essay about platonic love

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platonic love

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• Harvard University - The Center for Hellenic Studies - The Virtues of Platonic Love
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platonic love , a phrase used in two senses, with allusion in both cases to Plato ’s account of love in his Symposium .

The immediate object of the Symposium —which professes to record the discourses made in eulogy of Eros by a group of eminent speakers at a banquet in honour of the tragic poet Agathon —is to find the highest manifestation of the love which controls the world in the mystic aspiration after union with the eternal and supercosmic beauty. The Symposium depicts Socrates as the type of the aspirant who has reached the goal of union and sets in sharp opposition to him the figure of Alcibiades , who has sold his spiritual birthright for the pleasures and ambitions of the world. The centre of philosophical interest lies in the discourse of Socrates, which he professes to have learned from the priestess Diotima of Mantinea.

The main argument may be summarized thus: eros , desirous love in all its forms, is a reaching out of the soul to a good to which it aspires but does not yet possess. The desirous soul is not yet in fruition of the good. It is on the way to fruition, just as the philosopher is not yet in possession of wisdom but is reaching out after it. The object which awakens this desirous love in all its forms is beauty, and beauty is eternal. In its crudest form, love for a beautiful person is really a passion to beget offspring by that person and so to attain, by the perpetuation of one’s stock, the substitute for immortality which is all the body can achieve. A more spiritual form of the same craving for eternity is the aspiration to win immortal fame by combining with a kindred soul to give birth to sound institutions and rules of life. Still more spiritual is the endeavour, in association with chosen minds, to enrich philosophy and science with noble discourses and thoughts.

Thus, in common speech, platonic love means a supremely affectionate relationship between human beings in which sexual intercourse is neither desired nor practiced. In this sense, it most often refers to a heterosexual relationship. By extension, it may be used to cover that stage of chivalrous or courtly love in which sexual intercourse is indefinitely postponed.

From the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century, the term platonic love was also used as an occasional euphemism for homosexual love, in view of the comparatively tolerant attitude to such love discernible in Plato as well as in other Greek authors.

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This essay focuses on personal love, or the love of particular persons as such. Part of the philosophical task in understanding personal love is to distinguish the various kinds of personal love. For example, the way in which I love my wife is seemingly very different from the way I love my mother, my child, and my friend. This task has typically proceeded hand-in-hand with philosophical analyses of these kinds of personal love, analyses that in part respond to various puzzles about love. Can love be justified? If so, how? What is the value of personal love? What impact does love have on the autonomy of both the lover and the beloved?

1. Preliminary Distinctions

2. love as union, 3. love as robust concern, 4.1 love as appraisal of value, 4.2 love as bestowal of value, 4.3 an intermediate position, 5.1 love as emotion proper, 5.2 love as emotion complex, 6. the value and justification of love, other internet resources, related entries.

In ordinary conversations, we often say things like the following:

• I love chocolate (or skiing).
• I love doing philosophy (or being a father).
• I love my dog (or cat).
• I love my wife (or mother or child or friend).

However, what is meant by ‘love’ differs from case to case. (1) may be understood as meaning merely that I like this thing or activity very much. In (2) the implication is typically that I find engaging in a certain activity or being a certain kind of person to be a part of my identity and so what makes my life worth living; I might just as well say that I value these. By contrast, (3) and (4) seem to indicate a mode of concern that cannot be neatly assimilated to anything else. Thus, we might understand the sort of love at issue in (4) to be, roughly, a matter of caring about another person as the person she is, for her own sake. (Accordingly, (3) may be understood as a kind of deficient mode of the sort of love we typically reserve for persons.) Philosophical accounts of love have focused primarily on the sort of personal love at issue in (4); such personal love will be the focus here (though see Frankfurt (1999) and Jaworska & Wonderly (2017) for attempts to provide a more general account that applies to non-persons as well).

Even within personal love, philosophers from the ancient Greeks on have traditionally distinguished three notions that can properly be called “love”: eros , agape , and philia . It will be useful to distinguish these three and say something about how contemporary discussions typically blur these distinctions (sometimes intentionally so) or use them for other purposes.

‘ Eros ’ originally meant love in the sense of a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual passion (Liddell et al., 1940). Nygren (1953a,b) describes eros as the “‘love of desire,’ or acquisitive love” and therefore as egocentric (1953b, p. 89). Soble (1989b, 1990) similarly describes eros as “selfish” and as a response to the merits of the beloved—especially the beloved’s goodness or beauty. What is evident in Soble’s description of eros is a shift away from the sexual: to love something in the “erosic” sense (to use the term Soble coins) is to love it in a way that, by being responsive to its merits, is dependent on reasons. Such an understanding of eros is encouraged by Plato’s discussion in the Symposium , in which Socrates understands sexual desire to be a deficient response to physical beauty in particular, a response which ought to be developed into a response to the beauty of a person’s soul and, ultimately, into a response to the form, Beauty.

Soble’s intent in understanding eros to be a reason-dependent sort of love is to articulate a sharp contrast with agape , a sort of love that does not respond to the value of its object. ‘ Agape ’ has come, primarily through the Christian tradition, to mean the sort of love God has for us persons, as well as our love for God and, by extension, of our love for each other—a kind of brotherly love. In the paradigm case of God’s love for us, agape is “spontaneous and unmotivated,” revealing not that we merit that love but that God’s nature is love (Nygren 1953b, p. 85). Rather than responding to antecedent value in its object, agape instead is supposed to create value in its object and therefore to initiate our fellowship with God (pp. 87–88). Consequently, Badhwar (2003, p. 58) characterizes agape as “independent of the loved individual’s fundamental characteristics as the particular person she is”; and Soble (1990, p. 5) infers that agape , in contrast to eros , is therefore not reason dependent but is rationally “incomprehensible,” admitting at best of causal or historical explanations. [ 1 ]

Finally, ‘ philia ’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one’s friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one’s country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977). Like eros , philia is generally (but not universally) understood to be responsive to (good) qualities in one’s beloved. This similarity between eros and philia has led Thomas (1987) to wonder whether the only difference between romantic love and friendship is the sexual involvement of the former—and whether that is adequate to account for the real differences we experience. The distinction between eros and philia becomes harder to draw with Soble’s attempt to diminish the importance of the sexual in eros (1990).

Maintaining the distinctions among eros , agape , and philia becomes even more difficult when faced with contemporary theories of love (including romantic love) and friendship. For, as discussed below, some theories of romantic love understand it along the lines of the agape tradition as creating value in the beloved (cf. Section 4.2 ), and other accounts of romantic love treat sexual activity as merely the expression of what otherwise looks very much like friendship.

Given the focus here on personal love, Christian conceptions of God’s love for persons (and vice versa ) will be omitted, and the distinction between eros and philia will be blurred—as it typically is in contemporary accounts. Instead, the focus here will be on these contemporary understandings of love, including romantic love, understood as an attitude we take towards other persons. [ 2 ]

In providing an account of love, philosophical analyses must be careful to distinguish love from other positive attitudes we take towards persons, such as liking. Intuitively, love differs from such attitudes as liking in terms of its “depth,” and the problem is to elucidate the kind of “depth” we intuitively find love to have. Some analyses do this in part by providing thin conceptions of what liking amounts to. Thus, Singer (1991) and Brown (1987) understand liking to be a matter of desiring, an attitude that at best involves its object having only instrumental (and not intrinsic) value. Yet this seems inadequate: surely there are attitudes towards persons intermediate between having a desire with a person as its object and loving the person. I can care about a person for her own sake and not merely instrumentally, and yet such caring does not on its own amount to (non-deficiently) loving her, for it seems I can care about my dog in exactly the same way, a kind of caring which is insufficiently personal for love.

It is more common to distinguish loving from liking via the intuition that the “depth” of love is to be explained in terms of a notion of identification: to love someone is somehow to identify yourself with him, whereas no such notion of identification is involved in liking. As Nussbaum puts it, “The choice between one potential love and another can feel, and be, like a choice of a way of life, a decision to dedicate oneself to these values rather than these” (1990, p. 328); liking clearly does not have this sort of “depth” (see also Helm 2010; Bagley 2015). Whether love involves some kind of identification, and if so exactly how to understand such identification, is a central bone of contention among the various analyses of love. In particular, Whiting (2013) argues that the appeal to a notion of identification distorts our understanding of the sort of motivation love can provide, for taken literally it implies that love motivates through self -interest rather than through the beloved’s interests. Thus, Whiting argues, central to love is the possibility that love takes the lover “outside herself”, potentially forgetting herself in being moved directly by the interests of the beloved. (Of course, we need not take the notion of identification literally in this way: in identifying with one’s beloved, one might have a concern for one’s beloved that is analogous to one’s concern for oneself; see Helm 2010.)

Another common way to distinguish love from other personal attitudes is in terms of a distinctive kind of evaluation, which itself can account for love’s “depth.” Again, whether love essentially involves a distinctive kind of evaluation, and if so how to make sense of that evaluation, is hotly disputed. Closely related to questions of evaluation are questions of justification: can we justify loving or continuing to love a particular person, and if so, how? For those who think the justification of love is possible, it is common to understand such justification in terms of evaluation, and the answers here affect various accounts’ attempts to make sense of the kind of constancy or commitment love seems to involve, as well as the sense in which love is directed at particular individuals.

In what follows, theories of love are tentatively and hesitantly classified into four types: love as union, love as robust concern, love as valuing, and love as an emotion. It should be clear, however, that particular theories classified under one type sometimes also include, without contradiction, ideas central to other types. The types identified here overlap to some extent, and in some cases classifying particular theories may involve excessive pigeonholing. (Such cases are noted below.) Part of the classificatory problem is that many accounts of love are quasi-reductionistic, understanding love in terms of notions like affection, evaluation, attachment, etc., which themselves never get analyzed. Even when these accounts eschew explicitly reductionistic language, very often little attempt is made to show how one such “aspect” of love is conceptually connected to others. As a result, there is no clear and obvious way to classify particular theories, let alone identify what the relevant classes should be.

The union view claims that love consists in the formation of (or the desire to form) some significant kind of union, a “we.” A central task for union theorists, therefore, is to spell out just what such a “we” comes to—whether it is literally a new entity in the world somehow composed of the lover and the beloved, or whether it is merely metaphorical. Variants of this view perhaps go back to Aristotle (cf. Sherman 1993) and can also be found in Montaigne ([E]) and Hegel (1997); contemporary proponents include Solomon (1981, 1988), Scruton (1986), Nozick (1989), Fisher (1990), and Delaney (1996).

Scruton, writing in particular about romantic love, claims that love exists “just so soon as reciprocity becomes community: that is, just so soon as all distinction between my interests and your interests is overcome” (1986, p. 230). The idea is that the union is a union of concern, so that when I act out of that concern it is not for my sake alone or for your sake alone but for our sake. Fisher (1990) holds a similar, but somewhat more moderate view, claiming that love is a partial fusion of the lovers’ cares, concerns, emotional responses, and actions. What is striking about both Scruton and Fisher is the claim that love requires the actual union of the lovers’ concerns, for it thus becomes clear that they conceive of love not so much as an attitude we take towards another but as a relationship: the distinction between your interests and mine genuinely disappears only when we together come to have shared cares, concerns, etc., and my merely having a certain attitude towards you is not enough for love. This provides content to the notion of a “we” as the (metaphorical?) subject of these shared cares and concerns, and as that for whose sake we act.

Solomon (1988) offers a union view as well, though one that tries “to make new sense out of ‘love’ through a literal rather than metaphoric sense of the ‘fusion’ of two souls” (p. 24, cf. Solomon 1981; however, it is unclear exactly what he means by a “soul” here and so how love can be a “literal” fusion of two souls). What Solomon has in mind is the way in which, through love, the lovers redefine their identities as persons in terms of the relationship: “Love is the concentration and the intensive focus of mutual definition on a single individual, subjecting virtually every personal aspect of one’s self to this process” (1988, p. 197). The result is that lovers come to share the interests, roles, virtues, and so on that constitute what formerly was two individual identities but now has become a shared identity, and they do so in part by each allowing the other to play an important role in defining his own identity.

Nozick (1989) offers a union view that differs from those of Scruton, Fisher, and Solomon in that Nozick thinks that what is necessary for love is merely the desire to form a “we,” together with the desire that your beloved reciprocates. Nonetheless, he claims that this “we” is “a new entity in the world…created by a new web of relationships between [the lovers] which makes them no longer separate” (p. 70). In spelling out this web of relationships, Nozick appeals to the lovers “pooling” not only their well-beings, in the sense that the well-being of each is tied up with that of the other, but also their autonomy, in that “each transfers some previous rights to make certain decisions unilaterally into a joint pool” (p. 71). In addition, Nozick claims, the lovers each acquire a new identity as a part of the “we,” a new identity constituted by their (a) wanting to be perceived publicly as a couple, (b) their attending to their pooled well-being, and (c) their accepting a “certain kind of division of labor” (p. 72):

A person in a we might find himself coming across something interesting to read yet leaving it for the other person, not because he himself would not be interested in it but because the other would be more interested, and one of them reading it is sufficient for it to be registered by the wider identity now shared, the we . [ 3 ]

Opponents of the union view have seized on claims like this as excessive: union theorists, they claim, take too literally the ontological commitments of this notion of a “we.” This leads to two specific criticisms of the union view. The first is that union views do away with individual autonomy. Autonomy, it seems, involves a kind of independence on the part of the autonomous agent, such that she is in control over not only what she does but also who she is, as this is constituted by her interests, values, concerns, etc. However, union views, by doing away with a clear distinction between your interests and mine, thereby undermine this sort of independence and so undermine the autonomy of the lovers. If autonomy is a part of the individual’s good, then, on the union view, love is to this extent bad; so much the worse for the union view (Singer 1994; Soble 1997). Moreover, Singer (1994) argues that a necessary part of having your beloved be the object of your love is respect for your beloved as the particular person she is, and this requires respecting her autonomy.

Union theorists have responded to this objection in several ways. Nozick (1989) seems to think of a loss of autonomy in love as a desirable feature of the sort of union lovers can achieve. Fisher (1990), somewhat more reluctantly, claims that the loss of autonomy in love is an acceptable consequence of love. Yet without further argument these claims seem like mere bullet biting. Solomon (1988, pp. 64ff) describes this “tension” between union and autonomy as “the paradox of love.” However, this a view that Soble (1997) derides: merely to call it a paradox, as Solomon does, is not to face up to the problem.

The second criticism involves a substantive view concerning love. Part of what it is to love someone, these opponents say, is to have concern for him for his sake. However, union views make such concern unintelligible and eliminate the possibility of both selfishness and self-sacrifice, for by doing away with the distinction between my interests and your interests they have in effect turned your interests into mine and vice versa (Soble 1997; see also Blum 1980, 1993). Some advocates of union views see this as a point in their favor: we need to explain how it is I can have concern for people other than myself, and the union view apparently does this by understanding your interests to be part of my own. And Delaney, responding to an apparent tension between our desire to be loved unselfishly (for fear of otherwise being exploited) and our desire to be loved for reasons (which presumably are attractive to our lover and hence have a kind of selfish basis), says (1996, p. 346):

Given my view that the romantic ideal is primarily characterized by a desire to achieve a profound consolidation of needs and interests through the formation of a we , I do not think a little selfishness of the sort described should pose a worry to either party.

The objection, however, lies precisely in this attempt to explain my concern for my beloved egoistically. As Whiting (1991, p. 10) puts it, such an attempt “strikes me as unnecessary and potentially objectionable colonization”: in love, I ought to be concerned with my beloved for her sake, and not because I somehow get something out of it. (This can be true whether my concern with my beloved is merely instrumental to my good or whether it is partly constitutive of my good.)

