Secrets of Greek Love: The Socratic Quest for Philia
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2024
- Step into the world of ancient Greece, where the secrets of Greek love and the quest for a deeper understanding of *philia* unfold through the dialogues of Socrates. This episode, "Secrets of Greek Love: The Socratic Quest for Philia," takes you on a journey to explore the philosophical discussions on love, friendship, and the bonds that transcend the ordinary. From the enchanting island of Capri and the refuge of Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen to the wrestling schools of Athens where Socrates engages with the youth, we delve into the essence of philia-a love that is more than friendship, imbued with wisdom and virtue. Discover how the ancient Greeks navigated the complexities of love and friendship, challenging us to reflect on our own understanding of these timeless concepts.
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#ancientgreecerevisited #ancientlove #plato #philia #love #lovingfriendship #Lysis
And from this longing for the better, philia rises to actual being. thank you for this great episode.
Fascinating talk as always! Food for thought 😉
thank you for your videos
Glad you like them!
This has to be one of your best discussions I’ve watched. I was just writing more but felt there was too much in this topic to discuss and I don’t have time for an essay in the comment at 3pm, was already on my second paragraph. I really needed to see this today, and am so lucky I found your channel ❤
lol the old perv mad that no one likes him
We'll be waiting ;-)
I think topic is very complex and there is a lot things I don't understand, but I enjoyed presentation. I mean, if Socretes himself couldn't understand concept, then it's nothing wrong that I cannot either ❤😅😁
No, there is nothing wrong indeed! In fact, what I find in these Platonic (Socratic) Dialogues is that I will read and re-read them over years, never fully understanding, yet leaving the work a little changed.. and for the better.
❤🧡💚💙
I wonder if philia is supposed to be an emotion somewhere between platonic and romantic love. I agree that there is such a thing as social attachments that sort of blur the line between "friend" and our modern conception of "lover".
To your point on the greater sexual freedom granted by the cultural revolution of the 1960s and things like advancements in contraceptives, I suppose you could be right that there may have been a "something" lost in that shift in the midst of the various societal gains; and perhaps what we lost was indeed the possibility of an emotional attachment that remains in that fuzzy and not-easily-defined area between friend and sexually-involved lover, or even things like nonsexual or asexual romantic attachment, which (to some at least) is a bit of a foreign concept today.
That is exactly what we lost. Following a theory of "sexual repression" we believe that there is - to use the words of Allan Bloom - a "a lion roaring behind the closet of sexual repression" but when the revolution happened, the lion was shown to be a "domesticated cat." I think that the sexual revolution frustrated in its promises. The pleasure of love lies in boundaries as much as their occasional breaking down.
@@AncientGreeceRevisited UA-cam never tells me when I have comment responses! I will say that I think that this kind of relationship does still appear in certain situations, such as when there are other social boundaries in place to slow people down in indulging in physical love. (I'm thinking of a recurring debate I've heard over the concept of an "emotional affair", in which one spouse / significant other believes their partner to have a friendship that is a bit too close and familiar to be considered 'just a friend', and whether that kind of connection, even if it falls short of sexual activity, counts as "cheating". I would say that both sides have some validity as there's a bit of a spectrum when it comes to degrees of emotional attachment straying toward romantic involvement; some of the friendships in question really were just good friends, some were friends with a faint sense of romantic tension beneath the surface, others were definitely in a pseudo-romantic relationship and no one thought their spouse was wrong to be mad.)
There are also genuinely platonic relationships without the issue of sexual tension, though they're usually only accepted as a thing for school-age children, but I know there are communities of younger generations who are exploring ideas like "friend dating". And if there is one friend with whom you make a point to go out and do things regularly just to share experiences together, I could see how emotions associated more with romantic relationships (such as envy, jealousy, possessiveness) would flare up when a new friend enters the picture. So perhaps Gen Z is actually bringing us back around to embracing the ancient Greek idea of philia. ;)
"how did it look" OR "what did it look like"
The latter ;-)
I doubt if we ever be able to understand concepts like "philia" perfectly. (Fogretting for a brief moment that even Socrates and his young companions had a very substantial problem with finding the accurate definition!)
