Love

Use in the book

Charmides enters preceded and followed by erastai. Socrates describes the company as overwhelmed by his appearance and includes himself among the admirers. The scene recognizes differences of age and role in male courtship without specifying an exact numerical age for Charmides or narrating a sexual encounter. The immediate action is looking, crowding, speaking, and seeking proximity.

The narrator's self-exposure is essential. He calls himself an unreliable measure of youthful beauty and reports that seeing within the boy's cloak sets him on fire. He has imagined that conversation would be easy, but desire interrupts that composure. Cydias' fawn-and-lion image reverses the expected distribution of strength: the older would-be pursuer feels caught by the beautiful youth. Charmides is not merely a passive object in the scene, for his look and his question make the supposed expert struggle to answer.

The movement toward philosophy is not an assertion that bodily beauty has ceased to matter. Socrates has already proposed stripping the soul before the body, and his medical story offers verbal treatment. Charmides' approval gradually restores Socrates' confidence. One may read the recovery as a practical exercise in temperance, but the text does not label it the solution to the inquiry or define temperance as the complete elimination of desire. Attraction is redirected into sustained conversation, while the continuing playful power of the attractive youth remains evident at the close.

Erōs returns at 167e in the series testing knowledge of knowledge. Could there be a love directed to no beautiful thing, but only to itself and other loves? Critias denies it. The example depends on the stipulated ordinary object of love, the beautiful, and gains dramatic force from the prologue's richly specific attraction. It is not a separate argument that reflective affection or delight in being in love can never occur; it tests a purported capacity abstracted from the objects by which that capacity is recognized. Nor does the unsuccessful erotic analogy alone prove that knowledge cannot know knowledge: Socrates expressly continues the inquiry.

The ending again exchanges the positions of pursuer and pursued. Charmides wants daily association, Critias commands it, and Socrates is told he cannot resist. That reversal completes the comic frame while placing attraction beside obedience and coercion. Treating the scene as either wholly innocent educational symbolism or a single straightforward erotic confession would lose the tension Plato sustains.

Places to read

1. 154a–cCharmides’ lovers accompany him and the assembled company responds to his appearance
2. 155c–156d23Socrates narrates erotic discomposure and recovery of conversational confidence
3. 167eLove of the beautiful supplies one analogy in the examination of self-related capacities
4. 176b–dThe desired continuing association reverses the initial direction of pursuit

Translation in this edition

The edition renders erastai as “lovers,” not merely neutral friends, and ta erōtika as “the ways of love.” The noun erōs at 167e should retain its relation to the beautiful without importing the full theory developed in the Symposium.

ἐν ἐμαυτοῦ

Attested: ἐν ἐμαυτοῦ (en emautou). In possession or control of myself; the negated idiom describes Socrates’ loss of composure at Charmides’ appearance. References: 155d. Lexical identification: expression / normalized lookup: ἐν ἐμαυτοῦ. See Erotic attraction.

ἐραστής

Attested: ἐρασταὶ (erastai). Lovers or admirers; the youths attending Charmides’ conspicuous entrance. References: 154a. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐραστής. See Erotic attraction.

ἐράω

Attested: ἐρᾶν (eran). Love or desire erotically; describes the spectators’ response to Charmides. References: 154c. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐράω. See Erotic attraction.

ἐρωτικός

Attested: ἐρωτικά (erōtika). Matters of erotic love; the field in which Socrates calls Cydias exceptionally wise. References: 155d. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐρωτικός. See Erotic attraction.

θορυβέω

Attested: τεθορυβημένοι (tethorybēmenoi). Thrown into agitation or excitement; the admirers’ response to Charmides’ entrance, accompanying their astonishment. References: 154c. Lexical identification: lemma: θορυβέω. See Erotic attraction.

ἀνήγετο (anēgeto)

Was raising himself or moving to speak; introduces Charmides’ question as Socrates becomes flustered. References: 155d. Lemma: ἀνάγω. See Erotic attraction.

ἐφλεγόμην (ephlegomēn)

I was burning; Socrates describes the force of erotic excitement. References: 155d. Lemma: φλέγω. See Erotic attraction.

