cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/32338762
…or at least only non-romantic love. I’m learning about history of western philosophy and understand that Plato’s Symposium describes his theory on love and that a person initially desires physical love, but then eventually grows to love things that feel fulfilling, and eventually love the ideal form of beauty itself. It seems like more of a spectrum/progression that includes romantic/physical love, not abstaining from it. “Platonic love” would seem to include physical love and doesn’t seem consistent with the dictionary definition of “friendship love.”
Any thoughts on that?
It’s quite simple. This person is committing the etymological fallacy. A word’s meaning today does not have to be exactly equivalent to its meaning in the past, or to the words it evolved out of.
But even in Plato’s depiction of love I don’t think they’ve quite got it right. “that includes romantic/physical love” seems to be conflating romantic love with carnal attraction, which is pretty strongly not what Plato was about.
