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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 17 2010 : 8:45:24 PM
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This is our third big question. I've put together a lecture I've titled "Beauty and Goodness" that I hope will help us get started on this question. You'll find it in the Reading Room under the general heading "Lectures on Our Three Central Questions." Questions or comments regarding the lecture itself could go on its Discussion page, but this is the place where I want us to discuss this question. So unless you're sure your comment or question pertains to my lecture only and not to our question about what turns people on, post it right here.
As you'd expect, the question isn't a question about what particular things turn particular people on (we're trying to engage in philosophical thinking here, not autobiography or even psychology), but about the essence of the things that turn people on. According to Plato's Sokrates (who says he learned everything he knows about these matters from Diotima), this is the beauty of the beautiful: the hotness of the hot. The Symposium contains a fascinating attempt by Diotima to say just what this is. She presents her idea, as much as she can, by way of a Sokratic proof that builds in part on things that Sokrates already believed at the time at which he says they had their conversations, in part on other things he says she helped him come to see either by disabusing him of various misconceptions elenctically or by offering him yet other Sokratic proofs, and in part on certain premises she assures him are true, though she says she doesn't know, regarding these, if he "could ever become an adept" (210a, Rouse 113). Presumably he has in the meantime, and presumably we could as well even if this would take our acquiring a fund of experiences we might not yet have had. So there's not just an opinion here; it's accompanied by a complex series of arguments. We should look at both: her opinion and her arguments. Other opinions and arguments are also welcome, of course, but let's let Diotima's serve as our starting-point.
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Jenna Stimac
Apprentice
28 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2010 : 7:58:52 PM
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I am very excited about this topic because this is what I am writing my essay on. After writing my first draft, I am leaning towards saying that not everyone will have the same or even similar opinions about what turns people on because the two people I am writing about in my essay, Aristophanes and Diotima, don't agree about this in the least. I'm sure everyone remembers their views about what turns people on from the Symposium , but if not, Aristophanes believes that people are looking for their other half to make them whole after Zeus sliced humans down the middle to weaken them and make them less violent towards the gods. On the other hand, Diotima believes that people are turned on by the beautiful. quote:
Love is not for the beautiful.... It is for begetting and birth in the beautiful.... [B]egetting is, for the mortal, something everlasting and immortal. But one must desire immortality along with the good..., if love is love of having the good for oneself always. It is necessary...that love is for immortality also. (206e-207a, Rouse 109-110)
So as of right now I am thinking that the essence of things that turns people on may not be capable of be described because of the differences of opinion that exist among what turns people on in the first place.
[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling
19 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2010 : 8:12:55 PM
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| Posting for the 60% this week. |
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Christine Gylling
Fledgling
18 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2010 : 11:57:45 AM
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Jenna and Christine, I think Diotima believes that her position accommodates all those differences of opinion and all the differences that seem to exist among people as to just what it is they want.
What I have in mind is this: she thinks that even Aristophanes believes, really, that what people want isn't the other half that seems so beautiful to them. She assumes that what they really want -- and she assumes that he would admit that what they really want -- is the good. They find their other halves beautiful because those other halves and the union with them for which they also yearn seem to them full of the promise of the wholeness, the healedness, that they think they want. They believe that that wholeness, that healedness, would be good, and if they're right, then of course what they want is the good and they're not making a mistake about what it is. If they're wrong, they'll know it when they get what they think they want, and then they'll know -- as a result of the fact that what they then have isn't satisfying -- that what they want is in fact something else: the good.
What else could Diotima mean by what says specifically about Aristophanes' speech? (I just love how she manages to mention -- or how Sokrates manages to make her mention -- Aristophanes' speech all those years before he ever had the occasion to give it!) You remember what she says: quote:
'And there is a story...that people in love are those who are seeking for their other half, but my story tells that love is not for a half, nor indeed the whole, [nor indeed for anything else whatsoever], unless that happens to be something good, my friend; since men are willing to cut off their own hands and feet, if their own seem to them to be nasty. For really, I think, no one is pleased with his own thing, except one who calls the good thing his own and his property, and the bad thing another's; since there is nothing else men love but the good. (205e-206a, Rouse 109)
In this sense, everyone wants the same thing. According to Diotima, we can all agree that what we want is the desirable. All that opinions differ about is what particular things are desirable. The desirability of the desirable is something we all see in exactly the same way. Similarly, we're all turned on by what looks really hot to us, what looks like an avenue to the attainment of what we desire. Again, according to Diotima, we can all agree about that: what turns us on is the hot. All that opinions differ about is what particular things are hot. The hotness of the hot is something we all see in exactly the same way. If this is right, then all that Aristophanes and Diotima disagree about is the beauty of those other halves that Aristophanes is talking about or the beauty of those learnings that Diotima is talking about and maybe of the reality that is beauty itself. They don't have to disagree at all about the essence of the beautiful per se, whatever that happens to be -- or as I'd prefer to put it: about what being beautiful is.