Let's just ponder for a moment on the idea of having different names for different types of "love". In this element alone ancient Greek language seems to be far richer than many modern are. It may mean that ancient Greeks were able to develop more subtle ways of bonding, which we (being "products" of our languages and our cultures) will never experience. They are and will remain "invisible" for us, we just don't have them in our spectrum of seeing things!
Isn't that the case for the idea that our vocabulary defines our world in a way? (Having in mind Sapir-Whorf hypothesis!) We can argue what "philia" meant, but we may never be 100% sure. And our boys raised in a different culture with a different mindset and a different lanugage will never have exactly the same experience as Lysis and his friends had. Their dillemas will never be truly understandable and relatable for them.
And again, maybe our phrases like "in love", "boyfriend", "yearning", "friendship" are just not accurate and our struggle to understand is futile from the start?
Translating is always a tricky business, but when you try to understand whole concepts and ideas from a distant history period, different culture, things get even more complicated.
What is universal here is the fact that those young expressed the need to be together, rely on one another, take pleasure from the presence of the other. Maybe the bond that was between them created this kind of tension that provoked the change in a person, push them towards the idea to excel oneself.
One more thing... In reading Lysis I feel like the elephant in the room is still the age of the boys involved. I mean, while reading it becomes apparent that Lysis is younger, still rather a child of 12-13 and Hippothales seems to be a bit older (14-16?) ... This aspect gives another angle to the riddle. This and the whole text make me think that the sexual element isn't important here that much and that the atteaction is of a less precise nature. We, with our over-sexualised culture, tend to look at the ideas through the wrong lens.
I don't think that only sexual revolution is to blame. Christianity also has closed certain doors for us...
I believe you are right about language and how it works in translation. Perhaps we'll never know the contents of "philia" because we lack the word itself! That is why a language is not just a set of arbitrary signs like the post-modernists believe but an entire world. Reading from these texts we can only imagine how the world for ancient Greeks looked like, but like you said in the beginning, there IS a spontaneous understanding that comes up without any prior warning, and where you DO feel like you understand.
@@AncientGreeceRevisited Exactly, and there is something beautiful about it!
The modern man is pushed from behind... That is my takeaway .
Haha, just kidding, good episode.
We are ALL "pushed from behind" following the Enlightenment! ;-) Descartes especially... pushed us real hard!
Actual aristocrats do not necessarily "strive for the higher" in terms of values such as compassion or personal autonomy, and when actual commoners do strive to overcome their socio-economic disadvantages, the upper class still tends to work to keep them subservient. While in its base manifestations, the transcendent oneness of Being expresses itself as animalistic instincts such as sexuality and self-preservation, in its unmanifest essence it is unconditional in a way that human love only occasionally mirrors. Tantric yoga is all about the refinement and sublimation of base desires to expand consciousness. Hierarchies play a practical role in the world of dualities such as higher/lower or male/female or hot/cold, but ultimately the same Consciousness is equally present in all
I will refer you to one of my favourite authors, Ortega Y Gasset, who said something like ...
"There are two types of people: those who lower their standards to conform to whatever conditions they happen to be in, and those who try to change their condition to strive for their standards. While you shall find both types in all social classes, you will find that most of the latter are found in the aristocracy."
@@AncientGreeceRevisited An ugly idea to consider in today's zeitgeist, but I'm fairly sure that if we were to examine it in practice it would prove more true than not.
@@TheWolfgangGrimmerExatly
"For there is no doubt that the most radical
division that it is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves. The division of society into masses and select minorities is, then, not a division into social classes, but into classes of men, and cannot coincide with the hierarchic separation of “upper” and “lower” classes. It is, of course, plain that in these “upper” classes, when and as long as they really are so, there is much more likelihood of finding men who adopt the “great vehicle”, whereas the “lower” classes normally comprise individuals of minus quality"
Ortega Y Gasset "The Revolt of the Masses"
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” - Aristotle
Which is what Socrates, Plato, etc were doing but not encouraging unnatural behavior.
