Friends vs Platonic friends?

[Ikarus]

Is there a meaningful distinction between calling someone your friend vs calling them your platonic friend?

Just curious…

Do any of you believe in the ideas of platonic friendship as described in Platos Symposium? Random question I know but Plato is in the word platonic.

I find it odd that platonic is such a popularized word but people who emphasize platonic never go beyond (its not romantic) description.

If its not romantic why not call it friendship. Why use platonic anyway if people aren’t going to even give platos ideals a wink or a nod. 

 

[Scylactic]

I thought friendships are platonic. Wouldn't adding platonic be redundant?

[Ikarus]

@Scylactic In a way yes, I don’t understand why people have the need to use the word platonic.

What use does platonic friendship give, because everyone knows friendships aren’t romantic anyway. 
 

Unless…someone’s in a sexual relationship with a friend but even then why does anyone need to know that?

And if they knew why cant said person say they are my friend. But again, why say “they are my “platonic” friend?” (platonic / non romantically). 

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Ikarus

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

????? Who is out there saying “platonic friendship”?

[Holmbo]

I've never heard anyone using the term platonic friendship. Platonic relationship and friendship are somewhat synonymous I think. But the definition of both platonic and friendship are pretty broad and can vary depending on the person.

[HelloThere]

1 hour ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

????? Who is out there saying “platonic friendship”?

I’d pull out “platonic relationship” but never “platonic friendship”. I mean that’s kinda what friendships are, but a relationship is often just living together and being together more often than others.

[DeltaAro]

14 hours ago, Ikarus said:

Is there a meaningful distinction between calling someone your friend vs calling them your platonic friend?

"platonic" exists as a word for ...

• allos to emphasize that a relationship isn't sexual / romantic, and everyone's fine with it, no hard feelings, no sexual or romantic attraction (at least it's not strong) - and this though this relationship would be assumed to be sexual / romantic (e.g. same age, opposite gender)
• aros to precisely distinguish this non-romantic attraction (desire for friendship, etc.) from romantic attraction

14 hours ago, Ikarus said:

Do any of you believe in the ideas of platonic friendship as described in Platos Symposium? Random question I know but Plato is in the word platonic.

The Symposium is more about love as ascent to the Form of Beauty (which obviously contradicts the split attraction model, that sees aesthetic attraction as an attraction in its own right).

I think that in Phaedrus, we find more concrete ideas that can be applied to a relationship.

According to this dialogue, a platonic relationship would be one where sexual attraction is strongly present but mostly not acted upon. OK, sex is still "allowed" to happen as an "accident" or a "slip-up" in some rare instances, but better not!

In Plato's chariot analogy, love makes our soul spread wings because the soul remembers the Form of Beauty, and wants to ascend to it. Beauty in this world is "instantiated" by a beautiful boy (or "beautiful person", though Phaedrus [just as the Symposium] is about homoerotic male love, or more sinister, the Athenian institution of pederasty).

But the bad, ugly, black horse (the appetitive part of the soul) gets unruly when it sees the beautiful boy and pulls us to the beloved so to have sex with him. Platonic lovers resist the temptation, and over time the black horse gets disciplined.

After death, our soul rises from the body, and tries to ascend to the gods and ride with them to reach the place beyond the heavens. Here it can experience the Forms themselves, which results in a sort of salvation.

But black horse will pull us down to earth, if it was not disciplined, and we will not ascend.

I do not think that many aros are sympathetic to these ideas, since they come across as sex-negative and aphobic at the same time.

14 hours ago, Ikarus said:

If its not romantic why not call it friendship. Why use platonic anyway if people aren’t going to even give platos ideals a wink or a nod. 

The modern usage is heavily influenced by Renaissance-era Neoplatonism, which brought Plato's idea more in line with Christian values, so that platonic love usually means that sexual attraction isn't present.

Why is this word used? Maybe because friendships where we assume romantic/sexual attraction are suspect (usually opposite genders).

E.g. think "friend-zone"... the contempt in this word! So people can put a positive spin on it and insert the name of a famous philosopher.