ἐώθει (eōthei)

Was pushing; each seated admirer tries to create a place for Charmides beside himself. References: 155c. Lemma: ὠθέω. See Erotic attraction.

καθημένων (kathēmenōn)

Sitting or seated; the seated company jostles to make room for Charmides. References: 155c. Lemma: κάθημαι. See Erotic attraction.

κατεβάλομεν (katebalomen)

We knocked down; the scramble for a place beside Charmides pushes one man sideways off his seat. References: 155c. Lemma: καταβάλλω. See Erotic attraction.

μόγις (mogis)

With difficulty or barely; Socrates struggles to answer after losing his composure. References: 155e. Lemma: μόγις. See Erotic attraction.

περιέρρεον (perierreon)

Were flowing around; figuratively describes the audience crowding in a circle around Socrates and Charmides. References: 155d. Lemma: περιρρέω. See Erotic attraction.

Use in the book

Love is the condition of the conversation before it becomes its explicit subject. Socrates identifies himself as the first of Alcibiades’ lovers and the only one who has not left. The youth has defeated the others by greater pride, while Socrates has kept attending him without speaking. Alcibiades himself wanted to ask what this persistent man hopes to achieve. Their encounter is therefore reciprocal in curiosity before it becomes reciprocal in love.

Socrates’ initial account of his persistence closely resembles the beloved’s political ambition. Alcibiades wants to prove he is worth everything to the city and thereby gain power; Socrates wants to prove he is worth everything to Alcibiades and gain power with him. The parallel is deliberately strong, but it does not mean their proposed practices are identical. The actual service requested is answering questions, and what follows tests the young man’s ability to know and care before ruling. Socrates also ties his intervention to the god’s permission.

The long delay, Socrates says, makes sense because Alcibiades can now listen. The lover thus measures the right moment for address rather than merely the duration of attraction. At 119c he is indignant on behalf of both Alcibiades and his own love when the beloved proposes settling for superiority over poorly educated local politicians. At 122b the lover is almost the only person said to care about the young Athenian’s upbringing. These claims join eros to the labour of education, without eliminating its teasing or possessive features.

The distinction at 131c–132a2 gives a retrospective explanation. A person who loves Alcibiades’ body loves something belonging to Alcibiades; a lover of the soul loves the person himself, according to the provisional account just accepted. Bodily bloom fades, but Alcibiades is beginning to bloom in another sense. Socrates can therefore remain when the others leave. His promise is not unconditional: it is tied to movement toward the better and threatened by corruption through the people. The new account transforms the reason for loving rather than announcing that physical beauty has never mattered to the drama.

Eros also names dangerous redirections. Fame among Greeks and barbarians is something Alcibiades loves with unmatched intensity at 124b. At 132a the people becomes a handsome rival beloved. The question is not simply whether the young man loves, but what he loves and whether that relation encourages care or subordination to appearances and applause.

The ending changes the asymmetry. Alcibiades will now follow and attend Socrates; Socrates’ love has hatched another winged love that may care for it in return. The stork image makes reciprocity explicit without claiming their educational positions have become identical. Nor does the promise settle the future: the final fear remains. Love creates a possible route into care for justice, whose completion the dialogue withholds.

Places to read

1. 103a–106a234First lover, defeated rivals, silence and reciprocal hopes frame the encounter.
2. 119cThe proposal to avoid training offends Socrates on behalf of his love.
3. 122bThe lover is singled out as caring for a young Athenian’s formation.
4. 124bDesire for reputation is described with the same erotic verb.
5. 131c–132a2The persistent lover is distinguished from lovers of the beloved’s belongings.
6. 135d–135eAttendance reverses and reciprocal love is imagined as a stork’s young.

Translation in this edition

The edition consistently renders the erotic family as lover and love. The historical Athenian convention of an older male lover and younger beloved is supplied as contextual orientation; it must not obscure the dialogue’s own transformation of roles or be confused with the unrelated senses of “pupil.”

ἐραστής

Attested: ἐραστής (erastēs; 103a). Lover, specifically Socrates and Alcibiades’ other suitors. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐραστής. See Love and the lover.