Are you hinting to us something?
Also you quoting from far left non Christian views is not a good sign.
Since its not common for Greeks traditionally to haver more secular views.
I assume you did not see the videos form Metatron & Leather Apron Club.
Where you stand? Or POU STEGESE?
In heavily Christian societies the ones that push for alternate life styles are not the Christians. The same echo's go for in ancient Greece time.
"The culture of Ancient Greece (1200 BC - 146 BC) maintained a cosmocentric attitude towards nature, as it placed the human being as a reality."
"Hippocrates, emphasized the importance of understanding our bodies and living in harmony with nature. He believed that illnesses often resulted from going against natural principles."
Or as Aristotle put it simply to preserve the natural.
This seems to have escaped you, but this guy tends to be more involved with conservative pagan circles on UA-cam than conservative christian ones. Oh, and just in the event that your mind may be Americanized enough to make this mistake, I should specify that the former are generally far more right-leaning than the latter. More importantly, if you watch the video all the way to the end, you should have realized that his actual stance is vehemently opposed to both Marx's and Freud's readings on the concept.
I have no idea why you cite Metatron and Apron in the same breath. Metatron is objective and well reserached. Apron is clearly delusional as tries straight wash Alexander, Sacred Band and even empreror Hadrianus.
Erotic Marxism! Very good
Another piece of evidence that Socrates sentence was just.
Socrates sentence was neither just nor unjust. That is what people confuse. In our modern age it's customary to believe that Socrates' trial is the ultimate example of prejudice, bias, irrationality. Nietzsche was one of the first to challenge this, and Leo Strauss followed suit almost a century later. What these were alluding to was NOT the philosophers' attitudes towards sexuality. It had to do with the effects of reductive science on the whole of society. We need to remember that the first philosophers were not thinkers that WE would recognise as such, but more like "physicists." These early scientists were the first to explain away the mysteries of religious thinking, undermining some of the institutions that were based on exactly this thinking. This is what made Socrates - and any scientist who explains away the mystery of Being through reductive materialism - guilty.
@@AncientGreeceRevisited Socrates is not a reductive materialist he argues for the immortality of the soul using logic but without scientific evidence let’s say he was a great sophist.
Unless you know how to unlock the meaning of each persons name and esoteric effect each name has on the meaning of the stories you cannot begin to truly understand Plato.
Some of Plato’s works were examples to be avoided, including some of Socrates tales.
Here is another fallacy to think about, Plato was never a student of Socrates this is just an invention of the modern west to link them together and give more credibility to Socrates as this served the interests of the ruling classes thru the centuries for various reasons.
@@magouliana32 Socrates **began** as a reductive materialist. Because Socrates began - ironically but unsurprisingly - as a pre-Socratic. That is the Socrates that we find in Aristophanes "The Clouds." An atheist, materialist and subjectivist. That is what Socrates alludes to in the last episode of his life, where he talks about his "second sailing," or the "Socratic Turn." There is a lot of research around this topic from the Straussian school. Take this as a starting point: www.amazon.com/Socrates-Second-Sailing-Platos-Republic
@@AncientGreeceRevisited you are seeped in “western” interpretations and worse modern interpretations of classics.
They were distorted just like Polyfymos to suit their needs.
Leo Straus is an antinomian I would start my detective work there.
@@magouliana32 To understand what I'm saying, one needs to consider Aristophanes "The Clouds" as a more than a "farce." The Socrates you encounter there is a materialist scientist, who believes that everything divine (the Gods) can be explained by physical phenomena (the Clouds).
As for my "modern interpretation," there are small "parcels" of modernity in the ancient world. There were "reductive materialists" in ancient Greece, the atomists, of which Epicurus was perhaps the better known. In the Republic, Erexymachus is a "Sam Harris" figure, where with a small "nip and tuck," what he says can be attributed to many of the New Atheists.