Edited July 2, 2023 by DeltaAro
made some things clearer

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

Personally I hate Plato, so I think it’s really funny to use “platonic” in a technically inaccurate way. lol 

[HelloThere]

43 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Personally I hate Plato, so I think it’s really funny to use “platonic” in a technically inaccurate way. lol 

How so? 

[Atypique]

2 hours ago, DeltaAro said:

Why is this word used? Maybe because friendships where we assume romantic/sexual attraction are suspect (usually opposite genders).

I agree with this. Precising platonic for a friendship doesn't really make sense to me, unless people would assume it is not platonic. For example :

- I'm really close and affectionate with one of my friends, and people often assume that we're together. In that case, I might say it's a platonic friendship

- since the word friend is part of the words boyfriend and girlfriend, I can understand that people want to be more precise. Especially if the friend in question is neither a boy nor a girl

- it could also be use with irony, since insisting on the "platonic" makes people wonder even more if that's actually true

[DeltaAro]

2 minutes ago, Atypique said:

- since the word friend is part of the words boyfriend and girlfriend, I can understand that people want to be more precise. Especially if the friend in question is neither a boy nor a girl

I find "boyfriend" / "girlfriend" a very ridiculous English word, because you also use it for people of an age which is way older than "girls" / "boys".

But many languages are arguably even worse off, since the same word for "friend" can mean platonic friend or lover.

[HelloThere]

5 minutes ago, DeltaAro said:

I find "boyfriend" / "girlfriend" a very ridiculous English word, because you also use it for people of an age which is way older than "girls" / "boys".

But many languages are arguably even worse off, since the same word for "friend" can mean platonic friend or lover.

I hate having to say “a girl that is a friend”, it’s annoying to draw a clear distinction because every time that I have a friend that is a girl, my parents think I have feelings for that person, and then I have to remind them I don’t.

[Ikarus]

@DeltaAro Excellent summary Its been a fat minute since I read the Phaedrus, and yes I was wrong it was Phaedrus I was thinking of. 
 

This is just my opinion but I think there are some neat ideas in the Phaedrus despite all of the real messed up parts. Eat the fruit spit the seed.

The fruit? Well the way I can possibly apply the Phaedrus ideas in a way that may be useful is as follows. 

 The platonic relationship is primarily a friendship of virtue. One in which there are two or more people working to better themselves and reach self actualization / the forms, but preferably in life. (not the unlikely realm of the afterlife) The Phaedrus may not use these words or ideas directly but this is just how I think a healthy platonic inspired journey could look. I don’t necessarily take the theory of the forms and all that to heart either by the way.
 

The intense emotions which grow ones wings to reach the forms. It’s definitely not very relatable to me. 

Buuuuuuttttttt. in a certain point of view the main idea of a spiritual journey can be relatable to aros and allos. 

I think it would be interesting if there where people who loosely followed Platos spiritual journey part without the problematic parts.

 

imagine platonic friendships in this way explaining themselves to others.

Is that your boyfriend/girlfriend.

No this is my platonic friend. 

Oh I see.

But do you really see, or are you fooled by the shadows of illusion? Are you in the cave? Proceeds to speak about the cave allegory and give the poor man an existential crisis.

🤯

Hehe.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Ikarus

[nonmerci]

I never heard if it. That sounds weird. Maybe they mean a friend with whom they have a strong squish ?

[DeltaAro]

On 7/3/2023 at 6:18 AM, Ikarus said:

This is just my opinion but I think there are some neat ideas in the Phaedrus despite all of the real messed up parts. Eat the fruit spit the seed.

I find this difficult since it's so connected. Plato's vision entails that beauty is the ultimate telos of Eros. Also, Eros rules all, even "friendship". In Lysis, Eros is put aside a bit, and - surprise! - no satisfying result is achieved. Of course, there are many non-SAM aros, but most would still distinguish lovers and friends.