Although Whiting’s and Soble’s criticisms here succeed against the more radical advocates of the union view, they in part fail to acknowledge the kernel of truth to be gleaned from the idea of union. Whiting’s way of formulating the second objection in terms of an unnecessary egoism in part points to a way out: we persons are in part social creatures, and love is one profound mode of that sociality. Indeed, part of the point of union accounts is to make sense of this social dimension: to make sense of a way in which we can sometimes identify ourselves with others not merely in becoming interdependent with them (as Singer 1994, p. 165, suggests, understanding ‘interdependence’ to be a kind of reciprocal benevolence and respect) but rather in making who we are as persons be constituted in part by those we love (cf., e.g., Rorty 1986/1993; Nussbaum 1990).

Along these lines, Friedman (1998), taking her inspiration in part from Delaney (1996), argues that we should understand the sort of union at issue in love to be a kind of federation of selves:

On the federation model, a third unified entity is constituted by the interaction of the lovers, one which involves the lovers acting in concert across a range of conditions and for a range of purposes. This concerted action, however, does not erase the existence of the two lovers as separable and separate agents with continuing possibilities for the exercise of their own respective agencies. [p. 165]

Given that on this view the lovers do not give up their individual identities, there is no principled reason why the union view cannot make sense of the lover’s concern for her beloved for his sake. [ 4 ] Moreover, Friedman argues, once we construe union as federation, we can see that autonomy is not a zero-sum game; rather, love can both directly enhance the autonomy of each and promote the growth of various skills, like realistic and critical self-evaluation, that foster autonomy.

Nonetheless, this federation model is not without its problems—problems that affect other versions of the union view as well. For if the federation (or the “we”, as on Nozick’s view) is understood as a third entity, we need a clearer account than has been given of its ontological status and how it comes to be. Relevant here is the literature on shared intention and plural subjects. Gilbert (1989, 1996, 2000) has argued that we should take quite seriously the existence of a plural subject as an entity over and above its constituent members. Others, such as Tuomela (1984, 1995), Searle (1990), and Bratman (1999) are more cautious, treating such talk of “us” having an intention as metaphorical.

As this criticism of the union view indicates, many find caring about your beloved for her sake to be a part of what it is to love her. The robust concern view of love takes this to be the central and defining feature of love (cf. Taylor 1976; Newton-Smith 1989; Soble 1990, 1997; LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999; White 2001). As Taylor puts it:

To summarize: if x loves y then x wants to benefit and be with y etc., and he has these wants (or at least some of them) because he believes y has some determinate characteristics ψ in virtue of which he thinks it worth while to benefit and be with y . He regards satisfaction of these wants as an end and not as a means towards some other end. [p. 157]

In conceiving of my love for you as constituted by my concern for you for your sake, the robust concern view rejects the idea, central to the union view, that love is to be understood in terms of the (literal or metaphorical) creation of a “we”: I am the one who has this concern for you, though it is nonetheless disinterested and so not egoistic insofar as it is for your sake rather than for my own. [ 5 ]

At the heart of the robust concern view is the idea that love “is neither affective nor cognitive. It is volitional” (Frankfurt 1999, p. 129; see also Martin 2015). Frankfurt continues:

That a person cares about or that he loves something has less to do with how things make him feel, or with his opinions about them, than with the more or less stable motivational structures that shape his preferences and that guide and limit his conduct.

This account analyzes caring about someone for her sake as a matter of being motivated in certain ways, in part as a response to what happens to one’s beloved. Of course, to understand love in terms of desires is not to leave other emotional responses out in the cold, for these emotions should be understood as consequences of desires. Thus, just as I can be emotionally crushed when one of my strong desires is disappointed, so too I can be emotionally crushed when things similarly go badly for my beloved. In this way Frankfurt (1999) tacitly, and White (2001) more explicitly, acknowledge the way in which my caring for my beloved for her sake results in my identity being transformed through her influence insofar as I become vulnerable to things that happen to her.

Not all robust concern theorists seem to accept this line, however; in particular, Taylor (1976) and Soble (1990) seem to have a strongly individualistic conception of persons that prevents my identity being bound up with my beloved in this sort of way, a kind of view that may seem to undermine the intuitive “depth” that love seems to have. (For more on this point, see Rorty 1986/1993.) In the middle is Stump (2006), who follows Aquinas in understanding love to involve not only the desire for your beloved’s well-being but also a desire for a certain kind of relationship with your beloved—as a parent or spouse or sibling or priest or friend, for example—a relationship within which you share yourself with and connect yourself to your beloved. [ 6 ]

One source of worry about the robust concern view is that it involves too passive an understanding of one’s beloved (Ebels-Duggan 2008). The thought is that on the robust concern view the lover merely tries to discover what the beloved’s well-being consists in and then acts to promote that, potentially by thwarting the beloved’s own efforts when the lover thinks those efforts would harm her well-being. This, however, would be disrespectful and demeaning, not the sort of attitude that love is. What robust concern views seem to miss, Ebels-Duggan suggests, is the way love involves interacting agents, each with a capacity for autonomy the recognition and engagement with which is an essential part of love. In response, advocates of the robust concern view might point out that promoting someone’s well-being normally requires promoting her autonomy (though they may maintain that this need not always be true: that paternalism towards a beloved can sometimes be justified and appropriate as an expression of one’s love). Moreover, we might plausibly think, it is only through the exercise of one’s autonomy that one can define one’s own well-being as a person, so that a lover’s failure to respect the beloved’s autonomy would be a failure to promote her well-being and therefore not an expression of love, contrary to what Ebels-Duggan suggests. Consequently, it might seem, robust concern views can counter this objection by offering an enriched conception of what it is to be a person and so of the well-being of persons.

Another source of worry is that the robust concern view offers too thin a conception of love. By emphasizing robust concern, this view understands other features we think characteristic of love, such as one’s emotional responsiveness to one’s beloved, to be the effects of that concern rather than constituents of it. Thus Velleman (1999) argues that robust concern views, by understanding love merely as a matter of aiming at a particular end (viz., the welfare of one’s beloved), understand love to be merely conative. However, he claims, love can have nothing to do with desires, offering as a counterexample the possibility of loving a troublemaking relation whom you do not want to be with, whose well being you do not want to promote, etc. Similarly, Badhwar (2003) argues that such a “teleological” view of love makes it mysterious how “we can continue to love someone long after death has taken him beyond harm or benefit” (p. 46). Moreover Badhwar argues, if love is essentially a desire, then it implies that we lack something; yet love does not imply this and, indeed, can be felt most strongly at times when we feel our lives most complete and lacking in nothing. Consequently, Velleman and Badhwar conclude, love need not involve any desire or concern for the well-being of one’s beloved.

This conclusion, however, seems too hasty, for such examples can be accommodated within the robust concern view. Thus, the concern for your relative in Velleman’s example can be understood to be present but swamped by other, more powerful desires to avoid him. Indeed, keeping the idea that you want to some degree to benefit him, an idea Velleman rejects, seems to be essential to understanding the conceptual tension between loving someone and not wanting to help him, a tension Velleman does not fully acknowledge. Similarly, continued love for someone who has died can be understood on the robust concern view as parasitic on the former love you had for him when he was still alive: your desires to benefit him get transformed, through your subsequent understanding of the impossibility of doing so, into wishes. [ 7 ] Finally, the idea of concern for your beloved’s well-being need not imply the idea that you lack something, for such concern can be understood in terms of the disposition to be vigilant for occasions when you can come to his aid and consequently to have the relevant occurrent desires. All of this seems fully compatible with the robust concern view.

One might also question whether Velleman and Badhwar make proper use of their examples of loving your meddlesome relation or someone who has died. For although we can understand these as genuine cases of love, they are nonetheless deficient cases and ought therefore be understood as parasitic on the standard cases. Readily to accommodate such deficient cases of love into a philosophical analysis as being on a par with paradigm cases, and to do so without some special justification, is dubious.

Nonetheless, the robust concern view as it stands does not seem properly able to account for the intuitive “depth” of love and so does not seem properly to distinguish loving from liking. Although, as noted above, the robust concern view can begin to make some sense of the way in which the lover’s identity is altered by the beloved, it understands this only an effect of love, and not as a central part of what love consists in.

This vague thought is nicely developed by Wonderly (2017), who emphasizes that in addition to the sort of disinterested concern for another that is central to robust-concern accounts of love, an essential part of at least romantic love is the idea that in loving someone I must find them to be not merely important for their own sake but also important to me . Wonderly (2017) fleshes out what this “importance to me” involves in terms of the idea of attachment (developed in Wonderly 2016) that she argues can make sense of the intimacy and depth of love from within what remains fundamentally a robust-concern account. [ 8 ]

4. Love as Valuing

A third kind of view of love understands love to be a distinctive mode of valuing a person. As the distinction between eros and agape in Section 1 indicates, there are at least two ways to construe this in terms of whether the lover values the beloved because she is valuable, or whether the beloved comes to be valuable to the lover as a result of her loving him. The former view, which understands the lover as appraising the value of the beloved in loving him, is the topic of Section 4.1 , whereas the latter view, which understands her as bestowing value on him, will be discussed in Section 4.2 .

Velleman (1999, 2008) offers an appraisal view of love, understanding love to be fundamentally a matter of acknowledging and responding in a distinctive way to the value of the beloved. (For a very different appraisal view of love, see Kolodny 2003.) Understanding this more fully requires understanding both the kind of value of the beloved to which one responds and the distinctive kind of response to such value that love is. Nonetheless, it should be clear that what makes an account be an appraisal view of love is not the mere fact that love is understood to involve appraisal; many other accounts do so, and it is typical of robust concern accounts, for example (cf. the quote from Taylor above , Section 3 ). Rather, appraisal views are distinctive in understanding love to consist in that appraisal.

In articulating the kind of value love involves, Velleman, following Kant, distinguishes dignity from price. To have a price , as the economic metaphor suggests, is to have a value that can be compared to the value of other things with prices, such that it is intelligible to exchange without loss items of the same value. By contrast, to have dignity is to have a value such that comparisons of relative value become meaningless. Material goods are normally understood to have prices, but we persons have dignity: no substitution of one person for another can preserve exactly the same value, for something of incomparable worth would be lost (and gained) in such a substitution.

On this Kantian view, our dignity as persons consists in our rational nature: our capacity both to be actuated by reasons that we autonomously provide ourselves in setting our own ends and to respond appropriately to the intrinsic values we discover in the world. Consequently, one important way in which we exercise our rational natures is to respond with respect to the dignity of other persons (a dignity that consists in part in their capacity for respect): respect just is the required minimal response to the dignity of persons. What makes a response to a person be that of respect, Velleman claims, still following Kant, is that it “arrests our self-love” and thereby prevents us from treating him as a means to our ends (p. 360).

Given this, Velleman claims that love is similarly a response to the dignity of persons, and as such it is the dignity of the object of our love that justifies that love. However, love and respect are different kinds of responses to the same value. For love arrests not our self-love but rather

our tendencies toward emotional self-protection from another person, tendencies to draw ourselves in and close ourselves off from being affected by him. Love disarms our emotional defenses; it makes us vulnerable to the other. [1999, p. 361]

This means that the concern, attraction, sympathy, etc. that we normally associate with love are not constituents of love but are rather its normal effects, and love can remain without them (as in the case of the love for a meddlesome relative one cannot stand being around). Moreover, this provides Velleman with a clear account of the intuitive “depth” of love: it is essentially a response to persons as such, and to say that you love your dog is therefore to be confused.

Of course, we do not respond with love to the dignity of every person we meet, nor are we somehow required to: love, as the disarming of our emotional defenses in a way that makes us especially vulnerable to another, is the optional maximal response to others’ dignity. What, then, explains the selectivity of love—why I love some people and not others? The answer lies in the contingent fit between the way some people behaviorally express their dignity as persons and the way I happen to respond to those expressions by becoming emotionally vulnerable to them. The right sort of fit makes someone “lovable” by me (1999, p. 372), and my responding with love in these cases is a matter of my “really seeing” this person in a way that I fail to do with others who do not fit with me in this way. By ‘lovable’ here Velleman seems to mean able to be loved, not worthy of being loved, for nothing Velleman says here speaks to a question about the justification of my loving this person rather than that. Rather, what he offers is an explanation of the selectivity of my love, an explanation that as a matter of fact makes my response be that of love rather than mere respect.

This understanding of the selectivity of love as something that can be explained but not justified is potentially troubling. For we ordinarily think we can justify not only my loving you rather than someone else but also and more importantly the constancy of my love: my continuing to love you even as you change in certain fundamental ways (but not others). As Delaney (1996, p. 347) puts the worry about constancy:

while you seem to want it to be true that, were you to become a schmuck, your lover would continue to love you,…you also want it to be the case that your lover would never love a schmuck.

The issue here is not merely that we can offer explanations of the selectivity of my love, of why I do not love schmucks; rather, at issue is the discernment of love, of loving and continuing to love for good reasons as well as of ceasing to love for good reasons. To have these good reasons seems to involve attributing different values to you now rather than formerly or rather than to someone else, yet this is precisely what Velleman denies is the case in making the distinction between love and respect the way he does.

It is also questionable whether Velleman can even explain the selectivity of love in terms of the “fit” between your expressions and my sensitivities. For the relevant sensitivities on my part are emotional sensitivities: the lowering of my emotional defenses and so becoming emotionally vulnerable to you. Thus, I become vulnerable to the harms (or goods) that befall you and so sympathetically feel your pain (or joy). Such emotions are themselves assessable for warrant, and now we can ask why my disappointment that you lost the race is warranted, but my being disappointed that a mere stranger lost would not be warranted. The intuitive answer is that I love you but not him. However, this answer is unavailable to Velleman, because he thinks that what makes my response to your dignity that of love rather than respect is precisely that I feel such emotions, and to appeal to my love in explaining the emotions therefore seems viciously circular.

Although these problems are specific to Velleman’s account, the difficulty can be generalized to any appraisal account of love (such as that offered in Kolodny 2003). For if love is an appraisal, it needs to be distinguished from other forms of appraisal, including our evaluative judgments. On the one hand, to try to distinguish love as an appraisal from other appraisals in terms of love’s having certain effects on our emotional and motivational life (as on Velleman’s account) is unsatisfying because it ignores part of what needs to be explained: why the appraisal of love has these effects and yet judgments with the same evaluative content do not. Indeed, this question is crucial if we are to understand the intuitive “depth” of love, for without an answer to this question we do not understand why love should have the kind of centrality in our lives it manifestly does. [ 9 ] On the other hand, to bundle this emotional component into the appraisal itself would be to turn the view into either the robust concern view ( Section 3 ) or a variant of the emotion view ( Section 5.1 ).

In contrast to Velleman, Singer (1991, 1994, 2009) understands love to be fundamentally a matter of bestowing value on the beloved. To bestow value on another is to project a kind of intrinsic value onto him. Indeed, this fact about love is supposed to distinguish love from liking: “Love is an attitude with no clear objective,” whereas liking is inherently teleological (1991, p. 272). As such, there are no standards of correctness for bestowing such value, and this is how love differs from other personal attitudes like gratitude, generosity, and condescension: “love…confers importance no matter what the object is worth” (p. 273). Consequently, Singer thinks, love is not an attitude that can be justified in any way.

What is it, exactly, to bestow this kind of value on someone? It is, Singer says, a kind of attachment and commitment to the beloved, in which one comes to treat him as an end in himself and so to respond to his ends, interests, concerns, etc. as having value for their own sake. This means in part that the bestowal of value reveals itself “by caring about the needs and interests of the beloved, by wishing to benefit or protect her, by delighting in her achievements,” etc. (p. 270). This sounds very much like the robust concern view, yet the bestowal view differs in understanding such robust concern to be the effect of the bestowal of value that is love rather than itself what constitutes love: in bestowing value on my beloved, I make him be valuable in such a way that I ought to respond with robust concern.

