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If you want to tell somebody the truth, make them laugh; otherwise they shall kill you.

OSCAR WILDE.

We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

October 2019

Like Daisies Pure and True

The intention needs to be pure, for it to be true

Like daisies on green fields beneath a sky blue

Autumn is promised inside the breeze of September

Love this instance and know I´ ll be yours forever

Phrases to praise the creator and this passing summer

As for you, you live inside these words and no other

You are here as I gaze at the moon when it becomes night

Emotions fill my heart, and it comes out in poetic verse

Between your heart and mine, is our centre of universe

Persistence is faith and faith is persistence

To know you will love me tomorrow, I´m yours this instance

It is not true if the intentions are not pure

For this darkened heart of mine your light is my cure

Strewn across the fields, daisies speak to your heart delicately

Your name like silk thread weaves onto my heart intricately

Out there, there is a daisy field, for us waiting

Since yesterday my heart for you has been anticipating

Autumn is promised inside the breeze of September

This day with you tomorrow I wish to remember.

TANSEL MUSTAFA 14/09/2019

PROLOGUE

Eros has been the determining phase of love. Its identification with lust and lavishness could not hinder that the force of desire prevailed as its property. Perhaps, centuries of rejection of the bodily impulse, making of it a sensual impediment for a more subtle and more essential feeling, build my observation as a provoking advance. Nevertheless, I must mark that even doing subtle what is bodily facts, one is still in debt with sensuality. Hierarchically superior, the subtleness of the spiritual halitus is still blow or wind. My observation about Love as Eros does not end here.

The vision of Love generated by a being, god or demigod, has predominated over its consideration as relation. This implies nowadays, in the technological society, a change which turns from the being as fountain of love to the mode of love or relationship. And thus, there is no love if it is not desiring eros between persons.

However, it would involve a disfigurement of tradition if this relative mode of understanding Love as Eros would not call for an Ethic- Its consequence would be to annul the proper humanity of the erotic Love.

INTRODUCTION

Necessity could well be a hazardous, accidental, occasional, constant casualness, the reiteration of a casual determinism, the indefinite repetition of chance that by illusion it seems to be immutable. Were it so, are they, in their turn, illusion the free Will and Liberty?, is it possible freedom?

These questions are at the centre of the theme about love. Love or eros makes reference to the indeterminate of donation, gratuitousness and freedom. There is love, according to philosophical. religious and literary traditions, when it is possible a free decision regarding the other one, in a relation without any obligation at all, a relationship of gift.

These properties of love or eros Will be shown in this essay, that Will include the passage of the semigod Eros or Cupid to the theological virtue of charity: from the trouvadour mystique and the bodily love to the materiality of desire (already expressed in La Astrée). I shall point out the change of comprehension of love in the exposition of Stendhal, who states the relevance of individual feeling, also gathering art and philosophy, tradition and new context. Stendhal will be in this essay a turning and principal point because of relating the mentioned themes and opening a new conception of love.

Love or eros has always hold at least two aspects, as it is may clearly be seen in the courtois love and the grotesque epoch. The gracefulness and the clumsiness are qualities that may be found already in the human character and they reflect to themselves in the comprehensions of love.

I believe that love or eros is a free necessity inasmuch as intention of the other ones presence through the force that throws the person not to an object (as in the relation of knowledge) but towards the desired one, the loved one. It is a gratuitous , paradoxical, due to the forcé of desire ( recognized feature since Plato).

My main thesis is that love is a paradoxical relation that does not bind and unite in servitude but that liberates creativity (and, because of this, iconoclastic, utopic), that generates Liberty.

In this sense, I must recall the Christian theology that considers love as creator and forgiver (which, without anuling the past, raises it as obstacle for freedom). This religious proposal through grace, from a secular philosophical point of view Will be pointed out in the property of eros or love a gratuitous, without necessity, free.

There are other relations, for example the gnoseological, logical, epistemological, that imply necessity. The proper to love is just the gratuitousness in a relation that in other way would oblige, tie. Scope of freedom, love is a relation that implies persons in an unnecessary mode.

Because of this, beyond the causality of the past, of the datum, of the facts upon the actual, love extends time to future principally not being a consequence of the given, but as the temporality of the new. And, through this, of a committedly free encounter.

Through love, the inexorable arrow of time is questioned in the critique of the conditions of freedom (iconoclastic utopia).

I think thus, that love is a free relation. This is observed by thinkers since the Antiquity: necessity annuls love and is own freedom. It is true that it has been a custom to adjudicate servitude to love, especially during the Middle Ages and even in the Modern Age. Nevertheless, it is signalized in it the assumption of slavery as free and willingly, being also a servitude above the considered as vulgar one. These comprehensions are derived from the religiosity proper to Christianism, visions declared by Saint Paul though the paradoxical slavery in Christ (superior to simple Liberty by implying a Will raised by divine grace).

