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Loving happens as natural as the rising of the sun. At some point in our lives, we all profess to love someone or something. For as long as the word and notion of love has existed, there have been innumerable attempts to explain just what love is and whom we should or should not love. Even the Bible, commands its believers to love their neighbors, family, friends, and enemies as they love themselves. The Phaedrus, one of Plato's greatest dialogues delves into the love in terms of who would be best for us to love and why. Phaedrus makes mention of a speech by Lysias, whom he strongly admires, that states that one should strive to love a non-lover, someone who does not and will not love you in return, but why?
In this paper, I will discuss Lysias idea of loving and who we should love and then I will present Socrates refutation of this argument and why we should love the non-lover. Love is a complicated subject, which cannot be explained in just one sentence, which justifies why Lysias speech was so verbose. Phaedrus and Socrates go off to the forest to discuss the speech, away from the city and politics, which allow relaxation when conversing about the topic at hand. In general, Lysias firmly believes that one should love someone who does not love them in return. But, he didnt stop there, he gave several reasons why this is the best way to love someone. The first reason that one should love a non-lover is because the lover is driven by passion, and the non-lover associates with the beloved out of free will (231 a).
So that, the lover is inclined to do things with and for the beloved because of his feelings of affection, and due to those feelings only. Without passion, the lover would not be interested in the beloved in any way, in that once the passion dies, so does the desire to associate with the beloved, leaving the beloved deserted. On the other hand, the non-lover befriends and associates himself with the beloved out of pure free will, without regard to any feeling of pleasure or passion. So that there is no passion present to die out and thereby the non-lover will never desert the lover. Also, the lover will very likely blame the beloved for distracting him from personal, business, or academic affairs, so that the lover appears to be preoccupied with the beloved and ignores his prior obligations to school, such as homework, papers, and studying, career plans, home life, and friends (231 b). The lover becomes so entangled in doing stuff for the beloved, that the beloved comes first, above all and everything, by his choice, but at the fault of the beloved.
When this happens, the lover becomes immoderate and has no balance within his life. While the non-lover will always put business first, so that the beloved is second to all things and therefore cannot be blamed for a malfunction in the lovers prior obligations. During the relationship between the lover and the beloved, the lover will be kind to the beloved, but when it ends, the lover will love someone else, disregarding the previous relationship, thus hurting the past beloved (231 c). So that after having some extended relationship with the lover, and for example, the lovers passion withers away and the beloved and the lover are no longer together, although the beloved may still have feelings of affection for the lover, but his feelings will be disregarded, especially when he sees the lover with another beloved. It is obvious that the lover will move on to another once his passion for the beloved is over and this will deeply wound the beloved. Yet, it is implied that there will be no injury to the beloved on the part of the non-lover because the non-lover has always and will always associate with the beloved as well as others, so that it is acceptable to the beloved when the non-lover associates himself with someone else.
The lover is also inclined to boast about everything that they have done with the beloved- making it public knowledge (231 e). The lover, in the excitement of being with the beloved and out of passion, tends to tell his friends and neighbors about the things that he has done with the beloved such as sexual acts, arguments, and other things shared between the two of them. By this, everyone will know about the relationship between the lover and beloved and become inclined to know more or give advice and maybe even pass harsh judgment on the beloved from the information revealed about him. On the contrary the non-lover has better judgment and will choose to do what is best, which will be to disclose any information about his relationship with the beloved from anyone else. The non-lover will keep anything and everything that goes on between the two of them because he is not driven by fiery passion.
In this manner, the beloved does not have to worry about rumors about him being spread around, for the less said, the less people will know. In this way, the non-lover avoids altercation with the beloved and avoids arguments. In dealing with arguments, the fights of lovers are the most intense (232 b). When loving a lover, the lover, driven by passion and full of emotion, becomes confrontational about unnecessary things in a frequent manner. In that loving the lover, the beloved feels attached to the lover and feels that he maybe obligated to answer certain questions and live up to certain criteria and when he fails to do this, the lover is then upset and begins to question the beloved at which point a quarrel begins.
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Research essay sample on One Should Love Driven By Passion Lover