For it to be intelligible that I have bestowed value on someone, I must therefore respond appropriately to him as valuable, and this requires having some sense of what his well-being is and of what affects that well-being positively or negatively. Yet having this sense requires in turn knowing what his strengths and deficiencies are, and this is a matter of appraising him in various ways. Bestowal thus presupposes a kind of appraisal, as a way of “really seeing” the beloved and attending to him. Nonetheless, Singer claims, it is the bestowal that is primary for understanding what love consists in: the appraisal is required only so that the commitment to one’s beloved and his value as thus bestowed has practical import and is not “a blind submission to some unknown being” (1991, p. 272; see also Singer 1994, pp. 139ff).

Singer is walking a tightrope in trying to make room for appraisal in his account of love. Insofar as the account is fundamentally a bestowal account, Singer claims that love cannot be justified, that we bestow the relevant kind of value “gratuitously.” This suggests that love is blind, that it does not matter what our beloved is like, which seems patently false. Singer tries to avoid this conclusion by appealing to the role of appraisal: it is only because we appraise another as having certain virtues and vices that we come to bestow value on him. Yet the “because” here, since it cannot justify the bestowal, is at best a kind of contingent causal explanation. [ 10 ] In this respect, Singer’s account of the selectivity of love is much the same as Velleman’s, and it is liable to the same criticism: it makes unintelligible the way in which our love can be discerning for better or worse reasons. Indeed, this failure to make sense of the idea that love can be justified is a problem for any bestowal view. For either (a) a bestowal itself cannot be justified (as on Singer’s account), in which case the justification of love is impossible, or (b) a bestowal can be justified, in which case it is hard to make sense of value as being bestowed rather than there antecedently in the object as the grounds of that “bestowal.”

More generally, a proponent of the bestowal view needs to be much clearer than Singer is in articulating precisely what a bestowal is. What is the value that I create in a bestowal, and how can my bestowal create it? On a crude Humean view, the answer might be that the value is something projected onto the world through my pro-attitudes, like desire. Yet such a view would be inadequate, since the projected value, being relative to a particular individual, would do no theoretical work, and the account would essentially be a variant of the robust concern view. Moreover, in providing a bestowal account of love, care is needed to distinguish love from other personal attitudes such as admiration and respect: do these other attitudes involve bestowal? If so, how does the bestowal in these cases differ from the bestowal of love? If not, why not, and what is so special about love that requires a fundamentally different evaluative attitude than admiration and respect?

Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in the bestowal view: there is surely something right about the idea that love is creative and not merely a response to antecedent value, and accounts of love that understand the kind of evaluation implicit in love merely in terms of appraisal seem to be missing something. Precisely what may be missed will be discussed below in Section 6 .

Perhaps there is room for an understanding of love and its relation to value that is intermediate between appraisal and bestowal accounts. After all, if we think of appraisal as something like perception, a matter of responding to what is out there in the world, and of bestowal as something like action, a matter of doing something and creating something, we should recognize that the responsiveness central to appraisal may itself depend on our active, creative choices. Thus, just as we must recognize that ordinary perception depends on our actively directing our attention and deploying concepts, interpretations, and even arguments in order to perceive things accurately, so too we might think our vision of our beloved’s valuable properties that is love also depends on our actively attending to and interpreting him. Something like this is Jollimore’s view (2011). According to Jollimore, in loving someone we actively attend to his valuable properties in a way that we take to provide us with reasons to treat him preferentially. Although we may acknowledge that others might have such properties even to a greater degree than our beloved does, we do not attend to and appreciate such properties in others in the same way we do those in our beloveds; indeed, we find our appreciation of our beloved’s valuable properties to “silence” our similar appreciation of those in others. (In this way, Jollimore thinks, we can solve the problem of fungibility, discussed below in Section 6 .) Likewise, in perceiving our beloved’s actions and character, we do so through the lens of such an appreciation, which will tend as to “silence” interpretations inconsistent with that appreciation. In this way, love involves finding one’s beloved to be valuable in a way that involves elements of both appraisal (insofar as one must thereby be responsive to valuable properties one’s beloved really has) and bestowal (insofar as through one’s attention and committed appreciation of these properties they come to have special significance for one).

One might object that this conception of love as silencing the special value of others or to negative interpretations of our beloveds is irrational in a way that love is not. For, it might seem, such “silencing” is merely a matter of our blinding ourselves to how things really are. Yet Jollimore claims that this sense in which love is blind is not objectionable, for (a) we can still intellectually recognize the things that love’s vision silences, and (b) there really is no impartial perspective we can take on the values things have, and love is one appropriate sort of partial perspective from which the value of persons can be manifest. Nonetheless, one might wonder about whether that perspective of love itself can be distorted and what the norms are in terms of which such distortions are intelligible. Furthermore, it may seem that Jollimore’s attempt to reconcile appraisal and bestowal fails to appreciate the underlying metaphysical difficulty: appraisal is a response to value that is antecedently there, whereas bestowal is the creation of value that was not antecedently there. Consequently, it might seem, appraisal and bestowal are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled in the way Jollimore hopes.

Whereas Jollimore tries to combine separate elements of appraisal and of bestowal in a single account, Helm (2010) and Bagley (2015) offer accounts that reject the metaphysical presupposition that values must be either prior to love (as with appraisal) or posterior to love (as with bestowal), instead understanding the love and the values to emerge simultaneously. Thus, Helm presents a detailed account of valuing in terms of the emotions, arguing that while we can understand individual emotions as appraisals , responding to values already their in their objects, these values are bestowed on those objects via broad, holistic patterns of emotions. How this amounts to an account of love will be discussed in Section 5.2 , below. Bagley (2015) instead appeals to a metaphor of improvisation, arguing that just as jazz musicians jointly make determinate the content of their musical ideas through on-going processes of their expression, so too lovers jointly engage in “deep improvisation”, thereby working out of their values and identities through the on-going process of living their lives together. These values are thus something the lovers jointly construct through the process of recognizing and responding to those very values. To love someone is thus to engage with them as partners in such “deep improvisation”. (This account is similar to Helm (2008, 2010)’s account of plural agency, which he uses to provide an account of friendship and other loving relationships; see the discussion of shared activity in the entry on friendship .)

5. Emotion Views

Given these problems with the accounts of love as valuing, perhaps we should turn to the emotions. For emotions just are responses to objects that combine evaluation, motivation, and a kind of phenomenology, all central features of the attitude of love.

Many accounts of love claim that it is an emotion; these include: Wollheim 1984, Rorty 1986/1993, Brown 1987, Hamlyn 1989, Baier 1991, and Badhwar 2003. [ 11 ] Thus, Hamlyn (1989, p. 219) says:

It would not be a plausible move to defend any theory of the emotions to which love and hate seemed exceptions by saying that love and hate are after all not emotions. I have heard this said, but it does seem to me a desperate move to make. If love and hate are not emotions what is?

The difficulty with this claim, as Rorty (1980) argues, is that the word, ‘emotion,’ does not seem to pick out a homogeneous collection of mental states, and so various theories claiming that love is an emotion mean very different things. Consequently, what are here labeled “emotion views” are divided into those that understand love to be a particular kind of evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object, whether that response is merely occurrent or dispositional (‘emotions proper,’ see Section 5.1 , below), and those that understand love to involve a collection of related and interconnected emotions proper (‘emotion complexes,’ see Section 5.2 , below).

An emotion proper is a kind of “evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object”; what does this mean? Emotions are generally understood to have several objects. The target of an emotion is that at which the emotion is directed: if I am afraid or angry at you, then you are the target. In responding to you with fear or anger, I am implicitly evaluating you in a particular way, and this evaluation—called the formal object —is the kind of evaluation of the target that is distinctive of a particular emotion type. Thus, in fearing you, I implicitly evaluate you as somehow dangerous, whereas in being angry at you I implicitly evaluate you as somehow offensive. Yet emotions are not merely evaluations of their targets; they in part motivate us to behave in certain ways, both rationally (by motivating action to avoid the danger) and arationally (via certain characteristic expressions, such as slamming a door out of anger). Moreover, emotions are generally understood to involve a phenomenological component, though just how to understand the characteristic “feel” of an emotion and its relation to the evaluation and motivation is hotly disputed. Finally, emotions are typically understood to be passions: responses that we feel imposed on us as if from the outside, rather than anything we actively do. (For more on the philosophy of emotions, see entry on emotion .)

What then are we saying when we say that love is an emotion proper? According to Brown (1987, p. 14), emotions as occurrent mental states are “abnormal bodily changes caused by the agent’s evaluation or appraisal of some object or situation that the agent believes to be of concern to him or her.” He spells this out by saying that in love, we “cherish” the person for having “a particular complex of instantiated qualities” that is “open-ended” so that we can continue to love the person even as she changes over time (pp. 106–7). These qualities, which include historical and relational qualities, are evaluated in love as worthwhile. [ 12 ] All of this seems aimed at spelling out what love’s formal object is, a task that is fundamental to understanding love as an emotion proper. Thus, Brown seems to say that love’s formal object is just being worthwhile (or, given his examples, perhaps: worthwhile as a person), and he resists being any more specific than this in order to preserve the open-endedness of love. Hamlyn (1989) offers a similar account, saying (p. 228):

With love the difficulty is to find anything of this kind [i.e., a formal object] which is uniquely appropriate to love. My thesis is that there is nothing of this kind that must be so, and that this differentiates it and hate from the other emotions.

Hamlyn goes on to suggest that love and hate might be primordial emotions, a kind of positive or negative “feeling towards,” presupposed by all other emotions. [ 13 ]

The trouble with these accounts of love as an emotion proper is that they provide too thin a conception of love. In Hamlyn’s case, love is conceived as a fairly generic pro-attitude, rather than as the specific kind of distinctively personal attitude discussed here. In Brown’s case, spelling out the formal object of love as simply being worthwhile (as a person) fails to distinguish love from other evaluative responses like admiration and respect. Part of the problem seems to be the rather simple account of what an emotion is that Brown and Hamlyn use as their starting point: if love is an emotion, then the understanding of what an emotion is must be enriched considerably to accommodate love. Yet it is not at all clear whether the idea of an “emotion proper” can be adequately enriched so as to do so. As Pismenny & Prinz (2017) point out, love seems to be too varied both in its ground and in the sort of experience it involves to be capturable by a single emotion.

The emotion complex view, which understands love to be a complex emotional attitude towards another person, may initially seem to hold out great promise to overcome the problems of alternative types of views. By articulating the emotional interconnections between persons, it could offer a satisfying account of the “depth” of love without the excesses of the union view and without the overly narrow teleological focus of the robust concern view; and because these emotional interconnections are themselves evaluations, it could offer an understanding of love as simultaneously evaluative, without needing to specify a single formal object of love. However, the devil is in the details.

Rorty (1986/1993) does not try to present a complete account of love; rather, she focuses on the idea that “relational psychological attitudes” which, like love, essentially involve emotional and desiderative responses, exhibit historicity : “they arise from, and are shaped by, dynamic interactions between a subject and an object” (p. 73). In part this means that what makes an attitude be one of love is not the presence of a state that we can point to at a particular time within the lover; rather, love is to be “identified by a characteristic narrative history” (p. 75). Moreover, Rorty argues, the historicity of love involves the lover’s being permanently transformed by loving who he does.

Baier (1991), seeming to pick up on this understanding of love as exhibiting historicity, says (p. 444):

Love is not just an emotion people feel toward other people, but also a complex tying together of the emotions that two or a few more people have; it is a special form of emotional interdependence.

To a certain extent, such emotional interdependence involves feeling sympathetic emotions, so that, for example, I feel disappointed and frustrated on behalf of my beloved when she fails, and joyful when she succeeds. However, Baier insists, love is “more than just the duplication of the emotion of each in a sympathetic echo in the other” (p. 442); the emotional interdependence of the lovers involves also appropriate follow-up responses to the emotional predicaments of your beloved. Two examples Baier gives (pp. 443–44) are a feeling of “mischievous delight” at your beloved’s temporary bafflement, and amusement at her embarrassment. The idea is that in a loving relationship your beloved gives you permission to feel such emotions when no one else is permitted to do so, and a condition of her granting you that permission is that you feel these emotions “tenderly.” Moreover, you ought to respond emotionally to your beloved’s emotional responses to you: by feeling hurt when she is indifferent to you, for example. All of these foster the sort of emotional interdependence Baier is after—a kind of intimacy you have with your beloved.

Badhwar (2003, p. 46) similarly understands love to be a matter of “one’s overall emotional orientation towards a person—the complex of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings”; as such, love is a matter of having a certain “character structure.” Central to this complex emotional orientation, Badhwar thinks, is what she calls the “look of love”: “an ongoing [emotional] affirmation of the loved object as worthy of existence…for her own sake” (p. 44), an affirmation that involves taking pleasure in your beloved’s well-being. Moreover, Badhwar claims, the look of love also provides to the beloved reliable testimony concerning the quality of the beloved’s character and actions (p. 57).

There is surely something very right about the idea that love, as an attitude central to deeply personal relationships, should not be understood as a state that can simply come and go. Rather, as the emotion complex view insists, the complexity of love is to be found in the historical patterns of one’s emotional responsiveness to one’s beloved—a pattern that also projects into the future. Indeed, as suggested above, the kind of emotional interdependence that results from this complex pattern can seem to account for the intuitive “depth” of love as fully interwoven into one’s emotional sense of oneself. And it seems to make some headway in understanding the complex phenomenology of love: love can at times be a matter of intense pleasure in the presence of one’s beloved, yet it can at other times involve frustration, exasperation, anger, and hurt as a manifestation of the complexities and depth of the relationships it fosters.

This understanding of love as constituted by a history of emotional interdependence enables emotion complex views to say something interesting about the impact love has on the lover’s identity. This is partly Rorty’s point (1986/1993) in her discussion of the historicity of love ( above ). Thus, she argues, one important feature of such historicity is that love is “ dynamically permeable ” in that the lover is continually “changed by loving” such that these changes “tend to ramify through a person’s character” (p. 77). Through such dynamic permeability, love transforms the identity of the lover in a way that can sometimes foster the continuity of the love, as each lover continually changes in response to the changes in the other. [ 14 ] Indeed, Rorty concludes, love should be understood in terms of “a characteristic narrative history” (p. 75) that results from such dynamic permeability. It should be clear, however, that the mere fact of dynamic permeability need not result in the love’s continuing: nothing about the dynamics of a relationship requires that the characteristic narrative history project into the future, and such permeability can therefore lead to the dissolution of the love. Love is therefore risky—indeed, all the more risky because of the way the identity of the lover is defined in part through the love. The loss of a love can therefore make one feel no longer oneself in ways poignantly described by Nussbaum (1990).

By focusing on such emotionally complex histories, emotion complex views differ from most alternative accounts of love. For alternative accounts tend to view love as a kind of attitude we take toward our beloveds, something we can analyze simply in terms of our mental state at the moment. [ 15 ] By ignoring this historical dimension of love in providing an account of what love is, alternative accounts have a hard time providing either satisfying accounts of the sense in which our identities as person are at stake in loving another or satisfactory solutions to problems concerning how love is to be justified (cf. Section 6 , especially the discussion of fungibility ).

Nonetheless, some questions remain. If love is to be understood as an emotion complex, we need a much more explicit account of the pattern at issue here: what ties all of these emotional responses together into a single thing, namely love? Baier and Badhwar seem content to provide interesting and insightful examples of this pattern, but that does not seem to be enough. For example, what connects my amusement at my beloved’s embarrassment to other emotions like my joy on his behalf when he succeeds? Why shouldn’t my amusement at his embarrassment be understood instead as a somewhat cruel case of schadenfreude and so as antithetical to, and disconnected from, love? Moreover, as Naar (2013) notes, we need a principled account of when such historical patterns are disrupted in such a way as to end the love and when they are not. Do I stop loving when, in the midst of clinical depression, I lose my normal pattern of emotional concern?

