From desire to love. ἐπιθυμία, ἔρως and φιλία from Plato’s Symposium
Abstract
According to some specialists, in the Platonic tradition, love of the Good and wisdom implies a pathway of virtue in which the desire of the sensible world must be abandoned, according to a model of rationalization if desire. I will try to show in this article that there is a continuity between the primary desire —ἐπιθυμία— and the other two appetites ordered towards love —ἔρως and φιλία—, and that there is a superiority from the former over the last. I will argue, based on the speeches of both Phaedrus and Diotima which, read together, show that virtue must begin always with the most primary impulses, and that these are, from their very origin, directed towards the Good.Downloads
References
Bibliografía primaria
Platón (año), Oeuvres Complètes, tomo 4: Banquet, texto establecido y traducido por Léon Robin, París, Les Belles Lettres.
Platón (año), Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias, traducción de Walter Rangeley Maitland Lamb, Cambridge, Massachusetts/Londres, Harvard University Press.
Platón (2012), Banquete, traducción de Fernando García Romero, Madrid, Alianza Editorial.
Bibliografía secundaria
Aristóteles (1978), Acerca del alma, traducción de Tomás Calvo Martínez, Madrid, Gredos.
Aristóteles (1965), Tractatus de Anima. Graecae et latine, edición, versión latina mejorada y comentario de Paulus Siwek S. J., Roma, Desclée & C. Editori Pontifici.
Cummins, W. Joseph (1981), “Eros, Epithumia, and Philia in Plato”, Apeiron, vol. XV, núm. 1, pp. 10-18.
García-Baró, Miguel (2016), La filosofía como sábado, Madrid, PPC Editorial.
García-Baró, Miguel (2008), El bien perfecto. Invitación a la filosofía platónica, Salamanca, Sígueme.
Gurevitch, Zali (1998), “The Symposium: Culture as daimonic conversation”, Human Studies, vol. 21, núm. 4, pp. 437-454.
Hyland, Drew A. (1968), “Eros, Epithumia and Philia in Plato”, Phronesis, vol. 13, pp. 32-46.
Nehamas, Alexander (2007), “«Only in the contemplation of beauty is human life worth living» Plato, Symposium 211d”, European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 15, núm. 1, pp. 1-18.
Nussbaum, Martha C. (1986), “Rational animals and the explanation of action”, en The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 264-289.
Robin, Léon (1964), La théorie platonicienne de l’amour, París, Presses Universitaires de France.
Vanhoutte, Kristof K.P. (2011), “Philosophy as the in-between”, Inquiry, vol. 54, núm. 4, pp. 398-409.
Wedgwood, Ralph (2009), “Diotima’s eudaemonism: Intrinsic value and rational motivation in Plato’s Symposium”, Phronesis, vol. 54, núm. 4, pp. 297-325.
