5 - The epistemic eros

Summary

Foucault's analysis of Platonic erotics brings him to an extremely complicated domain of classical ancient philosophy, and one that can be discussed from a number of angles. In the ‘relation to truth’ he sees the decisive new perspective Plato introduces into the classical Greek theory on love.

Erotics, as a purposeful art of love … will be our topic in this section as well. But this time it will be treated as a developmental context for the fourth of the great austerity themes that have run through the ethics of pleasure over the entire course of the history of the Western world. After the relation to the body and to health, after the relation to wives and to the institution of marriage, and after the relations to boys … I would now like to consider the relation to truth … in the form of an inquiry into the nature of true love.

Within this new framework of erotics Foucault correctly diagnoses a series of fundamental shifts in the problematisation of love in the relevant Platonic dialogues, in particular the transition

• from the question of behaviour in love, to the question of the nature of love;

• from the question of the honour of the boy, to the question of the love of truth;

• from the question of the asymmetry of erotic relationships, to the question of the convergence of mutual love;

• from the question of the virtue of the beloved, to the question of love for the master and his virtue.