Presumably the answer requires returning to the historicity of love: it all depends on the historical details of the relationship my beloved and I have forged. Some loves develop so that the intimacy within the relationship is such as to allow for tender, teasing responses to each other, whereas other loves may not. The historical details, together with the lovers’ understanding of their relationship, presumably determine which emotional responses belong to the pattern constitutive of love and which do not. However, this answer so far is inadequate: not just any historical relationship involving emotional interdependence is a loving relationship, and we need a principled way of distinguishing loving relationships from other relational evaluative attitudes: precisely what is the characteristic narrative history that is characteristic of love?

Helm (2009, 2010) tries to answer some of these questions in presenting an account of love as intimate identification. To love another, Helm claims, is to care about him as the particular person he is and so, other things being equal, to value the things he values. Insofar as a person’s (structured) set of values—his sense of the kind of life worth his living—constitutes his identity as a person, such sharing of values amounts to sharing his identity, which sounds very much like union accounts of love. However, Helm is careful to understand such sharing of values as for the sake of the beloved (as robust concern accounts insist), and he spells this all out in terms of patterns of emotions. Thus, Helm claims, all emotions have not only a target and a formal object (as indicated above), but also a focus : a background object the subject cares about in terms of which the implicit evaluation of the target is made intelligible. (For example, if I am afraid of the approaching hailstorm, I thereby evaluate it as dangerous, and what explains this evaluation is the way that hailstorm bears on my vegetable garden, which I care about; my garden, therefore, is the focus of my fear.) Moreover, emotions normally come in patterns with a common focus: fearing the hailstorm is normally connected to other emotions as being relieved when it passes by harmlessly (or disappointed or sad when it does not), being angry at the rabbits for killing the spinach, delighted at the productivity of the tomato plants, etc. Helm argues that a projectible pattern of such emotions with a common focus constitute caring about that focus. Consequently, we might say along the lines of Section 4.3 , while particular emotions appraise events in the world as having certain evaluative properties, their having these properties is partly bestowed on them by the overall patterns of emotions.

Helm identifies some emotions as person-focused emotions : emotions like pride and shame that essentially take persons as their focuses, for these emotions implicitly evaluate in terms of the target’s bearing on the quality of life of the person that is their focus. To exhibit a pattern of such emotions focused on oneself and subfocused on being a mother, for example, is to care about the place being a mother has in the kind of life you find worth living—in your identity as a person; to care in this way is to value being a mother as a part of your concern for your own identity. Likewise, to exhibit a projectible pattern of such emotions focused on someone else and subfocused on his being a father is to value this as a part of your concern for his identity—to value it for his sake. Such sharing of another’s values for his sake, which, Helm argues, essentially involves trust, respect, and affection, amounts to intimate identification with him, and such intimate identification just is love. Thus, Helm tries to provide an account of love that is grounded in an explicit account of caring (and caring about something for the sake of someone else) that makes room for the intuitive “depth” of love through intimate identification.

Jaworska & Wonderly (2017) argue that Helm’s construal of intimacy as intimate identification is too demanding. Rather, they argue, the sort of intimacy that distinguishes love from mere caring is one that involves a kind of emotional vulnerability in which things going well or poorly for one’s beloved are directly connected not merely to one’s well-being, but to one’s ability to flourish. This connection, they argue, runs through the lover’s self-understanding and the place the beloved has in the lover’s sense of a meaningful life.

Why do we love? It has been suggested above that any account of love needs to be able to answer some such justificatory question. Although the issue of the justification of love is important on its own, it is also important for the implications it has for understanding more clearly the precise object of love: how can we make sense of the intuitions not only that we love the individuals themselves rather than their properties, but also that my beloved is not fungible—that no one could simply take her place without loss. Different theories approach these questions in different ways, but, as will become clear below, the question of justification is primary.

One way to understand the question of why we love is as asking for what the value of love is: what do we get out of it? One kind of answer, which has its roots in Aristotle, is that having loving relationships promotes self-knowledge insofar as your beloved acts as a kind of mirror, reflecting your character back to you (Badhwar, 2003, p. 58). Of course, this answer presupposes that we cannot accurately know ourselves in other ways: that left alone, our sense of ourselves will be too imperfect, too biased, to help us grow and mature as persons. The metaphor of a mirror also suggests that our beloveds will be in the relevant respects similar to us, so that merely by observing them, we can come to know ourselves better in a way that is, if not free from bias, at least more objective than otherwise.

Brink (1999, pp. 264–65) argues that there are serious limits to the value of such mirroring of one’s self in a beloved. For if the aim is not just to know yourself better but to improve yourself, you ought also to interact with others who are not just like yourself: interacting with such diverse others can help you recognize alternative possibilities for how to live and so better assess the relative merits of these possibilities. Whiting (2013) also emphasizes the importance of our beloveds’ having an independent voice capable of reflecting not who one now is but an ideal for who one is to be. Nonetheless, we need not take the metaphor of the mirror quite so literally; rather, our beloveds can reflect our selves not through their inherent similarity to us but rather through the interpretations they offer of us, both explicitly and implicitly in their responses to us. This is what Badhwar calls the “epistemic significance” of love. [ 16 ]

In addition to this epistemic significance of love, LaFollette (1996, Chapter 5) offers several other reasons why it is good to love, reasons derived in part from the psychological literature on love: love increases our sense of well-being, it elevates our sense of self-worth, and it serves to develop our character. It also, we might add, tends to lower stress and blood pressure and to increase health and longevity. Friedman (1993) argues that the kind of partiality towards our beloveds that love involves is itself morally valuable because it supports relationships—loving relationships—that contribute “to human well-being, integrity, and fulfillment in life” (p. 61). And Solomon (1988, p. 155) claims:

Ultimately, there is only one reason for love. That one grand reason…is “because we bring out the best in each other.” What counts as “the best,” of course, is subject to much individual variation.

This is because, Solomon suggests, in loving someone, I want myself to be better so as to be worthy of his love for me.

Each of these answers to the question of why we love understands it to be asking about love quite generally, abstracted away from details of particular relationships. It is also possible to understand the question as asking about particular loves. Here, there are several questions that are relevant:

• What, if anything, justifies my loving rather than not loving this particular person?
• What, if anything, justifies my coming to love this particular person rather than someone else?
• What, if anything, justifies my continuing to love this particular person given the changes—both in him and me and in the overall circumstances—that have occurred since I began loving him?

These are importantly different questions. Velleman (1999), for example, thinks we can answer (1) by appealing to the fact that my beloved is a person and so has a rational nature, yet he thinks (2) and (3) have no answers: the best we can do is offer causal explanations for our loving particular people, a position echoed by Han (2021). Setiya (2014) similarly thinks (1) has an answer, but points not to the rational nature of persons but rather to the other’s humanity , where such humanity differs from personhood in that not all humans need have the requisite rational nature for personhood, and not all persons need be humans. And, as will become clear below , the distinction between (2) and (3) will become important in resolving puzzles concerning whether our beloveds are fungible, though it should be clear that (3) potentially raises questions concerning personal identity (which will not be addressed here).

It is important not to misconstrue these justificatory questions. Thomas (1991) , for example, rejects the idea that love can be justified: “there are no rational considerations whereby anyone can lay claim to another’s love or insist that an individual’s love for another is irrational” (p. 474). This is because, Thomas claims (p. 471):

no matter how wonderful and lovely an individual might be, on any and all accounts, it is simply false that a romantically unencumbered person must love that individual on pain of being irrational. Or, there is no irrationality involved in ceasing to love a person whom one once loved immensely, although the person has not changed.

However, as LaFollette (1996, p. 63) correctly points out,

reason is not some external power which dictates how we should behave, but an internal power, integral to who we are.… Reason does not command that we love anyone. Nonetheless, reason is vital in determining whom we love and why we love them.

That is, reasons for love are pro tanto : they are a part of the overall reasons we have for acting, and it is up to us in exercising our capacity for agency to decide what on balance we have reason to do or even whether we shall act contrary to our reasons. To construe the notion of a reason for love as compelling us to love, as Thomas does, is to misconstrue the place such reasons have within our agency. [ 17 ]

Most philosophical discussions of the justification of love focus on question (1) , thinking that answering this question will also, to the extent that we can, answer question (2) , which is typically not distinguished from (3) . The answers given to these questions vary in a way that turns on how the kind of evaluation implicit in love is construed. On the one hand, those who understand the evaluation implicit in love to be a matter of the bestowal of value (such as Telfer 1970–71; Friedman 1993; Singer 1994) typically claim that no justification can be given (cf. Section 4.2 ). As indicated above, this seems problematic, especially given the importance love can have both in our lives and, especially, in shaping our identities as persons. To reject the idea that we can love for reasons may reduce the impact our agency can have in defining who we are.

On the other hand, those who understand the evaluation implicit in love to be a matter of appraisal tend to answer the justificatory question by appeal to these valuable properties of the beloved. This acceptance of the idea that love can be justified leads to two further, related worries about the object of love.

The first worry is raised by Vlastos (1981) in a discussion Plato’s and Aristotle’s accounts of love. Vlastos notes that these accounts focus on the properties of our beloveds: we are to love people, they say, only because and insofar as they are objectifications of the excellences. Consequently, he argues, in doing so they fail to distinguish “ disinterested affection for the person we love” from “ appreciation of the excellences instantiated by that person ” (p. 33). That is, Vlastos thinks that Plato and Aristotle provide an account of love that is really a love of properties rather than a love of persons—love of a type of person, rather than love of a particular person—thereby losing what is distinctive about love as an essentially personal attitude. This worry about Plato and Aristotle might seem to apply just as well to other accounts that justify love in terms of the properties of the person: insofar as we love the person for the sake of her properties, it might seem that what we love is those properties and not the person. Here it is surely insufficient to say, as Solomon (1988, p. 154) does, “if love has its reasons, then it is not the whole person that one loves but certain aspects of that person—though the rest of the person comes along too, of course”: that final tagline fails to address the central difficulty about what the object of love is and so about love as a distinctly personal attitude. (Clausen 2019 might seem to address this worry by arguing that we love people not as having certain properties but rather as having “ organic unities ”: a holistic set of properties the value of each of which must be understood in essential part in terms of its place within that whole. Nonetheless, while this is an interesting and plausible way to think about the value of the properties of persons, that organic unity itself will be a (holistic) property held by the person, and it seems that the fundamental problem reemerges at the level of this holistic property: do we love the holistic unity rather than the person?)

The second worry concerns the fungibility of the object of love. To be fungible is to be replaceable by another relevantly similar object without any loss of value. Thus, money is fungible: I can give you two $5 bills in exchange for a $10 bill, and neither of us has lost anything. Is the object of love fungible? That is, can I simply switch from loving one person to loving another relevantly similar person without any loss? The worry about fungibility is commonly put this way: if we accept that love can be justified by appealing to properties of the beloved, then it may seem that in loving someone for certain reasons, I love him not simply as the individual he is, but as instantiating those properties. And this may imply that any other person instantiating those same properties would do just as well: my beloved would be fungible. Indeed, it may be that another person exhibits the properties that ground my love to a greater degree than my current beloved does, and so it may seem that in such a case I have reason to “trade up”—to switch my love to the new, better person. However, it seems clear that the objects of our loves are not fungible: love seems to involve a deeply personal commitment to a particular person, a commitment that is antithetical to the idea that our beloveds are fungible or to the idea that we ought to be willing to trade up when possible. [ 18 ]

In responding to these worries, Nozick (1989) appeals to the union view of love he endorses (see the section on Love as Union ):

The intention in love is to form a we and to identify with it as an extended self, to identify one’s fortunes in large part with its fortunes. A willingness to trade up, to destroy the very we you largely identify with, would then be a willingness to destroy your self in the form of your own extended self. [p. 78]

So it is because love involves forming a “we” that we must understand other persons and not properties to be the objects of love, and it is because my very identity as a person depends essentially on that “we” that it is not possible to substitute without loss one object of my love for another. However, Badhwar (2003) criticizes Nozick, saying that his response implies that once I love someone, I cannot abandon that love no matter who that person becomes; this, she says, “cannot be understood as love at all rather than addiction” (p. 61). [ 19 ]

Instead, Badhwar (1987) turns to her robust-concern account of love as a concern for the beloved for his sake rather than one’s own. Insofar as my love is disinterested — not a means to antecedent ends of my own—it would be senseless to think that my beloved could be replaced by someone who is able to satisfy my ends equally well or better. Consequently, my beloved is in this way irreplaceable. However, this is only a partial response to the worry about fungibility, as Badhwar herself seems to acknowledge. For the concern over fungibility arises not merely for those cases in which we think of love as justified instrumentally, but also for those cases in which the love is justified by the intrinsic value of the properties of my beloved. Confronted with cases like this, Badhwar (2003) concludes that the object of love is fungible after all (though she insists that it is very unlikely in practice). (Soble (1990, Chapter 13) draws similar conclusions.)

Nonetheless, Badhwar thinks that the object of love is “phenomenologically non-fungible” (2003, p. 63; see also 1987, p. 14). By this she means that we experience our beloveds to be irreplaceable: “loving and delighting in [one person] are not completely commensurate with loving and delighting in another” (1987, p. 14). Love can be such that we sometimes desire to be with this particular person whom we love, not another whom we also love, for our loves are qualitatively different. But why is this? It seems as though the typical reason I now want to spend time with Amy rather than Bob is, for example, that Amy is funny but Bob is not. I love Amy in part for her humor, and I love Bob for other reasons, and these qualitative differences between them is what makes them not fungible. However, this reply does not address the worry about the possibility of trading up: if Bob were to be at least as funny (charming, kind, etc.) as Amy, why shouldn’t I dump her and spend all my time with him?

A somewhat different approach is taken by Whiting (1991). In response to the first worry concerning the object of love, Whiting argues that Vlastos offers a false dichotomy: having affection for someone that is disinterested —for her sake rather than my own—essentially involves an appreciation of her excellences as such. Indeed, Whiting says, my appreciation of these as excellences, and so the underlying commitment I have to their value, just is a disinterested commitment to her because these excellences constitute her identity as the person she is. The person, therefore, really is the object of love. Delaney (1996) takes the complementary tack of distinguishing between the object of one’s love, which of course is the person, and the grounds of the love, which are her properties: to say, as Solomon does, that we love someone for reasons is not at all to say that we only love certain aspects of the person. In these terms, we might say that Whiting’s rejection of Vlastos’ dichotomy can be read as saying that what makes my attitude be one of disinterested affection—one of love—for the person is precisely that I am thereby responding to her excellences as the reasons for that affection. [ 20 ]

Of course, more needs to be said about what it is that makes a particular person be the object of love. Implicit in Whiting’s account is an understanding of the way in which the object of my love is determined in part by the history of interactions I have with her: it is she, and not merely her properties (which might be instantiated in many different people), that I want to be with; it is she, and not merely her properties, on whose behalf I am concerned when she suffers and whom I seek to comfort; etc. This addresses the first worry, but not the second worry about fungibility, for the question still remains whether she is the object of my love only as instantiating certain properties, and so whether or not I have reason to “trade up.”

To respond to the fungibility worry, Whiting and Delaney appeal explicitly to the historical relationship. [ 21 ] Thus, Whiting claims, although there may be a relatively large pool of people who have the kind of excellences of character that would justify my loving them, and so although there can be no answer to question (2) about why I come to love this rather than that person within this pool, once I have come to love this person and so have developed a historical relation with her, this history of concern justifies my continuing to love this person rather than someone else (1991, p. 7). Similarly, Delaney claims that love is grounded in “historical-relational properties” (1996, p. 346), so that I have reasons for continuing to love this person rather than switching allegiances and loving someone else. In each case, the appeal to both such historical relations and the excellences of character of my beloved is intended to provide an answer to question (3) , and this explains why the objects of love are not fungible.