It is impossible to isolate or separate culture and comprehension of the world from the religious moment. As one may infer, this has not hindered the appraisal of the important will act in the loving relation (which, in contrary case, would not be genuine).

I enquire in this essay what is that is exclusive to this particular relation, through its property, its characteristic, that which determines the eros relation, which is its principal difference. I believe that it may be the intention towards the other as willing appetite o desire, the movement relative to the one that is not in ones power ( that is to say, free relationship).

This essay Will be organized in three parts: philosophical, religious, literary. It Will conclude in a last personal reflection, attending what has been exposed.

The theme of love is vast and the bibliography countless,. I decided to refer to the most relevant and classical works, selecting the philosophical and artistic issues.

Love does not consist in simply devoting or surrendering oneself, as if it were an armistice, but in strengthening the propriety, the person, or ,as Badiou states, in becoming subject. And in this freedom and creativity are intimately included.

Eros allows the creative desire. Love beyond the thing, free relation of creation and utopia. Necessary relation regarding the other, through the wish that does not alienate but that is founded en respect. By this, love approaches to the original, and springs from the pristine to affirm the difference, since it makes reference respectfully to the genuine. Love and Human Rights are, because of this reason, intertwined. Love and utopia contain themselves in a connected, due to the desire that innovates from a more plenty possible and future, impelling to the search and the creation.

Desire is a question of future. This has been marked out in the history of philosophy, as a intent of reaching that which is not possessed and that is longed for. Love needs the respect for the other person, by its identity. What is being pointed out by the loving desire is an utopian society.

Nothing more propitious for this Introduction that the primogenial classical thought of Empedocles. Allow me mention it prior to the philosophical part in the way of reference to what I shall later develop, with the intention of illuminating the problem.

That which is united by love is separated, divided by struggle or cruel fight, says to us Empedocles (1). Simultaneously he adds that the elements are reunited by Aphrodite (2). I may show in this two aspects: that love is a unitive relation distinct from disintegration or strife; that the mythical element and the comprehension of love as thing is explicit in Empedocles (trait that I signalized in former paragraphs when distinguishing love as relation ad love as thing). The things differ by hate or contend (3). Empedocles says:

“They are all brought together” (the elements) “into one order by Love, at another they are carried each in different directions by the regulation of Strife; if they grow into one ou of many and again divided become more than one. So far they come into being and their life is not lasting but in so far they never cease changing continually, so far they are evermore, unmovable in the circle” (4)

Regarding the unitive act of love, Empedocles is clear: “The joint binds two things” (5).

I must explain that Empedocles refers this uniting movement of Love ant the disintegrating of Strife to the cosmic circle (6). In it, Strife and Love progress to the vortex and the centre implicating a conjunction or a dispersing of elements. Thus what has been immortal turns out to be mortal, and the pure compound (7).

Empedocles clearly names Aphrodite as creator being a uniting factor: all the things “have been fitted together by Aphrodite and so are now come into being”(8). This comprehension could be preserved until today in a religion that explains God as creating love.

I must point out that Empedocles responds to his own philosophy with strict ethical precepts and cleanness requirements, as for example the one of avoiding spilling blood (9). That is to say, that since long ago the blemish of the material world, death, and battle should be condemned. Perhaps this imperative in accordance with its understanding of the generating Love, even when it embodies itself in Aphrodite or a being and its essential characteristic is diluted, is not isolated from the notion of creative unity in a relationship that still is not named as wish (but that points to it).

PHILOSOPHICAL COMPREHENSION OF LOVE

PLATO

The platonic metaphysic is grounded on the ideas of Goodness and Beauty, to which tends the erotic desire. This comprehension has determined the destiny of occidental philosophy.

I shall refer to the works Symposium, Phaedo, Phaedon to remember the dialogic exposition of Plato regarding love.

Formerly, I wish to mention the observation of Mac Intyre (10) concerning Goodness in the Greek world. This intellectual states that ir refers, in this context, to virtue and justice, being a social function as human being. This is also relflected in the work of Aristotle, as I shall expose.

According to André Lancelin y Maire Lemmonier:

“Inaugural and enigmatic, the Banquet of Plato imposed in the following two millennium the occidental point of view on love. Nevertheless, it results “enough humoristic”, as observes the psychoanalist Jacques Lacan, that since this moment there has not been only one reflection, nor a sole religious meditation about desire that would not refer to a text that finally represents an effeminate assembly.. a bunch of young depraved drunk, some old homosexuals of Athenian aristocracy… Though physically absent, Diotima of Mantinea is… the central figure” and Socrates “decides to be her mouthpiece” (11).