ἐράω

Attested: ἐρᾷ (erai; 131c). To love or desire; here to love Alcibiades’ soul. Lexical identification: lemma: ἐράω. See Love and the lover.

ἔρως

Attested: ἔρωτος (erōtos; 104c); ἔρως (erōs; 135e). Love or erotic desire, from which the reciprocal love at the ending is generated. Lexical identification: lemma: ἔρως. See Love and the lover.

Use in the book

Socrates contrasts his lack of the sophists' “blessed and fine subjects” with an exception: he knows the things of love and counts himself supremely clever in them (128b). The modest size of the exception is comic beside the extravagant claim to exceed both earlier and contemporary men. Neither half should be removed. “Socrates knows nothing” omits the qualification; “Socrates teaches a doctrine of love” invents a lesson not given here.

The placement matters. Father and son have asked for a beneficial relationship. The sophists attract wealthy young associates away from unpaid civic company; Theages wants Socrates in particular. A claim about recognizing and dealing with love is therefore relevant to the educational desires and attractions organizing the scene, even though Socrates does not explicitly work out that connection. The source note's parallels in Symposium 177d and Lysis 204b–c help a reader recognize the familiar claim, without supplying a missing speech on love to this dialogue.

Theages hears the whole disclaimer as joking or unwillingness. Socrates instead explains the daimonic limitations on association. The exception about love consequently remains neither withdrawn nor developed into a teachable curriculum. It also does not authorize interpreting Aristides' touching as an explicit sexual act: the later narrative describes proximity and contact in an educational story, and the lexicon must preserve that description without adding particulars the text lacks.

Places to read

1. 128bσμικροῦ τινος μαθήματος, τῶν ἐρωτικῶν — The knowledge of love is the specified small exception
2. 128bπαρ’ ὁντινοῦν ποιοῦμαι δεινὸς εἶναι — Socrates counts himself clever beyond anyone in this subject
3. 128b–c2τῶν προγεγονότων ἀνθρώπων καὶ τῶν νῦν — The comparison includes past and present people

Translation in this edition

“The things of love” retains the plural and avoids importing “erotic theory” or a single named craft. Burnet prints poioūmai in the boast; the apparatus records alternatives proposed by editors. The translation “count myself” follows the printed text rather than silently adopting those proposals.

Clever or skilled — δεινός (deinos)

δεινός (deinos)

Clever or skilled. The competence Socrates claims in love; it does not by itself mean morally good. Attested: δεινὸς (128b). Love as the small subject Socrates knows.

Count oneself — ποιεῖσθαι (poieisthai)

ποιεῖσθαι (poieisthai)

Count oneself. The printed verb in Socrates' claim to consider himself exceptionally clever in love; alternative readings are recorded in the apparatus. Attested: ποιοῦμαι (128b). Love as the small subject Socrates knows.

Have gone before — προγίγνεσθαι (progignesthai)

προγίγνεσθαι (progignesthai)

Have gone before. The earlier human beings included in Socrates' extravagant comparison of his erotic expertise. Attested: προγεγονότων (128b). Love as the small subject Socrates knows.

Things of love — ἐρωτικός (erōtikos)

ἐρωτικός (erōtikos)

Things of love. The substantival adjective naming the small subject Socrates excepts from his lack of knowledge; not an attestation of the noun erōs. Attested: τῶν ἐρωτικῶν (128b). Love as the small subject Socrates knows.

So to speak nothing except (contextual phrase)

128b: ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν οὐδὲν ἐπιστάμενος. “Knowing, so to speak, nothing” is immediately followed by the love exception. The idiomatic hedge and the exception both qualify the claim. Treating it as an unqualified denial of every competence makes the speaker contradict a proposition stronger than he states. The extraordinary boast in the excepted subject remains part of the same speech. See Socrates and Love.

Use in the book

The opening makes the noun concrete in Hippothales’ attraction to Lysis (204b–205a2). Praise, embarrassment, concealment, and the wish to win the beloved frame the inquiry into friendship. Socrates’ own eagerness for acquiring friends is described with the related adverb ἐρωτικῶς at 211e.