There seems to be something very much right with this response. Relationships grounded in love are essentially personal, and it would be odd to think of what justifies that love to be merely non-relational properties of the beloved. Nonetheless, it is still unclear how the historical-relational propreties can provide any additional justification for subsequent concern beyond that which is already provided (as an answer to question (1) ) by appeal to the excellences of the beloved’s character (cf. Brink 1999). The mere fact that I have loved someone in the past does not seem to justify my continuing to love him in the future. When we imagine that he is going through a rough time and begins to lose the virtues justifying my initial love for him, why shouldn’t I dump him and instead come to love someone new having all of those virtues more fully? Intuitively (unless the change she undergoes makes her in some important sense no longer the same person he was), we think I should not dump him, but the appeal to the mere fact that I loved him in the past is surely not enough. Yet what historical-relational properties could do the trick? (For an interesting attempt at an answer, see Kolodny 2003 and also Howard 2019.)

If we think that love can be justified, then it may seem that the appeal to particular historical facts about a loving relationship to justify that love is inadequate, for such idiosyncratic and subjective properties might explain but cannot justify love. Rather, it may seem, justification in general requires appealing to universal, objective properties. But such properties are ones that others might share, which leads to the problem of fungibility. Consequently it may seem that love cannot be justified. In the face of this predicament, accounts of love that understand love to be an attitude towards value that is intermediate between appraisal and bestowal, between recognizing already existing value and creating that value (see Section 4.3 ) might seem to offer a way out. For once we reject the thought that the value of our beloveds must be either the precondition or the consequence of our love, we have room to acknowledge that the deeply personal, historically grounded, creative nature of love (central to bestowal accounts) and the understanding of love as responsive to valuable properties of the beloved that can justify that love (central to appraisal accounts) are not mutually exclusive (Helm 2010; Bagley 2015).

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• Aristotle , Nicomachean Ethics , translated by W.D. Ross.
• Moseley, A., “ Philosophy of Love ,” in J. Fieser (ed.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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• Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance

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• Edited by Carl Séan O'Brien , Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany , John Dillon , Trinity College Dublin
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Book description

Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between higher and lower forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition.

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Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance pp i-ii

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Platonic Love from Antiquity to the Renaissance - Title page pp iii-iii

Copyright page pp iv-iv, contents pp v-vi, acknowledgements pp vii-vii, notes on contributors pp viii-xii, introduction pp 1-12.

• Platonic Love
• By Carl Séan O’Brien , John Dillon

Part I - Love in Plato pp 13-80

Chapter 1 - plato on love pp 15-31.

• By Vasilis Politis

Chapter 2 - The Selfishness of Platonic Love? pp 32-48

• By Carl Séan O’Brien

Chapter 3 - Love and Rhetoric as Types of Psychagōgia pp 49-63

• By Marina McCoy

Chapter 4 - Plato on the Love of Wisdom pp 64-80

• By Elizabeth S. Belfiore

Part II - Development of Platonic Love in Antiquity pp 81-150

Chapter 5 - plutarch pp 83-110.

• Expanding the Horizons of Platonic Love
• By Frederick E. Brenk

Chapter 6 - Love in Plotinus’ Thought pp 111-124

• By Dominic J. O’Meara

Chapter 7 - A Platonist ‘Ars Amatoria’ pp 125-132

• By John Dillon

Chapter 8 - Desire and Love in Augustine pp 133-150

• By Jan-Ivar Lindén

Part III - Love and Metaphysics during the Middle Ages pp 151-198

Chapter 9 - divine love and platonic beauty in dionysius the areopagite pp 153-170.

• By Andrew Louth

Chapter 10 - Love in the Thought of John Scotus Eriugena pp 171-183

• By Max Rohstock

Chapter 11 - Thomas Aquinas on the Connatural, the Supernatural, Love and Charity pp 184-198

• By Kevin L. Flannery S. J.

Part IV - Platonic Love during the Renaissance pp 199-288

Chapter 12 - human and divine love in marsilio ficino pp 201-210.

• By Paul Richard Blum

Chapter 13 - Marsilio Ficino and Leone Ebreo on Beauty pp 211-221

• By Maryanne Cline Horowitz

Chapter 14 - Pico della Mirandola on Platonic Love pp 222-237

Chapter 15 - the contra-amorem tradition in the renaissance pp 238-257.

• By W. R. Albury

Chapter 16 - Castiglione and Platonic Love pp 258-274

• By Reinier Leushuis

Chapter 17 - Platonic Love in Renaissance Discussions of Friendship pp 275-288

• By Marc D. Schachter

Bibliography pp 289-312

Subject index pp 313-318, altmetric attention score, full text views.

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Platonic Love

1976, Facets of Plato's Philosophy

Related Papers

Appeared in D.D. Butorac and D.A. Layne (ed.), Proclus and his Legacy, De Gruyter ('Millennium Studies' series, vol.65), Berlin-Boston, 2017, pp.45-52.

Dimitrios A . Vasilakis

Selected Papers from the Tenth Symposium Platonicum, Academia Verlag

Mehmet M Erginel

At the heart of Plato’s theory of erōs is the ‘ascent’ of love for an individual body, through several stages, to love of Beauty itself (Symposium 210a-212b). I argue that our understanding of the psychology of this transformation would benefit especially from bringing in Plato’s views on pain from the Republic. For erōs is presented in the Symposium as including sexual desire (207b) as well as love of wisdom (210d), but the Republic takes the former to be a painful desire, whereas the latter is apparently treated as painless. The ‘ascent’ of love, then, seems to involve the transformation of a painful desire into a painless one. I conclude that this transformation is best understood as a rechanneling of desire within the tripartite soul.

Emotions in Plato, Joint Workshop, Université Nanterre, Paris

Mariangela Esposito

Love - Ancient Perspectives

In his classic paper on "The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato" Gregory Vlastos denied that according to Plato's Diotima in the Symposium a human individual can ever be the proper object of one's erotic desire, because what one (should) be enamoured with is the Form of Beauty. For the true Platonic lover, the beauty of an individual is only the starting-point for one to understand that beauty can reside also in more abstract levels. Hence, Vlastos argues that the beloved individual is for his lover only a means to an end, so that the lover recollects and attains to true Beauty, and that this is morally objectionable. The systematic Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus (412-485 AD) had already given an answer to this accusation. I will first present the altruistic side of Eros as an ontological entity in Proclus's metaphysical system. My guide in this will be Socrates, as well as the Platonic Demiurge from the Timaeus and Republic's philosopher-king. It will be shown that, according to Proclus's interpretation of various Platonic texts, Vlastos was wrong to accuse Plato of the abovementioned "instrumentality" on the erotic field. However, my paper will close with a critical engagement with Proclus too, since I discern that in his view of Platonic love another sort of instrumentality, one which is akin to Stoic ethics, arises. Vlastos was wrong, but we do not need to be wholeheartedly sympathetic to Proclus.

Daniel Boyarin

Alexander Nehamas

Anthony Hooper

Fierro, María Angélica, “Loving and lovable bodies in Plato´s Symposium”, XI Symposium Platonicum: The “Symposium”. Proceedings II, International Plato Society – Universidad de Pisa, Departamento de Filología, Literatura y Lingüística, Pisa, Italia, 2013: 258-262.

Maria Angelica Fierro

The Heythrop Journal

T. Brian Mooney

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• Exploring the Beauty of Platonic Love Through Poetry

Love, in all its forms, has been a common theme in poetry for centuries. While romantic love often takes center stage, the profound beauty of platonic love deserves its own spotlight. Platonic love, characterized by deep affection and a strong bond between individuals with no romantic or sexual involvement, is a powerful and enduring connection. In this article, we will delve into the world of poetry that celebrates the essence of platonic love.

1. "To My Best Friend" by Lang Leav

2. "friendship" by henry david thoreau, 3. "a dedication to my mother" by alice meynell.

"To My Best Friend" by Lang Leav masterfully captures the essence of platonic love. Leav intertwines the emotions of friendship and love, highlighting the depth and significance of these connections. The poem paints a vivid picture of the profound impact a best friend can have on one's life, emphasizing the unwavering support and understanding they provide.

"You have always been there for me, Through the laughter and the tears, The good times and the bad, You have been my constant, My rock, my best friend."

Henry David Thoreau's poem "Friendship" delves into the complexities of platonic love, emphasizing the importance of genuine connections. Thoreau beautifully expresses the power of true friendship, emphasizing the need for authenticity and vulnerability in these relationships. The poem reminds us that platonic love can be a source of strength and solace in times of need.

"I value more the presence of a sincere friend than wealth and luxury's empty show, And—oh! by what a thousand tender ties Our hearts are bound, how dear, dear friends we grow!"

While platonic love is often associated with friendships, it can also encompass the profound bond between a child and their mother. In "A Dedication to My Mother" by Alice Meynell, the poet pays tribute to the unwavering love and support of a mother. This touching poem beautifully captures the essence of platonic love between a child and their caregiver.

"And love, I know, is long, And, knowing, long endureth. Each hour is strong to keep. And yet I know not how Thou hast such strength to go So far, so far, from me, Thy child, thy love most dear."

Poetry has the remarkable ability to capture the essence of complex emotions, including the pure and profound love found in platonic relationships. Whether it's the bond between best friends, the strength of genuine connections, or the love between a parent and child, these poems beautifully celebrate the beauty and significance of platonic love. Through the power of words, these poets remind us of the invaluable role these relationships play in our lives, filling our hearts with joy, support, and understanding.

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Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Plato — The Construction of Platonic Love and Affection Concepts

The Construction of Platonic Love and Affection Concepts

• Categories: Plato Symposium

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What is platonic love 16 signs & how it relates to friendship.

Not every profound relationship we encounter in our lives will necessarily be romantic. Love can take many forms, one of which is platonic love.

Platonic love gets much less attention when it comes to discussing the most important connections of our lives, but these platonic relationships are arguably some of the most meaningful.

What is platonic love?

Platonic love is a type of love that is distinctly nonsexual and nonromantic while still being deep, close, and meaningful. Beyond a simple friendship, platonic love describes a bond that's defined by heartfelt connection, intimacy, and care.

The term platonic references the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, whose work theorized about the nature of love and its highest forms. Plato's work conceptualized the most enlightened types of love as transcending beyond the body in favor of love for the soul and the love of wisdom. Because of this, the idea of platonic love became associated with having a strong, emotionally intimate connection that goes beyond sexuality and romance.

Today, the term platonic is often used to describe the absence of sex and romance in any relationship. The relationships between parent and child, mentor and student, professional colleagues, and friends can all be described as platonic relationships.

"Platonic love can be part of platonic relationships and is often sensed as a deeper layer of caring and connection," somatic psychologist and sex therapist Holly Richmond, Ph.D., LMFT, CST , tells mbg. "In essence, people feel love for each other without a foundation of sexual interest."

Platonic love vs. romantic love

Romantic love is the love between romantic partners, which involves a mix of passion, sexual attraction, attachment, and commitment. Platonic love takes the sex and romance out of the equation, while still involving similar levels of closeness, commitment, and care. Importantly, platonic love is not a "lesser" form of love than romantic love.

Psychologist and friendship expert Marisa G. Franco, Ph.D. , beautifully describes the relationship between the two in her New York Times bestseller Platonic :

"These days, we typically see platonic love as somehow lacking—like romantic love with the screws of sex and passion missing. But this interpretation strays from the term's original meaning. When Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino coined the term 'platonic love' in the 15th century, the word reflected Plato's vision of a love so powerful it transcended the physical. Platonic love was not romantic love undergoing subtraction. It was a purer form of love, one for someone's soul, as Ficino writes, 'For it does not desire this or that body, but desires the splendor of the divine light shining through bodies.' Platonic love was viewed as superior to romance."

Does platonic mean "just friends"?

Platonic love is not necessarily synonymous with friendship, though some close friends do have platonic love for each other.

"Platonic love denotes a deep level of closeness, love, understanding, communication, honesty and transparency, and intimacy," says Jesse Kahn, LCSW-R, CST , a sex therapist and director at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York. "Not all friendships have all of those qualities, nor all of those qualities to the depth of platonic love."

If you're wondering if being platonic with someone means you're "just friends," it's likely that the friendship in question does not involve true platonic love. Platonic friends truly love and value their relationship to each other exactly as it is, without seeing it as lesser or lacking just because sex or romance is not involved. It's diametrically opposed to what some people refer to as the " friend zone ," wherein a person resents their status as a friend because what they actually want is sex or romantic affection.

Platonic love challenges the idea that sex and romance definitively make a relationship "more" or "better."

Signs of platonic love:

• You care a lot about this person's well-being.
• You would go out of your way to do something to take care of this person or make their day better.
• You love spending time with this person.
• You feel emotionally close to this person.
• You can open up to them and share your most intimate and innermost thoughts and feelings, and vice versa.
• You can be really silly or really serious with this person, and you value both parts of the relationship.
• You feel like you know them really well, beyond the surface level.
• You accept them fully, flaws and all.
• You feel warm and affectionate toward this person.
• You want to nurture your relationship with this person, but you have no interest in dating them or turning it romantic.
• You have no desire to be sexual with this person.
• You tell this person you love them.
• Describing your feelings as anything other than love would feel like it's minimizing how much this person means to you.
• You see this person as being a long-term part of your life.
• You're committed to working on and tending to your relationship with this person.
• You love the relationship for exactly what it is, with no desire to add sex or romance to it. 

Benefits of platonic relationships

People don't tend to think about or prioritize their platonic relationships nearly as much as they do their romantic relationships.

"Many of us grew up with the idea that a romantic partner was supposed to satisfy all of our needs, that our happiness had to come from the romantic relational system," says Richmond. "More recently, we understand that a healthy romantic relationship can be an essential part of a person's well-being, but it can't be the only part."

Here are a few of the many benefits of platonic relationships:

Improved mental and physical health

Having strong, platonic relationships are vital to overall health and well-being. A large body of research links having a thriving, high-quality social life full of close relationships (beyond just family and romantic partnership) with a wide range of mental health benefits and even physical ones 1 , including increased longevity 2 , lower risk of cardiovascular disease, improved cognitive health 3 , higher life satisfaction , reduced risk of depression and loneliness 4 , and much more.

Feelings of connectedness and joy

Platonic relationships offer opportunities for pleasure, variety, camaraderie, and a general sense of belonging to our lives. As certified sex therapist  Heather Shannon, LCPC, CST , previously told mindbodygreen, "Platonic friendship allows for feeling connected, discussing ideas, and feeling witnessed in general in life."

The novelty is particularly important, according to Richmond: "Friends bring fresh perspectives and novel experiences, which enhance how we feel, behave, and experience the world."

Emotional support

Platonic relationships also act as an important source of care, perspective, and advice outside of (and about!) our romantic partnerships. Given the prevalence of toxic relationships , having a strong support network to fall back on is imperative.

Can be easier to maintain

While platonic relationships offer many of the same benefits as their romantic counterparts, Richmond notes that platonic relationships can actually make it easier to enjoy many of these things.

"Our platonic relationships are typically less fraught or high stakes than our romantic relationships—we are not living with that person day in and day out, and therefore we don't place the same expectations on our platonic relationships that we do our romantic relationships," she points out.

It can also be nice to have a mutually loving, supportive relationship with someone that isn't based on sex or expectations for romance. You get to just enjoy each other's company with no ulterior motives, and that's kind of refreshing.

Less pressure on romantic relationships

Having platonic relationships can take pressure off our romantic relationships from needing to satisfy every single interdependent need of ours, says Richmond.

"Most people have needs that can't be satisfied by one person, including their romantic partner. That is normal and perfectly healthy!" she points out. "It takes a village to fill the bucket of what helps us feel like our truest and most complete selves can thrive."

For example, maybe your partner isn't into the same kind of music as you, so you have a platonic friend who you're able to go to shows and geek out about new albums with. Or perhaps your partner can get a bit drained from endless conversations processing your never-ending work drama, but you've got a close friend who has an endless capacity to listen to you vent.

Life partnership

Platonic life partnerships have been getting more attention these days, and for good reason. These are partnerships wherein two people choose to share their lives together to the same degree as typical romantic couples—think buying a house together, sharing expenses, and maybe even raising kids with each other—just without the sex or dating.

