The thinking of love, so ancient, so abundant and diverse in its forms and in its modulations, asks for an extreme reticence as soon as it is solicited. It is a question of modesty, perhaps, but it is also a question of exhaustion: has not everything been said on the subject of love? Every excess and every exactitude? Has not the impossibility of speaking about love been as violently recognized as has been the experience of love itself as the true source of the possibility of speaking in general? We know the words of love to be inexhaustible, but as to speaking about love, could we perhaps be exhausted?...
The thinking of love - if it is necessary to solicit it, or if it is necessary that it be proposed anew, as a theme to be discussed or as a question to be posed - does not therefore lay claim to a particular register of thinking: it invites us to thinking as such. Love does not call for a certain kind of thinking, or for a thinking of love, but for thinking in essence and in its totality. And this is because thinking, most properly speaking, is love. It is the love for that which reaches experience; that is to say, for that aspect of being that gives itself to be welcomed. In the movement across discourse, proof, and concept, nothing but this love is at stake for thought. Without this love, the exercise of the intellect or of reason would be utterly worthless.
This intimate connivance between love and thinking is present in our origins: the word "philosophy" betrays it. Whatever its legendary inventor might have meant by it, "philosophy," in spite of everything - and perhaps in spite of all philosophies - means this: love of thinking, since thinking is love...
One single time, however, the first philosopher expressly authenticated an identity of love and of philosophy. Plato's Symposium does not represent a particular treatise that this author set aside for love at the heart of his work, as others will do later (and often by relating to this same Plato: Ficino, among others, or Leon the Hebrew, as though Plato were the unique or at least necessary philosophical reference, de amore, always present, beyond the epoch of treatises, in Hegel or in Nietzsche - "philosophy in the manner of Plato is an erotic duel" - in Freud or in Lacan). But the Symposium signifies first that for Plato the exposition of philosophy, as such, is not possible without the presentation of philosophic love. The commentary on the text gives innumerable confirmations of this, from the portrait of Eros to the role of Socrates and to the figure - who appeared here once and for all on the philosophical scene - of Diotima.
Although the Symposium speaks of love, it also does more than that; it opens thought to love as to its own essence. This is why this dialogue is more than any other the dialogue of Plato's generosity: here he invites orators or thinkers and offers them a speech tempered altogether differently from the speech of the interlocutors of Socrates. The scene itself, the gaiety of the joy that traverses it, attests to a consideration that is unique in Plato (to such a degree, at least) - consideration for others, as well as for the object of the discourse. All the different types of loves are welcomed in the Symposium; there is this discussion, but there is no exclusion. And the love that is finally exhibited as true love, philosophical Eros, does not only present itself with the mastery of a triumphant doctrine; it also appears in a state of deprivation and weakness, which allows the experience of the limit, where thought takes place, to be recognized.
The thinking of love - if it is necessary to solicit it, or if it is necessary that it be proposed anew, as a theme to be discussed or as a question to be posed - does not therefore lay claim to a particular register of thinking: it invites us to thinking as such. Love does not call for a certain kind of thinking, or for a thinking of love, but for thinking in essence and in its totality. And this is because thinking, most properly speaking, is love. It is the love for that which reaches experience; that is to say, for that aspect of being that gives itself to be welcomed. In the movement across discourse, proof, and concept, nothing but this love is at stake for thought. Without this love, the exercise of the intellect or of reason would be utterly worthless.
This intimate connivance between love and thinking is present in our origins: the word "philosophy" betrays it. Whatever its legendary inventor might have meant by it, "philosophy," in spite of everything - and perhaps in spite of all philosophies - means this: love of thinking, since thinking is love...
One single time, however, the first philosopher expressly authenticated an identity of love and of philosophy. Plato's Symposium does not represent a particular treatise that this author set aside for love at the heart of his work, as others will do later (and often by relating to this same Plato: Ficino, among others, or Leon the Hebrew, as though Plato were the unique or at least necessary philosophical reference, de amore, always present, beyond the epoch of treatises, in Hegel or in Nietzsche - "philosophy in the manner of Plato is an erotic duel" - in Freud or in Lacan). But the Symposium signifies first that for Plato the exposition of philosophy, as such, is not possible without the presentation of philosophic love. The commentary on the text gives innumerable confirmations of this, from the portrait of Eros to the role of Socrates and to the figure - who appeared here once and for all on the philosophical scene - of Diotima.
Although the Symposium speaks of love, it also does more than that; it opens thought to love as to its own essence. This is why this dialogue is more than any other the dialogue of Plato's generosity: here he invites orators or thinkers and offers them a speech tempered altogether differently from the speech of the interlocutors of Socrates. The scene itself, the gaiety of the joy that traverses it, attests to a consideration that is unique in Plato (to such a degree, at least) - consideration for others, as well as for the object of the discourse. All the different types of loves are welcomed in the Symposium; there is this discussion, but there is no exclusion. And the love that is finally exhibited as true love, philosophical Eros, does not only present itself with the mastery of a triumphant doctrine; it also appears in a state of deprivation and weakness, which allows the experience of the limit, where thought takes place, to be recognized.
... Shattered Love, Nancy Jean-Luc
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