Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Platonic Friendship

A friendship between a man and a woman which surpasses every social constraints, redefines a bond and reaches a scared stage is "Platonic Friendship". The world seems so beautiful to have a friend like that and if we are gifted enough have that, there is nothing else one needs in life. Life seems to begin and end with that. In those moments we do find meaning of life, we start believing in and bow to some power superior to us. Plato understood the power of this relationship way back in 400/300 BC. It's relevant now even after thousands of years and will be forever. The origins of the term platonic friendship from Slate:

"The Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino coined the term amor platonicus (Latin for "platonic love") in the 15th century. He had in mind Plato's Symposium, in which Socrates describes a possible ascent from base desire to high-minded contemplation—a "ladder" with love for a beautiful person at the bottom, and love of Beauty itself at the top. Ficino Christianized the concept, interpreting the final Beauty as a reference to God. He further asserted that true lovers are drawn to each other's divine souls: "The passion of a lover is not quenched by the mere touch or sight of a body," he wrote, "for it does not desire this or that body, but desires the splendor of the divine light shining through bodies, and is amazed and awed by it."
Ficino's description of Platonic love circulated around Europe, women stepped into the role of the beloved who incites spiritual desire. Neoplatonic thought also fused somewhat with an old courtly tradition in which women occupy an elevated position and become objects of male worship."

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