"A platonic partnership can involve deep emotional connection, fulfillment, and commitment, which can enrich our lives," says Kahn.

How to keep a relationship platonic:

Make your intentions known..

"Let your platonic friend know your intentions and boundaries from the start," says Richmond. Make sure they know you see the relationship as being platonic, not romantic or sexual.

Make appropriate plans.

Certain activities are more closely associated to romantic and sexual relationships. A candlelit dinner for two with rose petals scattered around you? Probably kinda romantic. Texting them past midnight to come over to watch Netflix and chill? Kinda sexual.

"Propose plans and outings that friends would do together rather than romantic date nights or hanging out at home alone on the couch," says Richmond. The boundaries will depend on the particular people involved (lots of platonic friends do love bingeing Netflix together), but be thoughtful and read the room.

Watch the language.

Your body language and choice of words can communicate a lot. Be wary of flirty behavior that might give mixed signals , says Richmond, unless or until you and this person have firmly established what the expectations are. Some platonic friends can be playful and flirty with each other without crossing a line, but typically that comes alongside actively making it clear that your relationship is decidedly platonic in nature.

"If [your language has] flirty or has sexual nuances, that's fine in long-term friendships because both people understand their roles in the friendship and can 'play' that way, but you may need to be less flirty or sexual when first starting a platonic relationship," Richmond adds.

Nurture the relationship.

Boundaries matter in platonic relationships. At the same time, though, what's so amazing about platonic love is that it really is love . And when you love someone, you actively care about them and your relationship with them.

"When you think about nurturing a platonic relationship, think about how you'd nurture any relationship," says Kahn. "Some examples include vulnerability, communication, spending time with each other, showing appreciation, showing affection, and co-providing emotional support." All of these behaviors are features of platonic love relationships.

What if I don't want it to be a platonic relationship?

If you don't want to be in a platonic relationship with someone, it's time to get brave and tell them how you feel . Ask if they're interested in pursuing something romantic or sexual with you.

Relationships are a two-way street, so it's important the two of you are on the same page about what you want your relationship to be. If you're falling in love with a friend who doesn't feel the same way, it's important to respect their boundaries and make peace with the relationship as it is. If you're not able to move forward platonically, it may be necessary to take a break from the friendship until your feelings cool and you're able to reestablish the relationship as true friends.

(We've got a full guide on how to stop liking someone , if you need it.)

Does platonic love mean just friends?

Platonic love involves authentically loving and caring about someone to the same degree you would a romantic partner, only without the sex and romance involved. All friendships that are nonsexual and nonromantic in nature can be considered platonic, but platonic love implies a level of deep closeness and care that not all friends necessarily have for each other. 

What does platonic love feel like?

Platonic love can feel very similar to romantic love—you genuinely care about this person's well-being, you have a lot of warmth and affection for them, and you want to spend more time with this person and invest in your relationship with them.

Can there be kissing and sex in a platonic relationship?

Generally speaking, platonic relationships are distinctly nonsexual and nonromantic in nature. The people involved choose to nurture a relationship without sex and romance.

That said, there are exceptions to every rule, and Kahn says people can define their relationships however they want. "I think most people think of a platonic relationship as not including physical intimacy, but they can if you want them to!" he says, adding that platonic friends may occasionally kiss, hold hands, or even have sex. A key distinguisher might be that a platonic relationship isn't built on the foundation of sex or romance, and those things are not central to the relationship.

The friendship, regardless of the presence of sex or romance, is the centerpiece of a platonic relationship.

The takeaway

Platonic love describes a deep closeness experienced between people whose relationship is not based on sexuality and romance. Platonic relationships add pleasure, camaraderie, support, and novelty to our lives, and they can be just as profoundly meaningful to our lives as our romantic relationships.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/
• https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18511731/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4225959/

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7 of the Great Platonic Loves in Literature

Books & Culture

Because sometimes your best relationship is with a friend.

I met my oldest friend when we were both, to borrow and literalize Eimear McBride’s phrase, half-formed things in our mother’s bodies. Since then we’ve surpassed friendship to become a kind of voluntary family. That’s arguably the best kind, just as friendships are arguably the best kind of love affairs — complex and emotional as a romance but platonically durable and (let’s be frank) much more fun. This Valentine’s Day, rather than the dwelling on the same old tired romances, how about celebrating all the great friendships literature has given us? Here are 7 novels that do just that.

Because you can’t solve crimes in Victorian London, go on a knightly quest across Spain, survive mid-century Naples, or “find yourself” on a drug-addled road trip across the Americas without a friend to share the journey.

1. Lila and Elena in the Neapolitan Series, by Elena Ferrante

Their relationship has its ups and downs; at times its intensity becomes uncomfortable, even abusive. Still, there’s no denying Elena and Lila are best friends. They push each other to succeed, thanks to a rock solid belief in the other’s abilities and worth. Never a small thing, their durability feels like an all-out triumph in the slums of mid-century Naples, a community that values brute strength over intelligence and lets men treat women like second class citizens.

2. Clarissa and Richard in The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

There are three alternating narratives in Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel , but the emotional core is the relationship between Clarissa and Richard. Longtime friends and onetime lovers, the tenderness with which Clarissa tends to Richard, who is dying of AIDS, will rack your heart as much as any Romeo and Juliet.

3. Darcy and Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Jane Austen was a keen observer of female life in Georgian England, but she could also portray male friendship, as evidenced by Darcy and Bingley in Pride and Prejudice . Darcy may be a snob, but his biggest issue with Bingley marrying Jane isn’t her loud, middle class family, but Darcy’s belief that she just doesn’t love his friend.

4. Sal and Dean in On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Kerouac’s classic novel is based on his travels with Neal Cassady in the late 1940s. As Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s alter ego) and Dean Moriarty (Cassady’s), drive across America, they meet women, drink themselves silly and pontificate on the meaning of life. These two enjoy hanging out a little too much — they resist real life, always drawn back to each other and the road.

5. Quixote and Sancho Panza in Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

Cervantes’ masterpiece is the tale of Don Quixote and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Though they start as master and servant, as the two travel the Spanish countryside their relationship becomes far more profound. Without Sancho, the gallant, crazy Quixote would never make it so far on his journey, and without the journey, Sancho would never have truly ‘lived.’

6. Sherlock & Watson in many, many stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The original bromance. In Doyle’s best-selling crime stories , Dr. Watson is more than Sherlock’s sidekick or his trusty biographer, he is the emotional element that balances Sherlock’s pathologically rational mind. A true friend.

7. Janie and Pheoby in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Janie, a young woman attempting to navigate the oppressive communities of rural Florida in the early 20th century. We only hear Janie’s story because she feels comfortable telling it to her friend Pheoby, the one woman who stood up for her in the small, gossipy town of Eatonville.

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Doomed Love: 14 Literary Quotations

This February 14th, celebrate Valentine’s Day with these fourteen quotes about the ravages of love

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Platonic Love: The Concept of Greek Philosopher Plato

Platonic love is one of the most widely misinterpreted concepts in Plato’s philosophy . It has transcended the realm of philosophy, becoming widely used across culture and has strayed from its original meaning throughout the process.

Plato believed that love is the motivation that leads one to try to know and contemplate beauty in itself. This happens through a gradual process that begins with an appreciation of the appearance of physical beauty and then moves on to an appreciation of spiritual beauty.

Moving through these steps culminates in the passionate, pure, and disinterested knowledge of the essence of beauty, which remains incorruptible and always equal to itself: the knowledge of the idea of ​​beauty.

The true concept of platonic love

This type of love is often interpreted as spiritual rather than physical. Some even go as far as to call platonic love an “impossible love,” although that is perhaps more extreme than Plato’s conception. Plato provides his clearest outline of Platonic love in “The Symposium.”

A symposium, or banquet, was a common celebration where Greeks came together to drink, celebrate, and discuss ideas.

During a symposium held in the house of the tragic poet Agathon, several of the most important men of Athens, including Socrates , Pausanias, Aristophanes, and the most powerful character of the moment, Alcibiades, began a philosophical debate over the true nature of love, with each philosopher providing their own argument.

After having listened to all those present, Socrates takes the floor and narrates what the priestess of Apollo , Diotima, had revealed to him about the meaning of platonic love: that it was a ladder on which love climbs up a series of steps to reach the peak of a “supreme idea.”

For Plato, love is not an end in and of itself but only a means to achieving this supreme concept of beauty. The first step is physical; the senses unleash eros (the love that enters through the eyes and compels one to approach someone). In this stage, love is physical. Plato does not, in fact, reject the physical dimension of love, as many falsely believe. This is a fundamental stage and is necessary in order to reach the supreme idea.

In the second step, one goes from looking for beauty in a particular body to looking for beauty in multiple bodies, thus forging a categorical notion of beauty and prompting the search for the idea behind this notion.

The third step is the one that passes from the physical body to the beauty of the soul. In this state, the person learns to love the soul despite the physical aspect of beauty.

In the fourth step, Socrates elevates love to a very different scale since it enters the world of ethics. The love of beautiful souls increases moral beauty.

In the fifth step, Socrates passes from the rules of conduct to beautiful knowledge referring to institutions and a love for the government.

The sixth step starts from the beautiful knowledge and uses science to reach a delight in the beauty of knowledge and understanding.

In the seventh, the idea of ​​beauty comes into harmony with the universe. It passes from the world to the cosmic category (to beauty itself.) In this phase, beauty takes on the hue of vision, or revelation, experienced through the lens of philosophy.

Plato and his ideal love

Plato’s ideal love is connected with his notion of the ideal world (a world where everything is perfect and our material reality is a copy of its image). That is why this ideal of Platonic love does not refer to having an unattainable love but to love in a sense that is eternal and intelligible: a perfect ideal form.

This framework is closely connected to Plato’s allegory of the Cave . The one who comes to the idea of beauty is the one who has managed to get out of the cave and look at the sunlight. That person has passed from the initial experience of physical love, which could be compared to existing within the cave, to reaching the experience of beauty’s truth, the equivalent of leaving the cave for the outside world.

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What It Means to Be in a Platonic Relationship

Sex isn't everything.

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Carly Snyder, MD is a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist who combines traditional psychiatry with integrative medicine-based treatments.

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

A platonic relationship is one in which two people share a close bond but do not have a sexual relationship . They may even feel love for each other, referred to as platonic love. This concept originates in the ideas of the ancient philosopher Plato, from whose name the term is derived.

Plato believed that platonic love could bring people closer to a divine ideal. However, the modern use of 'platonic relationship' or 'platonic love' is focused on the idea of people being close friends without sexual desire. This term can apply to both opposite-sex and same-sex friendships. 

Platonic Relationship vs. Romantic Relationship

A platonic relationship is different from a romantic relationship. While both types of relationships often involve having a deep friendship and sometimes even love, people in a romantic relationship are typically physically intimate whereas there is no sex or physical intimacy in a platonic relationship.

It is possible to desire physical intimacy (such as hugging, kissing, or touching) or sex with the other person but not be engaged in these activities. If no physical intimacy or sex exists between you and the other person, it is a platonic relationship—even if the desire is there.

Involves deep friendship

People involved may or may not have a desire for physical intimacy

No physical intimacy or sex occurs

Generally involves both people having a desire for physical intimacy

Often involves physical intimacy and/or sex

Signs Your Relationship Is Platonic

There are a number of characteristics that distinguish a platonic relationship from other relationship types . In addition to the lack of a sexual aspect, a platonic relationship also tends to be marked by:

• Closeness : Both people in the relationship feel a closeness to each other and feel that they share things in common. 
• Honesty : Both individuals feel that they can share what they really think and feel with the other person.
• Acceptance : These relationships tend to feel easy and comfortable. Both people feel that they are safe and free to be themselves. 
• Understanding : People who share a platonic relationship have a connection, but they also recognize and respect each other's personal space. They don't try to force the other person to do things they don't want to do or be something that they are not.

Platonic relationships are often friendships . And while the lack of a sexual relationship is what characterizes this type of connection, it does not necessarily mean that the individuals in the relationship are not attracted to each other or could not start to feel attracted to one another.

Types of Platonic Relationships

A few terms have emerged to describe different types of platonic relationships. These include:

• Bromance : This is a term used to describe a close, affectionate, non-sexual relationship between two men.
• Womance : This term is used to describe an emotional, non-sexual, non-romantic bond between two women.
• Work spouse : This phrase is sometimes used to describe a close but non-sexual connection between colleagues or co-workers that involves bonds and sometimes even roles similar to that of a marriage.

How to Form a Platonic Relationship

Platonic relationships can be important for psychological well-being. Research has found that having social support plays a vital role in mental health, so building a network that includes family, platonic friends, and other loved ones can be important for your overall wellness.

Some things that you can do to help foster platonic relationships include:

• Join social networking groups where you can meet people
• Sign up for workshops or classes on topics that interest you
• Participate in online communities
• Volunteer for causes you care about in your community

In addition to developing new platonic relationships, it is also important to understand how to keep the ones you have now healthy and strong. Some ways to do this include being supportive, maintaining boundaries, and practicing honesty .

Benefits of Platonic Relationships

There are several reasons why having platonic relationships is important for your health and well-being. Some of the positive effects that these relationships may bring to your life include:

Improved Health

Research suggests that having love and support from people in your life can have important health benefits. Physically, this type of platonic love and support can lower your risk for disease, improve your immunity, and decrease your risk for depression and anxiety.

Your platonic support system can help provide emotional support as well. They do this by listening to what you have to say, providing validation , and helping you when you are in need.

Lower Stress

Stress can take a serious toll on both your physical and mental health. Chronic or prolonged stress can contribute to health problems such as cardiac disease, high blood pressure, digestive issues, and decreased immunity. It can also play a role in mood problems such as anxiety or depression . 

Having strong platonic relationships outside of immediate family and romantic partnerships has been found to help people better cope with sources of stress. Not only that, but having supportive platonic friendships also lowers the stress that people face.

Increased Resilience

Platonic relationships can play a role in helping you become more resilient in the face of life's challenges. Whether you have troubles in your romantic relationships, problems in your family, work struggles, or health challenges, your platonic relationships can support you as you weather these storms. 

One study found that one of the biggest predictors of a person's ability to recover after a traumatic or stressful event was the presence of strong friendships.

Tips for a Healthy Platonic Relationship

Platonic relationships are not always easy to find. When you do establish a strong platonic bond, it is important to continue to nurture and strengthen that connection. Some things that you can do to help keep these relationships healthy include:

• Don't make the other person do all the work : Don't rely on the other person to make all the plans or initiate all the contact. Reach out to them regularly to invite them to participate in activities.
• Stay in touch : Call, text, or email the other person from time to time just to keep the lines of communication open. Let them know you are thinking of them, reach out to share a funny joke you know they'll enjoy, or just ask them how they are.
• Show up for them : Other people can be an important source of emotional support, but it's just as important for you to reciprocate that support. Be there when they need you, even if it is just to lend an open and supportive ear.

It is also important to know when to let go of a platonic relationship. Unhealthy relationships can create stress, so don't be afraid to end your association if the other person is unkind, manipulative, hurtful, or doesn't support you the way you need.

Potential Challenges of a Platonic Relationship

It is important to note that platonic relationships are not the same as unrequited love . An unrequited relationship is essentially a crush that involves one person being romantically or sexually interested in someone who does not return their feelings. True platonic relationships do not involve an unequal balance of emotions.

This does not mean that a platonic relationship can’t or won’t develop into something romantic or sexual. While such a relationship can potentially turn into a strong romantic relationship, you also run the risk of losing the friendship if you end up breaking up . 

If maintaining a platonic relationship is important to you, focus on establishing and maintaining clear boundaries . For example, set limits on things such as time spent together, amount of contact, and physical intimacy.