The Symposium and Phaedrus push the idea of an "objective beauty" which is strange enough. But I also can't accept that it all boils down to beauty anyway, it's not realistic.

Perhaps I approach this too prosaically, but neither sexual nor romantic attraction IRL works like this.

Sure, physical beauty is a very important factor. But often people can feel attraction to people they wouldn't describe as beautiful. And intentionally attracting sexual attention in a way that is "too obvious" is regarded as tasteless, and never beautiful. Beauty is a refined quality.

Also, certain peculiarities often cause attraction in people, which are quite different from the look that perfectly fits some beauty ideal. To quote another famous philosopher, Descartes:

I loved a girl of my own age ... who was slightly cross-eyed; by which means, the impression made in my brain when I looked at her wandering eyes was joined so much to that which also occurred when the passion of love moved me, that for a long time afterward, in seeing cross-eyed women, I felt more inclined to love them than others.

Similar arguments apply to the "beauty of the soul". How could we even rate character traits like extroverted vs. introverted? Those may be very important to us in friends, but it's ridiculous to say one is "more beautiful" than the other.

On 7/3/2023 at 6:18 AM, Ikarus said:

Buuuuuuttttttt. in a certain point of view the main idea of a spiritual journey can be relatable to aros and allos. 

Yes, but with or without beauty as the spiritual telos?

On 7/3/2023 at 6:18 AM, Ikarus said:

 The platonic relationship is primarily a friendship of virtue. One in which there are two or more people working to better themselves and reach self actualization / the forms, but preferably in life. (not the unlikely realm of the afterlife) The Phaedrus may not use these words or ideas directly but this is just how I think a healthy platonic inspired journey could look. I don’t necessarily take the theory of the forms and all that to heart either by the way.

I want to add that it's difficult to pin down Plato's opinion about it. If he was fully behind the forms as a sort of objects, the non-refuted counterarguments by Parmenides in the dialogue of the same name, like the Third Man argument, would be strange.

PS: maybe I write an essay about "Plato for aros and aces", including his reception in the Renaissance, when the modern understanding of "platonic love" was created.

I mean, Plato (or Socrates) is one of the few philosophers who wrote something interesting about love.

[Ikarus]

@DeltaAro Makes me think if I add enough of my own ideas, and that of others can I even call it platonic anymore?

What im actually saying is a friendship of virtue, similar to Cicero’s idea in friendship and a spiritual journey without beauty as the telos, or lovers.

Platonic friendships for aros and aces would definitely require a stretch from platonic writings. There would be no doubt different sub types of platonists who value beauty as the telos and others who don’t but hold other similar ideas. But again at what point do the variations become a different philosophy if the forms, beauty, and the lovers / monogamous language is rejected.

I think Plato implies a monogamous relationship in his dialogue Phaedrus.

By the way you would be a great candidate to write a plato essay for aros / aces.

[Ekaterina]

On 7/2/2023 at 9:26 PM, DeltaAro said:

"platonic" exists as a word for ...

• allos to emphasize that a relationship isn't sexual / romantic, and everyone's fine with it, no hard feelings, no sexual or romantic attraction (at least it's not strong) - and this though this relationship would be assumed to be sexual / romantic (e.g. same age, opposite gender)
• aros to precisely distinguish this non-romantic attraction (desire for friendship, etc.) from romantic attraction

The Symposium is more about love as ascent to the Form of Beauty (which obviously contradicts the split attraction model, that sees aesthetic attraction as an attraction in its own right).

I think that in Phaedrus, we find more concrete ideas that can be applied to a relationship.

According to this dialogue, a platonic relationship would be one where sexual attraction is strongly present but mostly not acted upon. OK, sex is still "allowed" to happen as an "accident" or a "slip-up" in some rare instances, but better not!

In Plato's chariot analogy, love makes our soul spread wings because the soul remembers the Form of Beauty, and wants to ascend to it. Beauty in this world is "instantiated" by a beautiful boy (or "beautiful person", though Phaedrus [just as the Symposium] is about homoerotic male love, or more sinister, the Athenian institution of pederasty).

