Armand d'Angour, 'Reconstructing Socrates: Platonic projections and realities'

What was Socrates’ understanding of Love? We must approach the question via Plato’s Symposium, which puts a doctrine about the ‘ascent’ of love’s objects into the mouth of Socrates via the mysterious figure of Diotima. In the dialogue Diotima’s doctrine challenges the theories of eros that have been proposed by other members of the party, notably the comic poet Aristophanes. Recent historical investigations into the text of Symposium suggest, however, a new perspective on Socrates’ own approach to love, as opposed to one directed towards Plato’s idealist goals: an object-relational understanding that can be set against the drive-directed structure famously derived by Freud from his interpretation of the tragedy of Oedipus (as treated by Sophocles). This revised understanding of Socratic eros fits in with a more down-to-earth portrayal of Socrates than is usually allowed for, which emerges from passages in Plato’s writings where he arguably projects characteristics of the philosopher onto other figures.