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What Plato can teach you about finding a soulmate

<p>In the beginning, humans were androgynous. So says Aristophanes in his fantastical account of the origins of love in Plato’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">Symposium.</a></p> <p>Not only did early humans have both sets of sexual organs, Aristophanes reports, but they were outfitted with two faces, four hands, and four legs. These monstrosities were very fast – moving by way of cartwheels – and they were also quite powerful. So powerful, in fact, that the gods were nervous for their dominion.</p> <p>Wanting to weaken the humans, Zeus, Greek king of Gods, decided to cut each in two, and commanded his son Apollo “to turn its face…towards the wound so that each person would see that he’d been cut and keep better order.” If, however, the humans continued to pose a threat, Zeus <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q=hopping&amp;f=false">promised</a> to cut them again – “and they’ll have to make their way on one leg, hopping!”</p> <p>The severed humans were a miserable lot, Aristophanes <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=snippet&amp;q=longed&amp;f=false">says</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>“[Each] one longed for its other half, and so they would throw their arms about each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to grow together.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Finally, Zeus, moved by pity, decided to turn their sexual organs to the front, so they might achieve some satisfaction in embracing.</p> <p>Apparently, he initially neglected to do so, and, Aristophanes <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=snippet&amp;q=cicadas&amp;f=false">explains</a>, the severed humans had “cast seed and made children, not in one another, but in the ground, like cicadas.” (a family of insects)</p> <p>So goes Aristophanes’ contribution to the Symposium, where Plato’s characters take turns composing speeches about love – interspersed with heavy drinking.</p> <p>It is no mistake that Plato gives Aristophanes the most outlandish of speeches. He was the famous comic playwright of Athens, responsible for bawdy fare like <a href="http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Lysistrata.htm">Lysistrata</a>, where the women of Greece “go on strike” and refuse sex to their husbands until they stop warring.</p> <p>What does Aristophanes’ speech have to do with love?</p> <p><strong>Is love a cure for our “wound?”</strong></p> <p>Aristophanes says his speech explains “the source of our desire to love each other.” He <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VV2wFhaVDBsC&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=snippet&amp;q=tries%20to%20make%20one%20out%20of%20two%20and%20heal%20the%20wound%20of%20human%20nature&amp;f=false">says</a>,</p> <blockquote> <p>“Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole…and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him.”</p> </blockquote> <p>This diagnosis should sound familiar to our ears. It’s the notion of love engrained deep in the American consciousness, inspiring Hallmark writers and Hollywood producers alike – imparted with each Romantic Comedy on offer.</p> <p>Love is the discovery of one’s soulmate, we like to say; it is to find your other half – the person who completes me, as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-towering-narcissism-of-jerry-maguire">Jerry Maguire</a>, Tom Cruise’s smitten sports agent, so famously put it.</p> <p>As a philosopher, I am always amazed how Plato’s account here, uttered by Aristophanes, uncannily evokes our very modern view of love. It is a profoundly moving, beautiful, and wistful account.</p> <p>As Aristophanes depicts it, we may see love as the cure for our wound, or the “wound of human nature.” So, what is this wound? On one hand, of course, Aristophanes means something quite literal: the wound perpetrated by Zeus. But for philosophers, talk of a “wound of human nature” suggests so much more.</p> <p><strong>Why do we seek love?</strong></p> <p>Humans are inherently wounded, the Greek philosophers agreed. At the very least, they concluded, we are prone to fatal habits, seemingly engrained in our nature.</p> <p>Humans insist on looking for satisfaction in things that cannot provide real or lasting fulfillment. These false lures include material goods, also power, and fame, Aristotle <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html">explained</a>. A life devoted to any of these goals becomes quite miserable and empty.</p> <p>Christian philosophers, led by Augustine, accepted this diagnosis, and <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3296/3296-h/3296-h.htm">added</a> a theological twist. Pursuit of material goods is evidence of the Fall, and symptomatic of our sinful nature. Thus, we are like aliens here in this world – or as the Medievals would put it, pilgrims, on the way to a supernatural destination.</p> <p>Humans seek to satisfy desire in worldly things, Augustine <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3296/3296-h/3296-h.htm">says</a>, but are doomed, because we bear a kernel of the infinite within us. Thus, finite things cannot fulfill. We are made in the image of God, and our infinite desire can only be satisfied by the infinite nature of God.