The noun returns at 221e beside friendship and desire: all three are proposed as directed toward what is akin. This return ties the apparently abstract inquiry back to the dramatic courtship. It does not erase their lexical differences: ἔρως denotes the lover’s desire, φιλία the relation or affection, and ἐπιθυμία wanting in a wider range, including appetite.

The outcome at 222a–b2 seems briefly favorable to Hippothales, but the argument resumes and ends without a definition. Reading the last affinity proposal as a certified theory of erotic reciprocity would disregard that sequence.

Places to read

1. 221eὅ τε ἔρως καὶ ἡ φιλία καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία — love and friendship and desire.
2. 204b–205a2
3. 211e
4. 221e–222b2

Use in the book

In the Phaedrus excerpt, love is associated with the divine inspiration awakened by beauty, pictured as the growth of wings. In the Symposium dialogue, Diotima reasons that Love’s lack of good and beautiful things prevents his being a god; he is a great daimōn between mortal and immortal. The explanation of desire and the classification of the intermediary belong to that particular argument.

Places to read

1. I.9.10The lover’s inspiration is explained through beauty and recollection.
2. I.9.17.1Love’s intermediate status follows from desire and lack.

Translation in this edition

Capital “Love” marks the personified subject. The Empedoclean power also rendered “Love” uses related but different Greek vocabulary, treated under Friendship and cosmic attraction.

Use in the book

An early quotation expressly attributed to La Mettrie praises love’s great pleasure as the highest good. That reported proposition must not be absorbed without qualification into Joubert’s own voice. A later reflection, approvingly related to Leibniz, instead differentiates love as joy in the beloved’s perfection and contemplation from pleasure as joy of sex or existence. Love becomes “a joy of essence.” The philosophical vocabulary should remain strange enough to preserve the distinction.

Yet another formula names love as will both at rest and in action: possession accounts for rest, pleasure for action. It does not merely repeat the earlier love/pleasure opposition. The harmonic soul can experience love together with sorrow, friendship, business and study, while angelic love is called continual pity. These several constructions show why a single romantic or theological definition would be inadequate. They also keep activity, possession, contemplation and compassion available as distinct aspects of the word.

Places to read

1. I, p. 38, entry 2, ¶1La Mettrie is the speaker of the praise of love’s pleasure.
2. I, p. 368, entry 4, ¶1Love is distinguished from pleasure through perfection and essence.
3. I, p. 468, entry 4, ¶1Love joins restful possession to pleasurable activity.
4. II, p. 557, entry 8, ¶1Love belongs within a broad field of inward harmony.
5. II, p. 855, entry 8, ¶1Angelic love is figured as continual pity.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the La Mettrie attribution, the repeated “joy” in the Leibniz-related passage and the contrast between existence and essence. It does not replace Joubert’s formulation with wording from another author’s edition. Rest/action and love/pity remain his explicit juxtapositions.

Use in the book

Love is the organizing reality of the Centuries. The world manifests it, the soul receives it, and felicity depends on returning and extending it. Traherne refuses a picture of gifts as sufficient in themselves: without living affection, even worlds become a silent wilderness. Material abundance matters because it expresses a giver and enables a communion. To enjoy the world truly is to perceive love at its fountain and at its end.

Its reciprocity is essential. Love desires the beloved’s happiness and delights in that happiness; the beloved’s response becomes a further treasure. God’s generosity therefore does not merely transfer goods from one stock to another. It establishes persons able to know and love, and hence to become delightful to the giver. The creature’s dignity and responsibility arise together from this relation.

II.40 discovers a Trinitarian structure within loving: love in its source, love communicated, and love present in the beloved are one love in distinct manners of subsistence. This is more than a decorative comparison. It allows the act that joins persons to become a means of contemplating divine unity and distinction. Yet it should not be flattened into the claim that any three feelings constitute three divine persons. The meditation develops an analogy through its own careful language of unity, procession, and presence.

Self-love presents a second apparent difficulty. IV.55 treats it as a basis capable of fulfilment and overflow, rather than as either an absolute good or an evil to be simply amputated. A person who receives enough can love the benefactor and then others more fully. IV.65 carries the reasoning into divine simplicity: God loves himself as the lover of his beloved, so his self-delight and their welfare belong to one act.