But the bad, ugly, black horse (the appetitive part of the soul) gets unruly when it sees the beautiful boy and pulls us to the beloved so to have sex with him. Platonic lovers resist the temptation, and over time the black horse gets disciplined.

After death, our soul rises from the body, and tries to ascend to the gods and ride with them to reach the place beyond the heavens. Here it can experience the Forms themselves, which results in a sort of salvation.

But black horse will pull us down to earth, if it was not disciplined, and we will not ascend.

I do not think that many aros are sympathetic to these ideas, since they come across as sex-negative and aphobic at the same time.

The modern usage is heavily influenced by Renaissance-era Neoplatonism, which brought Plato's idea more in line with Christian values, so that platonic love usually means that sexual attraction isn't present.

Why is this word used? Maybe because friendships where we assume romantic/sexual attraction are suspect (usually opposite genders).

E.g. think "friend-zone"... the contempt in this word! So people can put a positive spin on it and insert the name of a famous philosopher.

So what Plato was describing is basically aesthetic attraction? If so, it doesn't seem aphobic, because if the point is to understand beauty and beauty of terrestrial objects is considered reflection of the higher world, then even if one is completely indifferent to physical beauty of human beings, one can find beauty just as well in a lot of things that aren't physically attractive people, such as nature and art. 

And, well, other kinds of interpersonal relationships aren't beauty-driven, like friendship, family or respect. These would mean that the person perceives in another person a reflection of another idea other than beauty? The point of Plato's philosophy is that all abstract ideas objectively exist and manifest in our world - that means there's an endless number of ideas to be attracted to. 

[DeltaAro]

On 2/4/2024 at 11:27 AM, Ekaterina said:

So what Plato was describing is basically aesthetic attraction? If so, it doesn't seem aphobic, because if the point is to understand beauty and beauty of terrestrial objects is considered reflection of the higher world, then even if one is completely indifferent to physical beauty of human beings, one can find beauty just as well in a lot of things that aren't physically attractive people, such as nature and art. 

It includes (modern) aesthetic attraction but goes beyond that, because it also includes the "beauty of the soul".

So ... I agree that "aphobic" is too strong. There should be other ways to appreciate Beauty.

But still, Eros is so important for Plato, since at least it's the most common or obvious way how we get reminded of the realm of the forms, and the process gets kick-started.

This works since Eros is so strong.

But that's also why I find it odd that Plato reduces Eros to seeking Beauty (even if his conception is broader). Why should the "ugly, shaggy dark horse" of the soul-chariot (which symbolizes the appetites and lust) be so susceptible to Beauty?

From my modern view, it is not. And Eros is strong, because sexual (and romantic) attraction is usually strong, but not aesthetic. While sexual/romantic attraction sure correlates with aesthetic attraction, it's e.g. not that rare to get sexually attracted to people who are not considered beautiful.

I mean persons (ok, usually women) called "skanky" or "trashy". Apparently and for whatever reason, it's bad to be sexually attractive when you aren't beautiful. 🙄

On 2/4/2024 at 11:27 AM, Ekaterina said:

And, well, other kinds of interpersonal relationships aren't beauty-driven, like friendship, family or respect. These would mean that the person perceives in another person a reflection of another idea other than beauty? The point of Plato's philosophy is that all abstract ideas objectively exist and manifest in our world - that means there's an endless number of ideas to be attracted to. 

This is tricky, since Plato's conception of Beauty is so broad, and he regards Beauty (and Truth) as expressions of the Good (which is certainly not something we believe nowadays).

The question is if those other relationships are strong enough for us to trigger that process of remembrance.

He calls Eros a divine madness* after all.

* Therefore, I find it forgivable if aros use that word madness when talking about romance. Yes, yes, it should certainly be avoided because of the saneism. But allos call it that way, including the founder of Western philosophy, so it's to be expected that some aros just say "Love is madness? Oh, I agree."

BTW, in Phaedrus the speech of Lysias sounds like some very romance-negative disgruntled aro wrote it.