</p> <p>In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm">offered</a> an account of the wound of our nature more in tune with secular sensibilities. He claimed that the source of our sins and vices lay in our inability to sit still, be alone with ourselves, and ponder the unknowable.</p> <p>We seek out troublesome diversions like war, inebriation or gambling to preoccupy the mind and block out distressing thoughts that seep in: perhaps we are alone in the universe – perhaps we are adrift on this tiny rock, in an infinite expanse of space and time, with no friendly forces looking down on us.</p> <p>The wound of our nature is the existential condition, Pascal suggests: thanks to the utter uncertainty of our situation, which no science can answer or resolve, we perpetually teeter on the brink of anxiety – or despair.</p> <p><strong>Is love an answer to life’s problems?</strong></p> <p>Returning to Plato’s proposition, issued through Aristophanes: how many view romantic love as the answer to life’s problems? How many expect or hope that love will heal the “wound” of our nature and give meaning to life?</p> <p>I suspect many do: our culture practically decrees it.</p> <p>Your soulmate, Hollywood says, may take a surprising, unexpected form – she may seem your opposite, but you are inexplicably attracted nonetheless. Alternately, your beloved may appear to be initially boorish or aloof. But you find him to be secretly sweet.</p> <p>Hollywood films typically ends once the romantic heroes find their soulmates, offering no glimpse of life post-wedding bliss, when kids and work close in – the real test of love.</p> <p>Aristophanes places demands and expectations on love that are quite extreme.</p> <blockquote> <p>“[When] a person meets the half that is his very own,” he exclaims, “something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment. These are people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another.”</p> </blockquote> <p>This sounds miraculous and alluring, but Plato doesn’t believe it. Which is why he couches it in Aristophanes’ satirical story. In short: it’s all quite mythical.</p> <p><strong>Does true love exist?</strong></p> <p>The notion of “soulmate,” implies that there is but one person in the universe who is your match, one person in creation who completes you – whom you will recognize in a flash of lightening.</p> <p>What if in your search for true love, you cast about waiting or expecting to be star-struck – in vain? What if there isn’t a perfect partner that you’re waiting for?</p> <p>Is this one reason why, as the Pew Research Center <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-never-married/">reports</a>, we see a record number of unmarried Americans?</p> <p>Alternately, what if you dive into a relationship, marriage even, expecting the luster and satiation to endure, but it does not, and gives way to…ordinary life, where the ordinary questions and doubts and dissatisfactions of life reemerge and linger?</p> <p>In his book <a href="http://thepenguinpress.com/book/modern-romance/">Modern Romance</a>, actor and comedian <a href="http://azizansari.com/">Aziz Ansari</a> tells of a wedding he attended that could have been staged by Aristophanes himself:</p> <blockquote> <p>“The vows…were powerful. They were saying the most remarkable things about each other. Things like ‘You are a prism that takes the light of life and turns it into a rainbow’…”</p> </blockquote> <p>The vows, Ansari explains, were so exultant, so lofty and transcendent, that “four different couples broke up, supposedly because they didn’t feel they had the love that was expressed in those vows.”</p> <p><strong>Enduring love is more mundane</strong></p> <p>Love is not the solution to life’s problems, as anyone who has been in love can attest. Romance is often the start of many headaches and heartaches. And why put such a burden on another person in the first place?</p> <p>It seems unfair. Why look to your partner to heal an existential wound – to heal your soul? This is an immense responsibility no mere mortal can address.</p> <p>I accept the backhanded critique Plato offers here through Aristophanes. Though I am hardly an expert on the matter, I have found his message quite accurate in this respect: true love is far more mundane.</p> <p>I should specify: true love is mundane in its origins, if not in its conclusion. That is to say, true love is not discovered all of a sudden, at first sight, but rather, it’s the product of immense work, constant attention, and sacrifice.</p> <p>Love is not the solution to life’s problems, but it certainly makes them more bearable, and the entire process more enjoyable. If soulmates exist, they are made and fashioned, after a lifetime partnership, a lifetime shared dealing with common duties, enduring pain, and of course, knowing joy.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72715/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/firmin-debrabander-217516">Firmin DeBrabander</a>, Professor of Philosophy, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/maryland-institute-college-of-art-2430">Maryland Institute College of Art</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-plato-can-teach-you-about-finding-a-soulmate-72715">original article</a>.</em></p>

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Where to start reading philosophy?

