Orrchid Huunting The ancient Greek word ‘ailouros’ roughly translates into ‘nimble tail’. It was a name given to ‘various long-tailed carnivores kept for catching mice.’ Our mind immediately matches the cat to this description. However, it seems that at one point there had been more than one supreme rodent killer. Weasels once held this throne in ancient Europe. What exactly it was that deposed them remains unknown. One can imagine that it was something about the mysterious persuasive powers of cats that changed our minds. It seems many of the great thinkers at the time had some comment or other to give the adorable felines. Out of these, the philosopher himself, Aristotle remains the most well-known. He described female cats as naturally promiscuous, as he had observed their aggressive behaviour during mating. Both Aristotle and his teacher Plato pondered much on the nature of love. Rather than an all-encompassing broad definition we find in the English language, the Greeks had several different names for the same phenomenon. ‘Xenia’ is the word used to describe the hospitality of a host towards a guest, especially if that person is far from home or an associate of the one offering accommodation. ‘Philautia’ describes the desire to seek one’s own pleasure or happiness. It is divided into an unhealthy, bad version of self-love and a good, beneficial one. ‘Philia’, as it was described by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, is the loyalty felt between friends, equals, family and community. It is a form of love that is free from any passions and is truly virtuous. It is the root of the word ‘philosophy’, the love for wisdom. ‘Agápe’ is the unchallengeable love one feels towards one’s children and to a spouse. ‘Èros’, sexual love, may seem a simple enough concept to understand. As it turns out, however, it stretches far deeper than one can imagine. It is the subject of discussion in Plato’s Symposium. Arguably, it is his most beautiful dialogue and is definitely a recommendation for a Valentine's Day read. The word ‘Symposium’ can be translated to a drinking party or banquet and it is in this environment the dialogue is set. As a way to pass the time, the many well-known socialites - there among them Plato's famous mouthpiece Socrates - take turns to give praise to Eros, the god of love and desire. In each of their speeches, the characters explain their understanding of the natural origin of the concept. All give interesting and at times humorous testimonies, the text is casual yet compelling in a way that only Plato seems to be able to do. Each argument is laid out carefully and beautifully which makes it easy to relate to the feelings of its more than 2000-year-old characters. The last one to speak is, of course, Socrates. As is often the case with Plato, this character begins questioning Agathon, the person who had held a speech before him. This leads to his famous dialectic method. This is followed by a long-winded and logically consistent argument for love and its connection to the Theory of Forms. Socrates claims to have learned the ‘art of love’ from a woman named Diotima. He explains that Eros is not a god at all but a daemon, a spirit that is half God and half man. Eros is not a being of wisdom and beauty, instead, it is something that enables man to seek what is beautiful. It begins as a primal feeling, one that we share with animals, such as the promiscuous household cat. We instinctively seek after the most beautiful mate to reproduce and give new life. This, Diotima says, is the closest humans can get to immortality. By carrying over our heritage to our children, a part of us remains in this world, forever to be carried on throughout the generations. All mortal creatures share the nature of seeking immortality. This explains the erratic behaviour of many animals when they mate. As a lover's wisdom increases, he begins to seek beauty in minds or souls. The lover will begin to see the beauty within all attractive bodies and will therefore begin to seek for it in the virtue and wisdom of others instead. Actions and ideas will begin to inspire the lover to create a form of spiritual birth of new intellectual endeavours. Finally, love will prompt a person to study and experience beauty itself. Beauty, in this regard, is neither attractive nor repulsive, it is not a physical trait, a piece of knowledge or a creature. It is entirely its own thing, Beauty in itself. All beautiful objects, whether they be physical or mental, only partake in it. The existence of the objects themselves does not affect Beauty. A human being is enticed already by its physical representation and so the sight of the true Form of Beauty must be something pleasurable and worthy of seeking out. Diotima then explains to Socrates that one ought to use Love as a ladder to reach this knowledge. One begins by loving one beautiful body, that love is then extended to include several bodies and then physical beauty itself. It then moves on to the love of actions and ideas which in turn leads to the love of intellectual endeavours. This will then, in turn, to lead to an ascension to a ‘final intellectual endeavour’ which is the study of Beauty itself. What is love in modern times? Except for the odd story one hears from a friend or family member it seems to me, like with most things today, to have become a highly machinist and mathematical phenomenon. Scientists and doctors have reduced it to chemicals in the brain. Pheromones and oxytocin and dopamine. A physical anomaly, part of our primitive bodies, to be studied and prodded into. Something to be measured and altered and controlled. Although it does well in explaining what is happening and how a mere observation of chemicals tells us very little about the actual nature of love and why we experience it the way we do. Among common folk, ‘love’ seems to become increasingly deranged. The first problem lies in our loss of sense for beauty. Its physical representation has descended into a sickly perversion. The image of a healthy, beautiful body has strayed far from actual perfection. They have become amusement parks. A physical anomaly that, once again, can be altered with chemicals or plastics. A shot of botox to the lips, silicone in the breasts, some trenbolone before a gym session. These are indeed people that strive towards immortality, but their method relies not on their genuine capabilities or a love for beauty, but instead on a foolish fear of rejection. It is a dishonest way of finding beauty. Truly a love for bodies that fail to seek after anything higher. The people on the other side of the ideological spectrum seek to completely disregard beauty itself as an idea. To them, there is no such thing as a more or less beautiful body. Instead, one can be dangerously obese, misshapen or carry other unattractive traits and still be considered ‘beautiful’. One might similarly interpret Plato’s message when he speaks of finding beauty in all physical bodies. However, he would vehemently disagree
1