The dialogue opens with a petition to Apolodoro on a report about the “speeches in praise of love which were delivered by Socrates, Alcibiades, and others at Agathon´s supper” (12). He responds that he will refer them as Aristodemus did it (13). Eryximacus expresses then that, recalling Phaedo, “what a strange thin it is… that whereas other gods have poems and hymns made in their honour, the great and glorious god. Love, has no encomiant among all the poets… to this no one has ever dared worthily to hymn love´s praises!”. Thus, it is proposed an adequate pastime: discourses from left to right eulogizing Eros.

The first recommended in doing it is Phaedo, that qualifies Eros as a great, admirable god. Especially because its origin, honoured due to being among the oldest (16). Not richness, nor honours, nor anything else may achieve that must guide humans: the intention to “nobly live” (17), virtue. The esteem for Beauty allows that State exists y through it the individual is capable of realizing beautiful things (18), “abstaining from all dishonour”, preferring death than it (19). No one is so vile as to Eros not converts him in an inspired one in matter of excellence (virtue) (20). The “love would inspire him” and because of this Eros is central for men in as “author and giver of virtue”, and therefore in happiness (21).

Then speaks Pausanias, who essentially distinguishes a double face in love: the noble love belonging to the soul and the popular belonging to the body (22). Hence, he says: “Love is inseparable from Aphrodite. She is the daughter of Uranus… the daughter of Zeus and Dione”; so, there are two Aphrodites, the heavenly and the common, which have different character according to the performance(23). Therefore, there is an Eros Uranio and other Pandemo (24). Pausanias observes that each human action is not in itself good or bad, but “according to the mode” (25) in which an act is realized (well and correctly is beautiful and worthy of been appraised , induced by good loving, proper to Aphrodite Urania; commonly done and hazardous is the one desired by vile men that wish their bodies and follow the desire without worry about goodness proper to Aphrodite Urania) (26). He adds that this last one does not participate of female but only of male and that it is the oldest and is free from excess; that is the reason by which the ones inspired in this eros are directed towards the masculine, living together (27). Many of these traits will be expressed in Aristotle: virtue, living together, permanence. Since Pausanias also says that the lover of noble character stays permanent all his life, because he attached himself to something permanent; “the love of the noble disposition is life-long for it becomes one with the everlasting” (28). And he notes too that this willing servitude Is nor ugly nor flattery (29). Pausanias treats the theme of lover favours, that later will reappear in western tradition; he says that is beautiful making gifts to the loved one pleasing him, because it is “virtuous service” (30).

Eriximaco objects that Pausanias did not drive correctly his discourse (31) and he takes it again. From his profession, medicine, he will repeat the double nature of love. In the first place he states that both human and divine things are found in Eros (32). He explicates that the god is contained in his double character (33): as healthy eros and diseased eros (34). And this is so because it is beautiful to please noble men and ugly the libertines, beautiful and necessary to satisfy noble and healthy things in each body and ugly to satisfy ugly and unhealthy things (35). As professional, it is necessary not satisfying them. Because of what he has said, he adds that medicine is the science of the erotic movements of the body (36);; because of this, the physician produces the change from one eros to the other, achieving that one wishes some to other hostile things, in favour of the friendly. The physician produces “reconciliation of opposites” (38), eros and concordance. Thus, medicine is ruled by this god, inasmuch as it is harmony (39), as music and other arts. He concludes that in his art it is a hard labour to make good use of desires (40), caring about both eros (41), in order to not commit injustice through an intemperate eros (42) by means of moderation.

Immediately Aristophanes declaims showing the fusion love. He begins his discourse noting that men unknow Eros power, since if it were so they would have made him magnificent sanctuaries and offered him great sacrifices. He is the most philanthropic of all gods, servant of men and physicians. Aristophanes states that he will try to give account of his power, though for it would be necessary to know human nature and its modifications, since its constitution has changed (43). Because three were the human sexes, being the third androgyne ; thus one participated of the sun, another of the earth and the last of the moon. Vigorous and haughty, the androgynes rivalled with divinities. Zeus decided to cut them through the middle, Apollo collaborating, watching them weak and hungry. Says Aristophanes: “So ancient is the desire of the another which is implanted in us reuniting the original nature, making one of one two, and healing the state of man” (45), in the experience of friendship, intimacy and mutual company. Bo th form an unique being from two, united and confounded with the loved one (46). It is necessary to be pious with the god because by this mean we are guided, we shall encounter the proper loved ones reaching, thus healed, happiness (47). That is to say, it would return hence to the primitive nature (48).

According to Agathon men had been more praised than Eros. It must be exposed better the quality and the gifts of the god(49). Beautiful, excellent, delicate, he avoids the violence of necessity since “ungrace and love are always at with one another”(50). Just and moderate, he rules over desires, also being the most wise and happy and young of all gods, and so rules over them (51). Being wise, he is master (52). Being excellent driver, he voids us from the improper (53). Being father of desire, he is the one who everybody must follow (54).