<p>Philosophy can seem a daunting subject in which to dabble. But there are many wonderful books on philosophy that tackle big ideas without requiring a PhD to digest.</p> <p>Here are some top picks for summer reading material from philosophers across Australia.</p> <p><strong><em>Shame and Necessity </em>by Bernard Williams</strong></p> <p>After a year of Brexit, the return of Pauline Hanson and Donald Trump, many of us are wondering about the state of our public culture. Are we undergoing some kind of seismic cultural and moral shift in the way we live?</p> <p>However, the ancient Greeks would have been familiar with these phenomena for all kinds of reasons. They understood how anger, resentment and revenge shape politics. And they had some pretty interesting ways of dealing with outbreaks of populist rage and constitutional crises. Our language is still littered with them: think “ostracism”, “dictatorship” and “oligarchy” (let alone “democracy”).</p> <p>So, this year, amongst all the noise, I found myself driven back to the Greeks, and especially to some of the ideas that pre-date the great philosophical titans of Plato and Aristotle.</p> <p>Bernard Williams was one of our most brilliant philosophers, and <em>Shame and Necessity</em> is one of his best books. Stunningly – just given how good this book is, and how deep it goes into the classical mind – he didn’t consider himself a classicist, but rather a philosopher who happened to have benefited from a very good classical education. As a result, he is a delightful guide across the often rugged philosophical, historical and interpretive terrain of pre-Socratic thought.</p> <p>It might seem daunting at first, but the book is an elegant, searching essay on the ways in which we are now, in so many ways, in a situation more like the ancient Greeks then we realise. But it’s not a plea for a return to some golden age. Far from it. Instead, it challenges some of our most fundamental conceptions of self, responsibility, freedom and community, inviting us to think them afresh.</p> <p>The heroes of his tale are, interestingly enough, not the philosophers, but the tragedians and poets, who remind us of the complexity, contingency and fragility of our ideas of the good. Although almost 10 years old, it’s a book that gets more interesting the more often you return to it. It’s never been more relevant, or more enjoyable, than now.</p> <p><em>Duncan Ivison, University of Sydney</em></p> <p><strong><em>The Philosophy Book </em>by Will Buckingham</strong></p> <p>Remember when the <em>Guinness Book of World Records</em> was the best gift ever for the little (or grown-up) thinker in your family? Well, if you’ve been there, done that for a few Christmases in a row and are in need of an exciting, innovative gift idea, try DK’s big yellow book of intellectual fun: <em>The Philosophy Book</em>.</p> <p>With contributions from a bunch of UK academics, this A4 sized tome is decorated with fun illustrations and great quotes from the world’s best philosophical thinkers.</p> <p>The structure of the book is historical, with between one to four pages allocated to the “big ideas” from ancient times all the way up to contemporary thought. It is accompanied by a neat glossary and directory: a who’s who of thought-makers.</p> <p>The focus is on the traditional Western approach to philosophy, although some Eastern thinkers are included. Each historical section – Ancient (700-250 BCE); Medieval (250-1500); The Renaissance (1500-1750); Revolution (1750-1900); Modern (1900-1950); and Contemporary (1950-present) – is divided into classical philosophical ideas from that time period.</p> <p>There are 107(!) in total, including Socrates’ “The life which is unexamined is not worth living”, Rene Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”, Thomas Hobbes’ “Man is a Machine”, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”, and even Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of Marx, just to name a few.</p> <p>The reader can trace the history and development of philosophical thought throughout the ages, in the context of what else was occurring at that time in the world.</p> <p>This gift would be suitable for ages 12+ as it is written in ordinary, accessible language. But, be warned… after reading this, your Boxing Day is likely to be filled with questions such as, “what is truth?”, “how can we think like a mountain?”, “can knowledge be bought and sold?”, and “how did the universe begin?”</p> <p><em>Laura D’Olimpio, The University of Notre Dame Australia</em></p> <p><strong><em>50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know </em>by Ben Dupré</strong></p> <p>Obviously there are a lot more than <em>50 Philosophical Ideas</em> we really need to know, as this book is a part of a great series of small hardback books that cover most of the great thoughts ever thunk.