Plato’s bond of love: Erôs as participation in beauty
dc.contributor.advisor
Scaltsas, Theodore
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dc.contributor.advisor
Santas, Jerry
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dc.contributor.author
Ware, Lauren Patricia Wenden
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dc.contributor.sponsor
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship
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dc.contributor.sponsor
Sciences Shaw Fellowship
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dc.contributor.sponsor
Thomas Weidemann Memorial Fund
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dc.date.accessioned
2014-11-26T15:46:05Z
dc.date.available
2014-11-26T15:46:05Z
dc.date.issued
2014-07-01
dc.description.abstract
In his dialogues, Plato presents different ways in which to understand the relation
between Forms and particulars. In the Symposium, we are presented with yet another,
hitherto unidentified Form-particular relation: the relation is Love (Erôs), which binds
together Form and particular in a generative manner, fulfilling all the metaphysical
requirements of the individual’s qualification by participation. Love in relation to the
beautiful motivates human action to desire for knowledge of the Form, resulting in the
lover actively cultivating and bringing into being new beauty in the world, and in herself.
Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis offer a survey of the arguments and examples Plato puts
forward in the text of the corpus regarding the nature of Forms and the nature of
participation, alongside a framework of the traditional interpretations of these two
Platonic concepts in the literature. Chapter 3 turns to a close examination of Erôs in
the Symposium, arguing that the love Plato presents in this dialogue is of a different sort
than appetitive emotion. It is an aesthetic and intellectual attraction, capable of
stimulating cognitive achievement. Erôs, however, does not stop there. The lover is led
not only to contemplation of beauty, but to the generation of beauty, which is the
subject of Chapter 4. The emotive-turn-to-cognitive relation of Erôs, I argue, is the
clearest picture Plato paints of how possession of properties can be explained through
participation in Forms. Erôs leads the lover to produce beauty in the world and in the
soul, which explains how love in relation to the beautiful can lead to becoming
beautiful. The object of love is the generation of beauty, the mortal mechanism of
participation in the Form by which the lover herself becomes beautiful. Finally, Chapter
5 focusses on beauty itself and its role in moral education. Beauty, for Plato, is required
for creative generation and can be understood as a uniquely powerful virtue of soul.
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dc.identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9718
dc.language.iso
en
dc.publisher
The University of Edinburgh
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dc.relation.hasversion
Ware, Lauren. “What Good is Love?” Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis 34:2 (2014): 57-73.
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dc.subject
Plato
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dc.subject
emotions
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dc.subject
love
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dc.subject
beauty
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dc.subject
participation
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dc.subject
ethics
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dc.subject
education
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dc.title
Plato’s bond of love: Erôs as participation in beauty
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dc.type
Thesis or Dissertation
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dc.type.qualificationlevel
Doctoral
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dc.type.qualificationname
PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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