Platonic Boundaries

Some boundaries to maintain in a platonic relationship include:

• Don't gossip or complain about your partners to each other
• Don't engage in physical contact beyond casual intimacy (i.e., avoid things like handholding, kissing, or "friends-with-benefits" situations)
• Don't ditch your partner to spend time with your platonic friend
• Don't hide your platonic relationship from your partner
• Give each other plenty of space
• Make time for your other relationships

If You Want Something More

If you want to extend a platonic relationship or platonic love into a sexual or romantic relationship, it is important to be open and honest with the other person. Express your interest without pressuring them.

Discuss what it might mean to the relationship and how it might ultimately affect your friendship. Platonic relationships can serve as a great foundation for a romantic relationship, but it is important to be honest and communicate openly .

American Psychological Association.  Manage stress: Strengthen your support network .

Miller A. Friends wanted . Monitor on Psychology . 2014;45(1):54.

Amati V, Meggiolaro S, Rivellini G, Zaccarin S. Social relations and life satisfaction: The role of friends .  Genus . 2018;74(1):7. doi:10.1186/s41118-018-0032-z

van Harmelen A-L, Kievit RA, Ioannidis K, et al. Adolescent friendships predict later resilient functioning across psychosocial domains in a healthy community cohort .  Psycholog Med . 2017;47(13):2312-2322. doi:10.1017/S0033291717000836

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Relationships

The Secret of Platonic Relationships

Valentine's day is a good time to celebrate romantic and platonic relationships..

Updated May 20, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

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Valentine’s Day, or the feast of Saint Valentine, is an annual celebration of romance and love around the world. While most people regard the holiday as one reserved for lovers, many different relationships can be celebrated on this day—such as love for one’s parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, children, and grandchildren. In addition, platonic love between friends is another cause for celebration.

Platonic love is a special emotional and spiritual relationship between two people who love and admire one another because of common interests, a spiritual connection, and similar worldviews. It does not involve any sexual involvement.

Most friendships begin as either personal or professional. In the latter type of relationship, the connection is intellectual and revolves around a common work interest. Loving others means understanding them in a special way, and as author Judith Blackstone (2002) says, “The ability to love goes beyond having an emotional response to or understanding another person. It requires a capacity for contact, and this contact does not necessarily have to be physical. It can include how you speak to them, the emotions you display to them, and the awareness you have about them. It’s about being in tune with another person.”

Mark Matousek, in a Psychology Today post, discusses the god Eros, whom the Greeks believed to be the brother of Chaos. Matousek makes a good point when he says, “Erotic love is fierce and wild; the love of friends is more familial (as in healthy families), contained, unconditional, balanced, and tame ... But when friendship becomes both familial and wild, we have a dangerous animal on our hands,” he adds. In other words, it’s not easy having both a platonic and sexual relationship with someone. Platonic relationships can turn into erotic or romantic relationships , but most often the strength lies in the strong friendship.

Some say that in a heterosexual relationship where two people enjoy each other’s company—whether it’s personal or professional—there is going to be sexual tension, even if they are not “lovers” in the classic sense of the word. In this situation, it might be that sexual desire is suppressed.

While there might be some sexual tension between platonic friends, they might both decide to keep things simple and not become sexual. The problem is that once platonic friends become sexually intimate, the lines and boundaries become blurred. In a platonic relationship, caring, concern, and love are displayed through words and body language .

If both individuals decide to move forward sexually, then several things might occur. If intimacy is a positive experience, it can strengthen the connection, but if it is not, then intimacy can be detrimental to the platonic relationship. Many mental health care professionals discourage sexual intimacy between platonic friends, mainly because of how rare it is to find this type of connection. However, if one of the individuals feels a deep sexual urge but the other does not, here are some tips or secrets to keep the friendship intact:

• Discuss your feelings with the other person.
• Set boundaries together.
• Refrain from touching outside of hugging as part of a greeting.
• Refrain from sexual conversations.
• Be mindful of what is said and done when you are together.

My friendship with Thomas Steinbeck, the son of Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, was happily platonic. We were so close that we were almost like siblings, sharing in our joys, fears, and creative endeavors. Our love was unconditional, but we never crossed the line into intimacy.

Thomas and I adored one another’s company. We were happy together. We laughed together. At times, we were possessive over our company for one another, and when not together we knew telepathically what the other was feeling. In a sense, we were like one another’s “life-preserver,” and after his passing, I felt as if I was drowning in sorrow. He was the anchor to my creative voice. Together, we both turned pain into art, he through fiction, and me through poetry and memoir. Losing him and our platonic relationship was akin to losing a close family member.

Blackstone, J. (2002). Living Intimately. London, UK: Watkins Publishing.

Matousek, M. (2013). “The eros of friendship: What to do with platonic passion?” Psychology Today. May 12.

Diana Raab, Ph.D., is an expert in helping others transform and become empowered through creativity, especially writing.

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Friends and Benefits: Everything You Need to Know About Platonic Relationships

There are many types of relationships you can have over the course of your life. These unique bonds bring something different. Your relationships with your family members, friends and romantic partners can each present layers and textures to your day-to-day existence.

Some of these people will be the ones you ask questions . Others are the ones who will there for you (like Phoebe and Joey from Friends ) when you want to celebrate. All of these relationships are important to your life. 

One of the more misunderstood types of relationships is the platonic friendship — also called platonic love. These have been largely characterized as bonds between heterosexuals who love each other but are not in love. The definition should be widened to include the LGBTQ community.

To give a more inclusive overview, these platonic friendships are between two people who could couple up. But instead they decide to maintain a non-romantic bond. Does that sound a little unrealistic? Maybe to some people. But if you're interested in what a healthy platonic life partnerships are like, and what the benefits are, just keep reading. 

What Is a Platonic Relationship?

​​Platonic love has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. You may have made the connection, but the origin of the word comes from the famous philosopher Plato, who outlined categories of love in his text, Symposium .

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Although Plato didn’t use that particular word in his work, he did define what we now consider platonic relationships. In Symposium , he said that love based on physical attraction and sexual intimacy is romantic love. But love that’s more intellectually or spiritually based — with no romantic feelings — is what we call platonic love today. 

Platonic Love

Platonic love occurs when two people have a bond in which they deeply care for each other and share mutual respect for the other's well being. They lean on each other, and share similar interests and values. However, they don’t pursue things romantically. 

You can experience platonic love at first sight if you’re drawn to someone instantly because you share a passion for an activity or subject. But love in the romantic sense just isn’t part of the equation. (At least not intentionally, more on this later.) 

This concept may be hard to grasp for people who don’t have this kind of relationship in their lives — and for good reason. We constantly hear about non-sexual friendships in will they or won’t they terms. As if romance is inevitable between any two people who could theoretically be sexually attracted to each other. There’s a stigma around what types of friendships are acceptable, and which ones are headed for disaster (or toward the bedroom). 

There’s No Such Thing as 'Platonic Lovers'

Platonic love is not friends with benefits or hooking up. In fact, there can’t be a sexual aspect to the relationship. Platonic lovers just aren’t a thing. Because there are no romantic feelings a platonic friendship, unrequited love or affections from one person would also disqualify a relationship from being platonic. 

Examples of Platonic Love

To better understand the differences between platonic and romantic relationships, here are two of the most common examples: 

Bromance or Womance  

These terms describe close, affectionate, non-sexual bonds between two men or two women. Think of bromances and womances like next-level friendships, these pairings are definitely in BFF territory. They love each other, but they aren’t in love with each other. 

Work Spouse 

"Work spouses" are coworkers who are so close, they rely on each other the way they would a romantic partner. Except, there's no romance. 

They might run errands for each other, attend events together, and hang out together outside of the office. They are also known for sticking up for each other (and covering for each other) in the office. 

Can You Have a Platonic Relationship and a Romantic Partner?

In a word, yes. However, it’s important to understand that your romantic partner may need you to set clear boundaries with your platonic friend in order to feel comfortable. (And only you know how okay you are with this.)

Some romantic partners may feel threatened by the idea of you having someone in your life who is so close to you, even if there are no romantic or sexual desire between you and your friend. 

Depending on the person you’re romantically involved with, they might believe that your relationship with them needs to come first, before your platonic love. Romantic relationships can be tricky—jealousy can be a factor even in the most secure of bonds. 

The Rules for a Healthy Platonic Friendship 

So what to do about this? Talk to your friend and your romantic partner, separately, about their needs and fears about the other major relationship in your life. You might be surprised about what you discover in an honest discussion with each of these important people. Remind them that your relationships with each person are not in competition—they aren’t comparable because they are completely different from each other. 

Discuss how much time you expect to spend with each of them and what behaviors and activities won’t work moving forward. For instance, if you talked on the phone with your friend every night until you went to sleep, your romantic partner may not feel comfortable with this, especially if you two decide to move in together down the road. 

Or, if you’ve shared a bed with your friend every now and then in a completely non-sexual way, your partner may not feel comfortable with this happening now that you’re in a committed relationship. Talking through these habits and scenarios when things with your romantic partner start getting serious will help you avoid tricky situations, trust issues and jealousy down the road.

Finally, you have to determine how much you need or want to pull back from your platonic relationship now that you’re in a romantic relationship. While these bonds are very different, they do have some shared qualities: typically, your romantic partner is the person you’d confide in, share good news with first, lean on when you’re having a tough day and so on.

Benefits of Platonic Relationships

Having a platonic relationship means that you have someone in your corner who you can trust, who has your back and who brings you joy, but who isn’t necessarily engaged with you in a sexual relationship. Here are just some of the benefits of fostering this kind of bond:

Feeling Closeness Without the Pressure 

Talk about (hashtag) relationship goals . In a platonic relationship, you don’t need to worry about where things are going or if the other person is on the same page as you. You can maintain closeness with each other in a low-stakes way. You’re not thinking about the next step or where your relationship will be in a year. You’re getting the perks of a romantic relationship as far as emotional intimacy goes and none of the drawbacks. 

Getting a Unique Perspective 

If your platonic friend is of a different sex, gender or gender identity that you are, you’re able to reap the benefits of looking at a given situation (and the world) from their point of view. This can be helpful when navigating a tough situation at work, when you’re dating and trying to pinpoint red flags or whenever you just need another set of eyes and ears on your current life circumstances. 

Having Someone to Confide In

A platonic relationship comes with the major benefit of being able to spill your secrets, deepest fears and unpopular opinions without worrying about judgement, retribution or word getting out. Having a confidant is one of the most significant perks of a deep, trusting friendship. 

Maintaining a Relationship with Boundaries 

Practicing setting and respecting boundaries is an essential life skill. Luckily, a platonic relationship allows you to do this all the time. Since you and your friend are committed to remaining just friends, you both uphold the boundary of no romance or sex, giving each other the freedom to just be with each other without wondering what if. This is also good practice for setting boundaries with other people, from family members to acquaintances. 

Not Having to Keep Up Appearances or Impress the Person 

When you’re in a romantic relationship, there’s usually a tendency, especially in the beginning, to try to impress the other person. You put on your makeup, do your hair, don the cutest outfits. You might defer to them about what to do on a date or feign enthusiasm for activities they enjoy. All of this is a little exhausting, to say the least. In a platonic relationship, you can just be you because the stakes just aren’t as high. By using your platonic relationship as practice for showing off the real you, you could actually find more authentic connections with potential romantic partners as a result.

Being Able to Have an Honest Connection 

Platonic love isn’t about setting your feelings aside and putting your friend’s feelings first. It’s not about putting up a facade. These friendships thrive on honesty and clear communication. While you never want to be so brutally honest that you come off as mean or thoughtless, not having to hold back your feelings can be a relief for many people. 

Fighting Without Drama 

In a romantic relationship, conflict can be scary. (Because what if one big fight can lead to a breakup?) In a platonic relationship, you’re going to get annoyed with each other or have words about a given topic or situation. But what happens? You get mad, maybe you stop talking for a few days and then you work things out. It’s just not that big of a deal. 

Never Having to Wonder About the Status of Your Relationship

With platonic love, your relationship is steady. Yes, you can get closer or drift apart here and there but your bond is not on some kind of trajectory with the end point being either marriage or breaking up. You don’t have to waste brain energy wondering where your relationship is going. It just is. 

What if a Platonic Relationship Turns Romantic?

Of course, there is the potential for sexual attraction to develop, and for a friendship to turn into something more. These things are bound to happen between some platonic pairs. We’re all only human, right? 

Maybe something happened to make you see your friend in a new light. Or perhaps you were feeling lonely and decided to engage in some physical intimacy with each other. Maybe your feelings grew over time. It’s not unheard of for emotional support to turn into romantic interest from a formerly non-sexual relationship.  

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Here’s what to do about it: Since you know your friend so well, clearly you’re going to feel a vibe if things are getting more than friendly between you. The best thing to do is get those feelings out in the open—ASAP!—before something physical happens because it’s harder to have a conversation if you’re in the throes of lust, or if things get weird. 

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Having a talk about what you’re feeling may be a little scary since you may not totally know if your friend feels the same way but once you sense that the relationship is changing it’s hard to have things go back to the way they were before.

Working together to talk about your feelings and what they mean will inevitably bring you two even closer together. You may decide that you don’t want to pursue things romantically, even if you’re feeling some love-like feelings. Or you may choose to turn your friendship into a romance. Trying to get on the same page before feelings progress is the best way to avoid having one person feel in love and the other decidedly not feeling it.  

Platonic Love Has No Expectations

Platonic relationships can still be highly misunderstood. Unless you’ve experienced these types of bonds for yourself it can be hard to grasp the idea of completely non-romantic personal relationships between two people who could theoretically be involved.

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But, honestly, that’s kind of society’s problem. The narrative many of us have been taught is that men and women can’t be friends. And, to include gay and non-binary people as well, there’s an assumption that it’s not possible to be completely platonic with anyone you would potentially identify as a love match for you. If we can unlearn these lessons about love and friendship, we can open ourselves up to some pretty wonderful relationships. 

Platonic bonds are super special because they don’t ask much of the people involved except to simply be themselves—and to be good friends to each other. There are no expectations of needing to check all the boxes on the other person’s wishlist, the way there is with romantic partners, and no need to show off the best version of yourself in order to impress the other person. 

With platonic relationships, people can be free to love deeply without all the romantic baggage. It’s time to cherish these bonds and seek them out!

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Paralyzed Man Vows To Never Return to the Beach Unless He Can Walk - Then He Met Her

Everything Changed For Paralyzed MMA Fighter When He Met Her

When a former MMA fighter named GK became paralyzed from the waist down, he vowed he would only ever return to the beach if he could walk. But then he met a woman named Marte, and everything changed.

A Sad Turn of Events

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GK has always been a physical guy. As a professional MMA fighter, he worked out and took pride in fueling his body. He even owned his own gym in Norway, where he lived. But then, one day in 2021, he dove headfirst into the water, and tragedy struck. The water was too shallow for a head dive, and there were concrete stones at the bottom. As a result, GK broke two vertebrae in his back.

At the time, he was paralyzed from the chest down despite an immediate operation. He and his supporters demanded better signage at the beach where he had the accident to prevent future injuries. Meanwhile, he vowed that he would not live his life in a wheelchair.

“The doctors say I’ll not go again, but I will. I do not envision life in a wheelchair. It is unreal,” he told World News Today on the phone.

A Pivotal Relationship

GK fell into a depression and vowed he wouldn’t return to the beach unless he could walk. There were days he dedicated six hours to his recovery, which was a painful and slow process. Then, one day, he sent a DM to a social media influencer named Marte, who inspired him.

“His goal was to walk,” she recalled to Majically News . “That was his only focus, every day.”

The pair fell in love, but Marte wanted to travel . She had always explored the world independently and wanted GK to come with her. Finally, she convinced him to start traveling around Norway with her.

Suddenly, GK was living in the moment rather than dreaming of a potential future that was no longer practical. A world of possibilities opened up, and he began doing things he hadn’t thought possible, like driving a motorcycle or riding a horse.

“I did all of this crazy stuff, and then suddenly she came into my life,” he said. “I never looked at [travel] like it was possible for me because I’m in a wheelchair.”

A Change of Perspective

As they began traveling, GK started appreciating the opportunities and life he had. He realized he could inspire others.

