Untangling Eros

Abstract

This chapter draws on recent reinterpretations of Plato's Symposium to argue for a contemporary critical reappropriation of Platonic erotic love of less powerful persons, minus its androcentrism and its era's sexualization of inequality and of eroticism. It theologically elaborates the reflections on desire, sin, and grace. Moreover, it addresses the contemporary recoveries of Plato's Symposium and the account of desire that has affected so much of Western thought, Christian and secular. The Symposium was nothing if not an illustration of the seduction that wise, self-possessed men work on younger men in pursuit of knowledge or pleasure. It formulated a vision of ideal erotic love from the point of view of the lover. Edward Vacek believed that hope in the genuine affirmation that comes from being loved back is normally a part of the motivation. Vacek overcame the Platonic dualism that produces a barrier between physical and spiritual eros.