Love Drunk Puppets : on the politics of philosophic erotic reciprocity in Plato’s laws
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2012
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Thesis
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en_US
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Abstract
This 2012 master’s thesis argues, contra the previous work of Karl Popper and Gregory Vlastos,
that the role of philosophical eros, and love more broadly, in Plato’s political philosophy is
worthwhile and beneficial for individual citizens and the social cohesion of the polis. An
examination of the functioning of Platonic philosophical eros as suggested in Phaedrus and
Symposium reveals that such love is implicated in the creation and exchange of abstract or
spiritual goods, specifically virtue in its four types or parts, and that on the macroeconomic level
of the polis in Laws the processes of philosophic erotic interaction constitute a spiritual
economy. The mutuality or reciprocity of philosophical eros, together with the specific
modalities in which a citizen actively practices that eros, create a system similar to what
anthropologists call a reciprocity economy, in which productive human interaction is essentially
connected to the relationships of the people involved. In Magnesia, the polis in Laws, symposia,
choruses, and the laws with their preludes constitute a general economy; the Nocturnal Council
and the Ambassadors are put in place to improve and augment the wealth and functioning of the
spiritual economy as well as for the distribution of wealth throughout the polis; and the
Moderation Tank and other measures are put in place for the benefit of citizens poor in virtue.
The argument finds that this political system adopts both the intrinsic and instrumental positive
valuation of the other, with which Popper and Vlatos are concerned, insofar as each citizen’s
capacity for virtue and philosophic eros is, according to Platonic texts, an innate characteristic of
each human being’s divine soul, and each individual positively values, and benefits from, his or
her fellow citizens.