For human beings this harmony is a vocation, not a description of every impulse. Love must be educated and exercised amid wants, competing interests, and failures of esteem. Its freedom matters because coerced affection would contradict what it is. The lexicon’s neighbouring terms, charity, benevolence, delight, self-love, and communion, name distinguishable workings within this larger movement.

Places to read

1. II.40One love appears as source, communication, and presence in the beloved in a Trinitarian analogy.
2. II.47Love delights in its objects and in being delightful to them.
3. II.62Without love, even the abundant world is a silent wilderness.
4. IV.55Fulfilled self-love becomes a reservoir capable of overflowing to others.
5. IV.65Divine self-love is inseparable from love for the beloved and their felicity.

In this edition

The repeated same and one in II.40 guard the analogy against dividing love into separate substances. Elsewhere loving can include willing good, giving, esteeming, and delighting, rather than a single emotional state.

Use in the book

Love is first a preserving power beside God in the father’s care. It later becomes a common principle moving flower, bird, and human observer, though at different degrees of perfection. The same natural meditation binds love and reproduction to decline, making love a source of life inseparable from expenditure and loss.

The intimate demand is more vulnerable. Addressing the notebook as a beloved companion, Guérin imagines an affection able to understand, support, and console a weak soul. He does not claim equality of visible gifts; he asks for a strength willing to serve. Yet reciprocity survives: the stronger companion can also lean on the weaker, and giving that rest is itself consolation. The imagined relation is more intricate than one-way pity.

Love further organizes his attachment to landscapes. Leaving the country resembles parting from a beloved, and he is surprised by the resemblance rather than explaining it away. After Marie’s death, love requires a painful reorientation of imagination toward the invisible. Across these uses, love is less a single passion than the power through which persons and things become capable of altering the self’s world.

Places to read

1. 4 August 1832 · ¶1Paternal love cooperates with God in preserving the child within earthly life.
2. 31 March 1833 · ¶1Love links flowering, birds, and humanity while remaining bound to a law of decline.
3. 20 April 1834 · ¶1The desired compassionate attachment includes reciprocal rest even amid unequal strength.
4. 20 August 1834 · ¶2Parting from the countryside is explicitly compared with separation from a beloved.
5. 2 February 1835 · ¶5Love changes the direction of imagination after the beloved friend’s death.

Translation in this edition

The English “love of compassion” retains amour de compassion rather than reducing it to pity. Its repeated “soul” in the imagined relationship preserves Guérin’s insistence on a whole inward being, not simply an attractive social personality.

Use in the book

René says in solitude that he has not yet loved (p. 160), yet later calls Amélie the only person he has loved (p. 166). The apparent contradiction is instructive: the first passage envisages a future erotic object; the second gathers familial intimacy, recognition, and childhood memory into a single person. Neither warrants inferring that he knowingly shared her incestuous desire. Her own decisive prayer calls him a brother who has not shared it (p. 180).

His wished-for Eve is a woman ‘drawn from myself’ (p. 163). The explicitly biblical image gives cosmic scale to companionship, but also makes the imagined other unusually close to the self that desires her. Amélie’s advice to marry has its own disturbing recoil: the ideal wife would seem a recovered sister (p. 171). These verbal crossings make substitution and projection legible without proving a concealed reciprocal affair.

In Amélie’s final letter, religion ‘gently deceives’ the sensitive soul and unites the lover and virgin (p. 186). The letter describes an affective conversion, not instant erasure of feeling. Its modest assurances on p. 185, where peace is qualified and suffering diminishes over time, resist an overly tidy account. The superior’s later testimony that Amélie dies nursing her companions (p. 188) provides a distinct, outward manifestation of love: charity directed beyond the privileged bond with René. The authorial Défense’s assertion that she dies happy and healed is stronger and more categorical than every stage of her own account.

Places to read

1. p. 160n'ayant point encore aimé — René describes the lack of a realized love-object during his rural isolation.
2. p. 180un frère qui n'a point partagé ma criminelle passion — Amélie’s words explicitly exclude reciprocity at the revelation.
3. p. 186une sorte de chasteté brûlante — The oxymoron preserves intensity within a changed religious commitment.
4. p. 186ce reste de trouble — The surviving remainder matters: conversion is narrated through mixed affect, not simple emotional extinction.
5. p. 188morte victime de son zèle et de sa charité — The superior’s account makes care for the community a final measure of transformed love.

