Love and its Relation to Good and Pleasure

Here is an essay I wrote about Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus. It might be a little rough around the edges because this was the original copy and not my final copy, so please excuse any spelling or structuring errors if there are any.


Socrates is a believer in doing what is good, not what is pleasant. In Gorgias, he clearly lays out how doing what is good is advantageous to the soul by discovering truths through philosophy and learning, and to the body by keeping it strong, healthy, and active. Socrates assertion seems to align with the idea that doing what is good is ultimately more beneficial in all facets of life while doing what is pleasurable may appear to be beneficial to the senses in the short-term, but ultimately is not beneficial, sometimes even damage-causing. In Phaedrus, Socrates makes two speeches about love, one criticizing it and the other in its defense. He and Phaedrus agree that love is some sort of insanity and/or some celestial being, and it seems to be the former that leads him to criticize love and the latter that compels him to defend/glorify it. Through his speeches, Socrates reveals what many people in the modern day have already learned through experience: Sometimes it can be hard to determine whether or not love is a good thing. Likewise, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between what is good and what is merely pleasurable.

Obviously perspectives on proper human relationships have changed from the time of Plato to the present. Pederasty, for example, is no longer considered an acceptable expression of love. However, it appears one thing that has not changed much since Plato is human. Love is often attributed to having an intoxicating effect. In fact, many people can probably think of instances when they have acted insanely because of it. Instances of it even shows up in the news repeatedly (Nancy Kerrigan, lately that astronaut lady, etc.)

In Socrates’ first speech, he finds the problem to be that desire, which is associated with love, is interconnected with pleasure. One who desires will always ultimately use the person of his or her affection to obtain pleasure. The result is that the object of affection serves his or her purpose and is cast aside, failing to gain anything for him/herself in the process. However, in his second speech, Socrates reverts to matters of the heavens to make a case in the defense of love. Socrates is forced to tell mythical stories, in the process glorifying love. However, these are stories that he, as a mere mortal, could never have witnessed, making it something he can never completely understand. He concludes that love is a sort of divinity.

Socrates conclusion seems to be contradictory. In Gorgias, and even in the first speech he gives in Phaedrus, he uses logic to come to his conclusions. However, in his final speech he seems to have succumbed to some sort of divine intoxication, or perhaps the same sort of madness that love stems from. He abandons logic and dialogue and seemingly contrary to his beliefs, he gives a long, beautiful, but intangible speech. Perhaps Plato saw that the best way to understand and present love, this strange something that seems so illogical but remains innate in all humans, was by depicting his protagonist Socrates at his weakest and most illogical moment. Plato’s point being that love is not an aspect of human life that can be understood by logic, but nonetheless remains essential. In doing so Plato was making a very profound statement, but he also raised many questions as to whether Socrates is being contradictory and whether or not his conclusion of love should be valued considering that he concludes in his first speech that love is a component of pleasure and does nothing to disprove it, but rather foregoes rational and logical processing in favor of elegant intangibles.

The most prevalent issue in determining love’s relationship to the good and the pleasurable appears to lie within the problematic definition of the word ‘love.’ Love means many different things and to different people the word carries differing connotation, relevance, and impact depending on when, how, and who it is used in reference to. There exists spiritual love, romantic love, brotherly love, neighborly love, etc. It certainly seems that certain aspects of love are pleasurable whereas others would seem to be more accurately grouped as good. Another issue with Socrates’ speeches about whether love is good or just is that he does not define the counterpart to love. With the body, Socrates states that gymnastics and medicine are good ways to take care of the body and cosmetics and pastry-baking are the pleasurable counterparts. Similarly, in regards to the soul, legislation and justice are the good ways to govern the soul and sophistry and rhetoric are the pleasurable counterparts. It would appear that to determine whether love can be considered either good or pleasurable, its counterpart also needs to be identified.

I’m not Socrates or Plato, but it seems to me that Socrates first speech which he gives is an attack against lust more than it is of love. Seeing beauty and desiring to possess it in order to quench a deep, insatiable sexual urge relates more closely to his assertions in his first speech and its relation to what is pleasurable. In his second speech, Socrates presents an intangible speech for love, which is something that humans will probably never completely understand, but for whatever reasons still believe to be a good thing.