</p> <p>Dupré has a lot of fun in these 200 pages, with 50 short essays written on a variety of classical philosophical ideas, including the important thought experiments such as brain in a vat, Plato’s cave, the ship of Theseus, the prisoner’s dilemma and many more.</p> <p>The book’s blurb asks:</p> <blockquote> <p>Have you ever lain awake at night fretting over how we can be sure of the reality of the external world? Perhaps we are in fact disembodied brains, floating in vats at the whim of some deranged puppet-master?</p> </blockquote> <p>It is to philosophy that we turn, if not for definite answers to such mysteries, but certainly for multiple responses to these puzzles. The 50 essays in this volume cover things like the problems of knowledge, the philosophy of mind, ethics and animal rights, logic and meaning, science, aesthetics, religion, politics and justice.</p> <p>There is a nifty timeline running along the footer and inspired quotes by which the reader can link the main ideas, their original thinkers, and the time at which they were writing.</p> <p>This book would make a great gift for teachers, students and anyone interested in some of the big eternal questions. I would recommend it for ages 12+ given its clear writing style that illuminates and contextualises some of the most important ideas in philosophy.</p> <p><em>Laura D’Olimpio, The University of Notre Dame Australia</em></p> <p><strong><em>On Bullshit </em>by Harry G Frankfurt</strong></p> <p><span class="caption"></span>When someone asks you “where do I start with philosophy?”, it’s tempting to point them to a book that gives an overview of the history, key figures and problems of the discipline.</p> <p>But what about someone who doesn’t even want to go <em>that</em> far? Not everyone’s prepared to slog their way through Bertrand Russell’s <em>History of Western Philosophy</em> like my optometrist once did; every time I’d go in for new glasses he’d give me an update on where he was up to. And even if they’re prepared to put in the effort, some readers might come away from such a book not really seeing the value in philosophy beyond its historical interest. It’s easy to get lost in a fog of Greek names and -isms until you can’t see the forest for the trees.</p> <p>So there’s one book I recommend to everyone even if they have <em>no</em> interest in philosophy whatsoever: Harry Frankfurt’s classic 1986 essay “<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html">On Bullshit</a>”, published as a book in 2005. It’s only a few pages long so you can knock it over in a couple of train trips, and it’s a great example of philosophy in action.</p> <p>Frankfurt starts with the arresting claim that:</p> <blockquote> <p>One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.</p> </blockquote> <p>In the best tradition of the discipline, Frankfurt takes something we don’t even typically notice and brings it into the light so we can see just how pervasive, strange and important it is.</p> <p>Bullshit, Frankfurt argues, is not simply lying. It’s worse than that. In order to lie, you first have to know the truth (or think you do), and you have to care about the truth enough to cover it up. To that extent at least the liar still maintains a relationship to the truth.</p> <p>The bullshitter, by contrast, doesn’t care about the truth at all. They just want you to believe what they say. What they tell you could even be true, for all they care, it doesn’t matter, so long as you buy it.</p> <p>The lying/bullshit distinction is a remarkably useful analytic tool. Be warned, though: once you have it, you’ll be seeing it <em>everywhere</em>.</p> <p><em>Patrick Stokes, Deakin University</em></p> <p><em><strong>The Guardians in Action: Plato the Teacher </strong></em><strong>by William H F Altman</strong></p> <p>Plato’s dialogues were conceived by their author as a consummate, step-by-step training in philosophy, starting with the most basic beginners. Such is the orienting claim of<em> The Guardians in Action</em>, the second of a projected three volumes in American scholar William Altman’s continuing contemporary exploration of Plato as a teacher.</p> <p>Altman, for many years a high school teacher trained in the classical languages and philosophy, has devoted his retirement from the classroom to an extraordinary attempt to reread or <em>reteach</em> the Platonic dialogues as a sequential pedagogical program.