Translation in this edition

At p. 163 the supplied 1802 reading has masculine ‘à un autre’, where 1826 has feminine ‘à une autre’; the later witness specifies a woman. At p. 186 the change from kindling a flame where another burned to changing one flame into another emphasizes continuity of language. Neither change can be dated more precisely from this edition’s two witnesses alone.

Use in the book

Love in these chapters is an intellectual or appetitive embrace of goodness. Pleasure is the will's expansion toward, and repose in, good. Ficino uses this connection to argue that perfect divine cognition must not be imagined as an affectless awareness without enjoyment. God wills and loves his own goodness, and from that love extends love to his images and works.

The craftsman and father illustrate degrees of attachment to one's production: God loves his works more fully because he has received neither their form nor their matter from another. This divine love leads directly to providence, the willing and preserving of their good. The language should not be reduced either to bodily pleasure or to changing human passions. Ficino qualifies divine desire as occurring in God's own manner and identifies being, understanding, and willing in God. These terms therefore express the perfection and efficacy of divine good rather than need, deprivation, or dependence on a beloved object outside God.

Further passage references. II.11.30–3823456789; II.12.4–7234; II.13.1–323.

Places to read

1. II.9.2Intelligence is desirable because it allows enjoyment of self and other things
2. II.11.30Divine will embraces its present good and connects outward production with goodness
3. II.13.1Divine self-pleasure and self-love lead to love of images and works

Translation in this edition

“Pleasure” or “love” should not import a fluctuating human passion into a passage that identifies divine being, knowing, and willing. In II.13.1 the paired amat and diligit connect self-love with love of images and works. Frui at II.9.2 describes the good of intellectual enjoyment.

amare / amor

amare / amor. Printed forms: amari; amorem.

To love; love as orientation toward or expression of goodness. The first principle’s goodness is aligned with love in the Johannine theological comparison. References: II.1.7, II.3.10. See Love and pleasure.

caritas

caritas. Printed forms: caritate.

Charity or love directed toward humanity. Ficino presents charity as a motive for composing a Platonic theology aligned with Christian truth; the term concerns his declared purpose. References: Proem.7. See Love and pleasure.

conquiescere / amplecti

conquiescere / amplecti. Printed forms: amplecti; amplectitur; conquiescat.

Rest contentedly / embrace. These verbs characterize possession and enjoyment of a present good rather than pursuit of something still lacking. References: II.11.29, II.11.30. See Love and pleasure.

dilectio / diligere

dilectio / diligere. Printed forms: Dilectio; dilectione; diligit.

Love or loving attachment. Divine love is called intellectual because its subject and object are intellectual and intelligible. References: II.11.36, II.11.37. See Love and pleasure.

frui

frui. Printed forms: frueretur; frui; fruitur.

To enjoy or possess the use of something. The flame would enjoy its natural goal; intelligence lets a being enjoy itself and other things. References: II.6.23, II.9.2. See Love and pleasure.

Enjoy or possess with delight. Perfect intellect’s continuing enjoyment of its perfect object supports the argument for delight in divine activity. References: II.11.32. See Love and pleasure.

placere / displicere

placere / displicere. Printed forms: displicet; placet.

Please or satisfy / displease. Participation in good is linked to self-contentment; the Good itself is therefore said to will and delight in itself supremely. References: II.12.6. See Love and pleasure.

voluptas

voluptas. Printed forms: voluptatem.

Pleasure as a possible object of preference. People may prefer pleasure to contemplation, showing knowledge’s subordinate status relative to what is taken as good; this is not an unrestricted endorsement of every pleasure. References: I.6.19. See Love and pleasure.

voluptas / dilatatio

voluptas / dilatatio. Printed forms: dilatatio; voluptas.

Pleasure / expansion or dilation. Mental pleasure is defined through will’s expansion into and repose in the good, distinguishing delight from bare appetite. References: II.11.33. See Love and pleasure.