Note, by the way, that whereas Diotima has an answer to this question (the question concerning the essence of the hot) -- one that looks as if it might really accommodate all the differences of opinion among us as to which things are the ones that are truly hot -- Aristophanes never even takes that question up. The man is uninterested in those "What is it?" questions that lead us to the realities. He's just interested in particulars and in funny stories, especially really touching funny stories, about the particulars. He isn't a philosopher at all, unless, of course, he's one in potentia (and Diotima, like Sokrates, thinks we're all philosophers in potentia).
Incidentally, I assume, Christine, that when you speak of "looking for erotic desire" what you really have in mind is looking for sex or something like that, or perhaps looking for someone or something that would kindle erotic desire in one. Does anyone ever look for desire itself? What we're looking for whenever we're looking for anything is always what we want -- i.e., what we desire -- to find or to do. Are we ever on the hunt for wanting to find something or wanting to do something? I assume that your answer would be "no," and that what you wrote isn't really quite what you meant to write. Let me know if I'm mistaken about this.
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2010 : 12:51:26 PM
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Good question, Richard! I was asking about whether we ever desire desire and go looking for desire in the way that Christine suggested, perhaps inadvertently, that we sometimes do or that some people sometimes do. I don't think we do. I agree with just about everything you say about the chase and about people who only want the chase (though chase enthusiasts are precisely people who don't want a partner and mustn't ever have one; since all they want is the chase, they can and do chase and chase and chase people without ever "catching" anyone at all, and this is precisely the activity they want to engage in. The people who are therefore attractive to them aren't potential partners. They're precisely people who don't want to be caught).
The more interesting case -- from the point of view of possible counter-examples to my thesis that no one ever desires desire -- is the case of the person who is genuinely anorexic (I don't mean anorexic only what it comes to eating; "anorexic" a word that comes for the Greek for "has no desire"), who really doesn't want anything at all, but who, thinking that that anorexia is probably a "bad thing" (knowing, in other words, that other people think it's a serious condition) wishes that he or she did want something. In my view, this is no counter-example, no case of a person who desires desire, because that wish itself isn't really desire. Wishing that things were different from the way they are is feckless. Desire is never; it gets people off their butts, sets them in motion, drives them into action.
You know the old saw, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." I say that if wishes were desires, then everyone who just wished he had a horse would be doing everything he could to find one. Wishes are feckless. This is a central part of their essence. |
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
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Katie Contreras
Apprentice
29 Posts |
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Katie Contreras
Apprentice
29 Posts |
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Andrew Koziuk
Apprentice
34 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 24 2010 : 10:51:52 AM
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Regarding the last four posts, or so: first, what's a common quality? Richard and Katie: do you mean a quality the the two people have in common, i.e., share? Or do you mean an ordinary quality -- a quality that brands you as someone who's common, i.e., mean or base? If you mean the former, then you're committed to something like the principle that "birds of a feather flock together," and that means that vicious people will seek out vicious people, not excellent people.
By the way, the antonym for virtue is not "bad virtue." A bad virtue, a lousy excellent characteristic, is a icontradictio in adjecto, which is to say, an oxymoron (Greek for "a sharp dull thing"). If you want to use the word "virtue" to talk about what the Greeks call "''aretê''," then the contrast-term, the antonym, is "vice"; if you want to use "excellence," then the contrast-term is "lousiness"; if you want to use the therm "goodness" then the contrast-term is "badness."
So let's hear no more about bad virtues. I really want to nip this right in the bud. If we go in for that, before you know it, we'll be talking about ignorant knowledge, foolish wisdom, ugly beauty, and so on. |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 24 2010 : 10:59:42 AM
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Richard, the word "passion" is an interesting word. Originally, it was the contrast-term for "action." Hence something would qualify as a passion (as opposed to an action) if and only if it's something one suffers, undergoes, finds oneself on the receiving end of, as opposed to something one does. "Affection" is an exactly parallel word: it originally meant a being affected. Rusting, for example, was seen as one of the affections of iron things just as such things as thirst, hunger, and sexual desire were seen as affections of animals: all these things were seen as things that happen to things -- things caused in things by other things -- not things that these things do.
Here's yet another case: "patience" is hardly understood any longer as a disposition to let things happen to you. But originally, it was the contrast-term for "agency": the patience of the patient was simply his or her being acted upon, maybe even operated on, by the doctor; the doctor is the active party in the relationship, and the patient is the passive one. We've got the agency or activity of the doctor on the one side, and the patience (or "patiency" or passivity) of the patient on the other. Now, of course, we want our doctors to "work with us." What about the passion of the Christ? Was that Jesus' enthusiasm about anything? No. It was his being tortured: his suffering (not the feeling of suffering, but the fact that he was utterly powerless in this situation). A contemporary Jesus might say to his tormentors: "Can't we all just get along? Work with me folks. I'm prepared to co-operate; why aren't you?"