</p> <p>The program begins with Socrates walking into the Hades-like den of sophists in the Protagoras. In the middle, the heart and high point of the 36 texts, stands the Republic, the subject of <em>Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic</em> of 2012 (Volume 1).</p> <p>Here, the education of the philosopher-“guardians” who will rule in the best city, having seen the true Idea of the Good, is timelessly laid out. The true philosopher, as Altman’s Plato conceived him, must “go back down” into the city to educate his fellows, even though he has seen the Transcendent End of his inquiries.</p> <p>The Republic itself begins emblematically, with Socrates “going back down” to the Piraeus to talk with his friends. As Altman sees things, the entire Platonic oeuvre ends with Socrates going back down into Athens, staying there to die in a cavelike prison for the sake of philosophy in the Phaedo.</p> <p>Who then did Plato want for his guardians, on Altman’s reading? <em>We his readers</em> –like the first generation of students in the Academy whom Altman pictures being taught by Plato through the syllabus of the dialogues.</p> <p>This is an extraordinarily learned book, maybe not for the complete beginner. You need to have spent a lifetime with a thinker to write books like this (with the finale, <em>The Guardians on Trial</em> set to come).</p> <p>But it is everywhere lightened by Altman’s style, and the warm affection for Plato and for the business of teaching that radiates from every page. So it is most certainly a book for anyone who loves or has ever wondered about Plato, still the original and arguably the best introduction to philosophy.</p> <p><em>Matt Sharpe, Deakin</em></p> <p><strong><em>Philosophy as a Way of Life </em>by Pierre Hadot</strong></p> <p>This book is a collection of essays by the late French philosopher and philologist Pierre Hadot. After 1970, via his studies of classical literature, Hadot became convinced that the ancients conceived of philosophy very differently than we do today.</p> <p>It was, for them, primarily about educating and forming students, as well as framing arguments and writing books. Its goal was not knowledge alone but wisdom, a knowledge about how to live that translated into transformed ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, mediated by what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” like the premeditation of evils and death, and the contemplation of natural beauty.</p> <p>The ideal was the sage, someone whose way of living was characterised by inner freedom, tranquillity, moral conscience and a constant sense of his own small place in the larger, ordered world.</p> <p>Hadot spent much of the last decades of his life exploring this idea in studies of ancient philosophy, particularly that of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. He wrote long books in this light on Marcus Aurelius (The Inner Citadel) and the German poet Goethe, both of whom feature prominently in the essays in <em>Philosophy as a Way of Life</em>, Hadot’s most popular introductory book. Hadot’s writing is simple and graceful, and has been beautifully preserved in Michael Chase’s translations for English readers.</p> <p>I’ll let Hadot himself describe his intentions, in a passage which gives a sense of the spirit that breathes through the larger original:</p> <blockquote> <p>Vauvenargues said, “A truly new and truly original book would be one which made people love old truths.” It is my hope that I have been “truly new and truly original” in this sense, since my goal has indeed been to make people love a few old truths […] there are some truths whose meaning will never be exhausted by the generations of man. It is not that they are difficult; on the contrary, they are often extremely simple. Often, they even appear to be banal. Yet for their meaning to be understood, these truths must be lived, and constantly re-experienced. Each generation must take up, from scratch, the task of learning to read and to re-read these “old truths”.</p> </blockquote> <p><em>Matt Sharpe, Deakin</em><!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51745/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em>Written by <span>Patrick Stokes, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin University; Duncan Ivison, Professor of Political Philosophy, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), University of Sydney; Laura D'Olimpio, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Australia, and Matthew Sharpe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, Deakin University</span>. Republished with permission of <span><a href="https://theconversation.com/where-to-start-reading-philosophy-51745">The Conversation</a></span>.</em></p>

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