Socrates observes that Eros desires. Desire is always from something which one lacks, since if one would not lack it, one would not desire it (55). In other words:

“He and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already, and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and of which he is in want, sort of things which love and desire seek?”(56).

Therefore, Eros is the desire of the thing from which one is lacking; wish of something deprived. From this it deduces that Eros is deprived from beauty. In this moment of the discourse Socrates remembers the comprehension of Diotima of Mantinea, his instructor. He indicates that she refuted him and that Eros was neither good or beautiful, nor wise or ignorant. Eros is something in between. Among knowledge and ignorance one finds the right opinion; on the other hand, Eros wishes the good and beautiful things inasmuch as he lacks them. Correlatively he is neither god nor mortal, but intermediate; that is to say, a “daimon”. His power is interpretation and transmission of messages between men and gods(57). Thus, Eros is he who completes the whole unifying it. Son of Poros and Penia, he is neither poor nor rich (58). Because of the motives, he is philosopher. No god philosophizes since they are wise, and no one desires that of which he is deprived if one does not believe he lacks it (59). “He has no dsire for that which he feels no want. They are those who are in the mean between the two. Therefore love is also a philosopher or a lover of wisdom… he who loves loves the good”. Philosophize those who are in an intermediate situation. Diotima states that men love what is good (60), and there is no love if it is not desire of possessing the good-Socrates concludes that the erotic activity is the procreation in Beauty and Harmonious because generation is perennial and immortal (61), desiring always which is good (62). That is to say, Eros is wish of immortality (63), expressed by procreation. The great and beautiful wisdom of Eros is temperate and gives birth to the cities (64). Diotima refers to Socrates the ascending ascises towards the unique for of Beauty, guided by Eros. The scale initiates itself in the beautiful bodies, passing through an unique beautiful body to reach the beauty in all bodies, then the one of the soul and the beauty of laws and customs. Diotima says that, thus directed,

“When he comes to the will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils which in the first place is everlasting, without diminution and without increase, or any change is imparted to the ever growing and perishing beauties… He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty for he has hold not of an image but of reality nourishing true virtue” (65).

In this moment, the human is friend of the gods. And therefore, honouring Eros is a duty of all men.

Eros drives man to Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Plato repeats this conception of love as driver of wise men in the Phaedon (66). In the path to wisdom, the soul recognizes that it is simply united to the body and until philosophy may receive it, it cannot see its real existence. The bodily jail makes it captive of ignorance and love allows it to regain the memory of the truth. Because of this the philosophers are concerned about the art of dying wishing only the soul life (67).

In the Phaedrus, Plato defines love as desire (68); love is the supreme wish towards Beauty. Victim of passion and pleasure, the soul is incarcerated in the body. Nevertheless, Plato adds that the noble deeds are inspired by the madness of love (69). This may be divine, liberating the soul of habit and convention (prophetic, inspired by Apollus; initiatory, from Dyonisius; poetic, by the Muses; the erotic, given by Aphrodite, the supreme madness) (70). Plato discourses that the dos are all nobles but other races are compound. It is the case of human being. The Philosopher uses an image: the one of the carriage whose driver is man, of which one part is noble, and the other, which brings him difficulties ignoble. The soul, thus imperfect, losing because of this its wings falls on earth and finds in it a home, but receiving a bodily frame. The composition of body and soul is, justly, the mortal creature. The platonic image is grounded in the fact that the wing is the bodily element most akin to the divine (beauty, wisdom, goodness), and of it the wing is nourished. But when the driver is fed of evil and nonsense, it looses its wings. Hence, the lover of the immortal has this fourth form of madness as it wishes to return to truth. The lover characterizes itself by this name inasmuch as it participates in Beauty. Plato states that he who attends to Zeus is the more apt to see the winged god. The vision of the truth is really a reminiscence if what has been perceived before the fall, and it implies modesty and fear to the loved one. Therefore, friendship exists in communion with Goodness, making grow the wings. And if the element of Goodness prevails, lover and loved one pass their lives in harmony, making the vice slave of them and liberating the virtuous parts of the soul, conquering one of the three heavenly or true Olympian victories (71). He concludes that “nor can human discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing… those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not go down again to darkness and earth… but live happy companions in their pilgrimage” (72).

By what has been declared, it may be seen that for Plato love is Eros, as being and semigod, but also as desiring relationship, precisely the desire of Beauty. Through this philosopher the comprehension of the body as soul´s jail, the theory of reminiscence of Truth and a mythology that allows him to express imaginatively the internal struggle to abandon this pitiful and inferior earthly world, are indissolubly united.