Nowadays, people are actually prepared to blame other people for feeling no passion towards them, for having no affection for them, of not loving them! Doesn't this strike you as at least a little bit odd? There is a love "that can be commanded" -- the phrase is Kant's. This is the love that Jesus preached when he said (using a sentence in the imperative mood): "Love thy neighbor as thyself." This is not ''eros''; ''eros'' can't be felt on demand. Hence I've got serious doubts about the relevance, Katie, of all your remarks about what we are looking for when we "search for what turns us on." Desiring isn't the same thing as seeking. We find ourselves affected by things, impassioned about them, turned on by them. Being turned on is not something that can be commanded. "Feel sexual desire for me, dammit!" "You don't like me any more!" "Why can't you get a boner for me for God's sake?" These are ridiculous reproaches and demands. For me to be moved is not for me to move myself. It's for me to be moved by something other than myself. If anything or anyone is to be blamed for the fading or drying up of desire, it's the thing that's lost its beauty or the person who's lost his or her beauty, the thing or person that -- or who -- has become unattractive.
By the way: isn't our discussion threatening to degenerate into a discussion of the particular things that turn people on? This might be interesting from the point of view of psychology, but from the point of view of philosophy (as we've come to understand it), what we have to try to capture in our answer to our question is the reality: the essence, the nature, of the things that turn people on: what all attractive things have in common; what all beautiful things have in common; what the attractiveness or beauty of the attractive or beautiful thing or person consists in. If we start talking about particular turn-ons, our discussion will once again be derailed by all this familiar and totally irrelevant stuff about whether different people aren't turned on by different things (or different folks)? The answer to that question is "Sure they are, but so what?" |
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John Koban
Apprentice
40 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 25 2010 : 06:32:11 AM
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John, I think that's pretty much what Diotima suggests except for two things.
The first thing is that she seems to think that initially everybody finds only beautiful bodies beautiful. So there aren't any people who are just naturally drawn to the higher beauties -- beautiful speeches, beautiful souls, beautiful conversations, beautiful practices, beautiful customs, beautiful learnings, and so on. One is drawn to those things, if ever, only later on. This makes sense if one supposes that those things all become evident only in the context of speech. None of us comes into the world speaking a language. Nearly all of us come into the world with our senses intact and working well. Hence it would stand to reason that sensible beauties, beauties we can see and hear and so on, would be the things we'd first find attractive. We don't need to be seduced into loving those. We see them and if we find them attractive, we want them. All we need then -- so far as the education of desire is concerned 00 with respect to those lowest beauties is to be disillusioned about their being avenues to the good.
The second thing is that beauty and goodness are not the same. In the ascent, what one finds beautiful will change as does one's thinking about what is really good. Remember: the beautiful is the avenue to the good -- that in which we believe we will be able to breed the good, beget the good, give birth to the good -- not the good itself. |
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Andrew Koziuk
Apprentice
34 Posts |
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John Koban
Apprentice
40 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1367 Posts |
Posted - Jul 25 2010 : 5:38:05 PM
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There you go, John, and what are we to do with Sokrates, whom Alkibiades describes in just these terms? ()
I'm unclear, Andrew, about whom you were addressing in your most recent post. If it was I you were asking about whether someone or something must be both beautiful and good to turn us on, my answer is an unequivocal "no." That is not necessary. What's necessary is that the person or thing be beautiful or at least seem to us to be beautiful. And this is Diotima's view too. You've read "Symposium IV"? You've read the part of the Symposium that's covered by "Symposium IV"? You've read the following vivid description of the way in which the beautiful turns one on?quote:
'All men are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul; and when they are of the right age, our nature desires to beget. But it cannot beget in an ugly thing, only in a beautiful thing....When the pregnant comes near to a beautiful thing it becomes gracious, and being delighted, it is poured out and begets and procreates; when it comes near to an ugly thing, it becomes gloomy and grieved and rolls itself up and is repelled and shrinks back and does not procreate, but holds back the conception and is in a bad way. Hence in the pregnant thing swelling full already, there is great agitation about the beautiful thing because he that has it gains relief from great agony.' (206c-e, Rouse 110)
It certainly sounds to me as if Diotima thinks it's the beauty of the beautiful and not its (or his or her) goodness (in case it -- or he or she -- has any goodness to speak of) that's the turn-on. How could there be any doubt what this passage means? Look: beautiful people can be good. Some beautiful people are good. But there are also beautiful people who are not good at all. Consider Alkibiades, for example. There's a really lousy human being who was, by all accounts (including his own), one of the most beautiful young men of all time! |
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling
19 Posts |
Posted - Jul 25 2010 : 9:01:23 PM
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Jenna Stimac
Apprentice
28 Posts |
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What Turns People On?
