of knowledge, and arrives at Beauty itself. The error the text points out is not starting with the body, it is stopping there.
What is the difference between platonic love and infatuation, or romantic love?
The Symposium does not use these terms, but the distinction the text offers is one of movement. Whoever stops at a beautiful body, thinking they have reached the summit, feels that something is still missing, and indeed it is, because that was only a step. The love Diotima speaks of is the one that does not halt there: attachment to a single body loosens, the beauty of one is recognized as kin to that of others, and desire keeps ascending.
For Plato, does platonic love exclude desire for the body?
No. Diotima explains that everything begins when someone loves a beautiful body, and there is no shame in that. The body is the first step of the ascent, and no step is despised. What the text condemns is mistaking the step for the summit.
Where does Plato speak of platonic love?
In the Symposium, during Socrates’ speech, where he recounts what he learned from Diotima of Mantinea. The ascent through the rungs of beauty is found in passage 211c. The phrase "platonic love" arose many centuries later to name this idea.
Continue reading: The Ladder of Love: What Diotima Teaches Socrates · Plato's Soulmate Myth and Diotima's Response · Plato’s Symposium: Summary and How to Read It · Living the questions, by Rilke
Source lecture: O Banquete, de Platão | O que é, de verdade, o amor platônico