I claim that it is a focusing desire, that overrides other concerns and causes us to overwhelmingly focus on its object. I suggest that it is an arresting response to beauty, through which we come to value the ideal properties of the forms. I argue that it is grounded in our mortality and imperfection, which give rise to a desire for immortality and the immortal. First, I consider the source of philosophical erôs. Why should Plato make this claim? In this chapter, I explore Plato’s treatment of philosophical erôs along three dimensions.

One of the ways in which Plato has captured the popular imagination is with the claim that the philosopher can feel erôs, passionate love, for the objects of knowledge. At the same time, in the ascent passage, he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality through its communion with the form. It is this form of immortality that Plato claims is unavailable to humankind in the flux passage of the Symposium. I argue that, while Plato attributes general immortality to all soul in the Phaedo, in the Affinity Argument, he proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through contemplating forms. ) applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to the Phaedo and the Symposium. Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim? What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment? And how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s insistence throughout his corpus that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal? In this chapter, I pursue these questions by (. In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the forms may confer immortality upon him.

The banquet plato