“We had a plan in our head,” he said. “Let’s show people it’s possible.”

Earlier this year, GK and Marte launched a new social media channel, Perspective By Us. Their first video was Marte wheeling GK to the one place he said he would never visit again unless he could walk: the beach.

In the video , Marte lifts GK onto her back, and the two enter the water together. It is the perfect launch into a life of adventure, possibilities, and inspiration.

“No one will understand the journey it took to get here,” they wrote in another video , in which the couple enjoys a waterfall together. “But here we are.”

Having the Right Mindset

Life isn’t always fair, and hard things happen to good people. It can be incredibly difficult to pull yourself up and out of a dark situation, especially when it changes the way you navigate your life. However, GK and Marte prove that it is possible if you first change your mindset.

This powerful story is such a great reminder to all of us that we can all survive hard things if we think about the things we do have and remember to live in the moment. Sometimes our situations change and we no longer have the life we thought we’d have. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a life worth living to the fullest.

Especially when we surround ourselves with love and support the way this inspiring man has.

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Dwayne Johnson Serenades 4-Year-Old With Favorite Moana Song

Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson surprised us all with his singing chops as the lovable, shapeshifting demi-god Maui in the Disney smash hit, Moana .

But it's his performance off-screen for one very special 4-year-old girl that's currently making waves on social media.

Maui's Biggest Fan

Johnson may play some of the toughest guys on the planet, but he has proven time and again that underneath that incredibly buff Herculean exterior, he has the heart of a sweet little ol' teddy bear.

When he's not busy crushing iron at the gym, drinking tequila, or making serious bank on the next big Hollywood blockbuster, he's making miracles happen for children with critical illnesses.

As a frequent wish granter with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, he's no stranger to making dreams come true sometimes granting upwards of one wish PER DAY.

So when he received an urgent request from a little girl on home hospice who loves Maui he immediately dropped everything to make it happen.

Lily Guerrero is four years old. Her favorite treats are Outshine Purple Popsicles and Watermelon Blowpops. She loves pink and playing peek-a-boo and watching Moana "every day, all day." And heartbreakingly, she's now on home hospice, no longer able to verbally communicate because of a feeding tube.

But she can still "see and hear and react" and wanted nothing more than to have Maui sing her You're Welcome and record it so she could listen to it "over and over and over" again. Johnson, despite being a little rusty on vocals, happily obliged.

Dwayne Johnson Makes A Little Girl's Wish Come True

At the request of Lily's parents, Johnson shared his good deed, worthy of a demigod, on Instagram , captioning the emotional video in part: "Needed to share this “rush” wish with all of you ❤️🌎✨"

"This is a special Make-A-Wish request and it’s called a rush wish," Johnson told the camera. "And a rush wish means, what the implication sounds like, which is time is just not on our side.”

He continued, "Of course, Mom and Dad have asked that I share this wish on social media to share Lily's spirit and strength and her mana, and of course we take that energy and we send it right back to Lily."

He then revealed that he was sitting at a piano but jokingly shared, "I actually stink at piano” and instead opted for a recording of the music.

"I'll try not to screw this up," he quipped before launching into a heartfelt rendition of the Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned song, You're Welcome.

Following his performance he directly addressed Lily, saying:

“Thank you so much for allowing me the privilege of making your Make-a-Wish come true. That was me singing ‘You’re Welcome’ in probably a few keys that don’t exist. I hope you enjoyed it and Lily, you are so special.”

Using His Fame For Good

In addition to being a global phenomenon, Johnson has made it a habit to use his celebrity status for good. His philanthropic efforts are widespread and he works with a number of different charities, including his own, The Dwayne Johnson Rock Foundation — aimed at helping families and children in need.

As for his work with the Make-a-Wish Foundation? It runs in his blood. His father, former WWE tag-team champion, Rocky Johnson, became one of the first wish-granters of the New Jersey chapter when he visited a 10-year-old boy named Bobby Macaluso, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1983.

Johnson never forgot it.

“I remember my Dad telling me and Mom, ‘There’s a little boy, and he wants to meet me, and he’s really challenged right now, and he’s fighting hard, and his one wish is to meet me,’ and I was blown away,” Johnson said . “And I remember meeting Bobby and his family, and my Dad was holding him, and it was a very special moment and time in our lives.”

“It moved me,” he added. “It changed my life even then as an 11-year-old.”

And now, 41 years later, he's the one granting wishes and making a profound impact in people's lives.

But you don't have to be a megastar with megabucks to make a difference. As Johnson says, it starts with being nice and recognizing the importance of serving others.

"Service to others is the rent you pay for the room you have here on earth. It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice." Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - 2021 People's Champion Awards

Copyright © 2024 Goalcast

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Platonic Love

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Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship...

Time is DNA

Time is the strands of past and future in our DNA, not the hands of time on a clock

Essay; Platonic Love? Which One?

Where does the term platonic love come from?

“It is named after Greek philosopher Plato, though the philosopher never used the term himself. Platonic love as devised by Plato concerns rising through levels of closeness to wisdom and true beauty from carnal attraction to individual bodies to attraction to souls, and eventually, union with the truth.”

He was also a pedophile so there you have seeds of the modern Greco-Roman Church. I also see in that progression the problem males have with the objectification and emotional attachment to the physical and getting a bit dramatic about that. As I’ve said before, women are very matter of fact about everything physical and attracted to a man’s vibe, affection, and generally whatever gets her motor running about him. We’re not particularly focused on his appearance or body parts as it is for men. Meaning, I’ve heard a man will “fall in love with” a woman’s breasts and marry her just for that; or her face; or her legs. I can’t even fathom being that superficial and most women would agree. This is the foundation of Platonic love designations; the way men love.

What did Plato’s mother do to him as a child? The subject is  still not talked about in 2019. What’s interesting to me is that when the word “platonic” is used now, Eros platonic love (see below) is left out, usually by a man who has a whore-madonna or hookup-possession, black and white, passive-aggressive view of the role of women. There is a distinct pride many men take in denying women affection and love but not defecation sex. They know that women need and want affection as much as the sex act itself, maybe more. So there is a power play there. Women have check-mated that by going to the arms of other women or just satisfactorily taking care of themselves and being celibate. Thriving is important in the face of love withholding. I can’t say I blame women if they are in the least bit attracted to other women sexually. At least there are all kinds of love there.

I just ran into the word platonic today in an e-mail and now I need to take a shower because it was used in the context of denying Eros simply because I asked for love and affection with sex from this man who has been my friend for two years. We’ve gone from polyamorous hookup suggestion (Ludus platonic), lusty talk and plans with a mutual attraction to my REALISTIC lover and friend suggestion, to THIS.

I’m not doing PlatonicPhilia which is the way he means it. I don’t jump through men’s definition of relationships hoops because my needs are never met. What a disaster.

I looked up the different types of Platonic love and they are;

• Eros  is sexual or passionate love or a modern perspective of romantic love.
• Philia  is the type of love that is directed towards friendship or goodwill, often is met with mutual benefits *that also can be formed by companionship, dependability, and trust.
• Storge  is the type of love that is found between parents and children, and this is often a unilateral love, meaning a one-way street. Parents love the child but the child does not return it and leaves to form his own love relationships outside of the immediate family. It’s actually natural but many cultures won’t allow the child to become independent.
• Agape  is the universal love, that can consist of the love for strangers, nature, or god.
• Ludus  is playful and uncommitted love, this is focused for fun and sometimes as a conquest with no strings attached.
• Pragma  is the type of love that is founded on duty and reason, and one’s longer-term interests.
• Philautia  is self-love and this can be healthy or unhealthy; unhealthy if one places oneself above the gods (to the point of hubris), and healthy if it is used to build self-esteem and confidence.

In my personal life, I am ErosPhilia with a lover or two, if the man is mature enough to tolerate it. I’m finding that they usually aren’t. Men emotionally need possession and territory of a woman (the way his mother adored him). The problem there is I’m not his mother.

I tend naturally toward Agape love  in my public and work life, having Venus in Pisces. I love at all times which can be confusing for Americans. Since barely anyone really loves in our society on any level, because of lack of authenticity and loving touch, when they encounter someone who loves them at all, they mistake it for Eros or personal love. It’s not, nor can it be in a professional setting. If you’re not friends or have Philia love and know each other well, there can be no Eros. In the State of Michigan, it’s illegal to be in Eros with your clients as a bodyworker so it doesn’t happen.

They say, “There is no wrath like a woman scorned,” but I think there is no wrath like a son of a mentally ill mother who neglected him and possibly abused him sexually. I believe those wounds go deep in men and are largely untapped in terms of public dialogue. A mother’s love is supposed to be the most sacred love on the planet, yet, most men I’ve talked to don’t speak very respectfully of their mothers. I think it’s a complicated relationship for a man, to be sure; the most complicated of his life, bar none. The women he has relationships with bear the brunt of it.

I haven’t thought about or had a platonic relationship since I was in my twenties! Good, God! This idealized, Philia love with no sex is so…dumb and unrealistic. It’s also highly unnatural. Anyway, it’s a good thing I can unpause Zoosk at any point.

This could be considered a slight move toward lover awareness on his part but the overriding energy of a lover is awesome sex and affection or Eros. It’s not idealized at all! It’s full of Eros, is extremely carnal,  meaning body which is all good. Yes! Come on! The body!

The garden still lies fallow. I hate to say it, but this Platonic Philia crap sounds like religion to me. Next thing I know I’ll be hearing about Church and that he’s saved.

Share this: Synchronicity 13:20, DNA is Time

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Why Hallmark Stars Shantel VanSanten & Victor Webster's Divorce Settlement Will Keep Them Connected

Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster's time filming Hallmark's "Love Blossoms" in 2016 stirred up a real-life rom-com scenario. Speaking to Brides in 2022, VanSanten shared that she struck up a friendship with her co-star in no time and even wound up advising Webster on his love life. About a year later, their platonic relationship evolved into something more romantic. Webster popped the question in February 2021 and  the Hallmark stars went on to marry each other three different times later that same year. Unfortunately, though, VanSanten and Webster couldn't make their fairytale romance last and they split up after two years of marriage.  

According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly in April 2023, Webster was the one who filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the initial breakup, which occurred in January. Meanwhile, in June, court documents acquired by People revealed that the former spouses were "in mediation and any issues regarding spousal support will be determined." It took the "Days Of Our Lives" alum and his former co-star over a year to iron out the specifics of their divorce agreement, only reaching a rather odd conclusion in July 2024. 

Under normal circumstances, a celebrity couple who didn't share any children naturally wouldn't see much of each other post-divorce. However, in the case of VanSanten and Webster, they had a few reasons to stay in touch: The former couple's dog, Nova, and their two cats, Finnegan and Phillippa. Unsurprisingly, they ensured they were legally allowed to continuing seeing their fur babies.

Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster had a detailed pet custody agreement

We initially learned the details of Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster's hush-hush divorce through court documents procured by People. These papers confirmed that Webster had been declared the sole owner of their dog, but VanSanten was given clearance to frequently visit the pup. However, the "Final Destination" star couldn't keep their fur baby in her care for more than three weeks at a time unless she wanted to pay her ex-husband a whopping $10,000-per-day fine until he got Nova back. Furthermore, VanSanten had to keep the "Workin' Moms" alum in the loop about their dog's whereabouts. Elsewhere, the exes agreed on joint custody of their two cats. However, they would reside at Webster's brother, Vincent's home. Both parties also consented to shell out $1,500 to Vincent on a yearly basis to compensate him for caring for the felines. 

Naturally, a divorce agreement heavily centered around pets seemed strange. And, when we asked Holly Davis, a nationally-recognized family law trial attorney, if she regularly came across pet custody agreements, the expert exclusively told us that she had only seen one successful occurrence in her long-standing career. Davis asserted that dogs were classified as a part of marital assets but legal professionals understood that people were emotionally attached to their pets, so they allowed them to spend exorbitant amounts on mediation to decide ownership. However, "Typically, courts will not go so far as to issue a court-ordered dog possession schedule or issue court-ordered support for the dog."

The former couple's arrangement could complicate things in the long run

Family law trial attorney Holly Davis exclusively informed The List that a pet custody agreement could give Shantel VanSanten and Victor Webster a reason to remain in each other's lives going forward. However, she also warned that such arrangements can quickly turn complicated when the exes move to different places, or get into new relationships and no longer want to speak to their former spouse as much. Ultimately, though, VanSanten and Webster's divorce agreement didn't just outline their pet arrangements. As reported by People, the legal documents also established that the exes would put their once-shared home up for sale and divide the proceeds from it equally. The "One Tree Hill" alum also agreed to pay her ex-husband $25,000 to even out their divorce settlement. 

Shortly after everything was finalized, both parties took to their respective Instagram Stories to cryptically hint at why the marriage ended. VanSanten seemingly claimed that the "Five Star Christmas" star didn't put his best foot forward in their relationship as she shared a quote that read, "Let go. Don't allow yourself to get comfortable existing in spaces where you know you deserve better. Love is not meant to be given in the bare minimum." Then, just one day later, Webster posted a Story expressing his desire to find a mature, drama-free love. His chosen quote read in part: "Your partner should give you peace of mind and reassurance, not constant little heart attacks and high anxiety," (via People ).

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Ashley Judd: I'm calling on Biden to step aside. Beating Trump is too important.

My folks are not bad people, in spite of what you may now think of them. they are facing bad options. we must give them a different choice..

Wednesday evening, I was visiting, as we say in the South, with some of my beloved chosen and biological family. These folks are my roots, my sense of belonging, and meet many of my most intimate human needs.

And some of them, remarkably, feverishly love Donald Trump.

And I love these Trump folks as if my life depended on it, and at times, it literally has. I do not love the beliefs they believe and cling to.

And Wednesday, as I listened to one of my dearest people share some of those beliefs and thoughts, it hurt. I was shaken. My body felt like it was on fire. The words activated in me profound alarm in the aftermath of the recent debate at which President Joe Biden, a deeply decent man, was incapable of countering Trump, while he, unchecked, gushed a firehose of galling lies.

“Those people pouring over our border are less evolved than we are. They are naturally less intelligent. They have criminal natures. They are incapable of respecting the rule of law and order.”

“Men must be strong. They cannot be weak.” We were talking about the wish for boys and men to experience a full range of human emotions without shame or punishment. “It is dog-eat-dog and men will get eaten if they show any weakness. China has a massive, 2-million-man army. They aren’t teaching DEI. Good men must be willing to kill at any moment, but just know how to control that impulse.”

And Trump folks can act on those beliefs. Another one of my closest people, upon arriving at our local mall, came across Black youth hanging out, laughing, sitting on the hoods of cars. She went inside the mall to notify the security person on duty that Black kids were menacingly loafing and up to no good. The security person called the police.

I do not necessarily think all Trump supporters believe, feel, act and speak like this. I know Donald Trump himself does. That is critical. That is why I have come to realize that my private, personal belief is one I should no longer just keep to myself.

And so, I now ask President Joe Biden to step aside.

It's time for Joe Biden to leave the 2024 race

The defense of our cherished rights and freedoms, the moral imperative that we do better by more people, and our bodies, cannot be left to voters who see and are frightened of the consequences of President Biden’s obvious limitations , or who are now not going to vote. We take the risk of an off night and minimize the warning signs at our gravest peril.

You may judge me or be baffled by how and why I can continue to live with and love people who feel and act upon the same harmful beliefs that Trump espouses. And, of course, I wholly realize they feel my beliefs and positions are equally odious. I am humbled and grateful they neither exile me from our family nor allow our significant differences to taint their love for me.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store .

As Father Richard Rohr has written, we live in a " mixed reality ." I forgive reality for being so mixed. And I do not choose to sanitize reality or my life. I trust real, however messy it is, and however much it hurts to hold this complexity.

My deal breaker is not with my loved ones who are thrilled by Donald Trump. I cannot change them. I tried that, failed at that, damaged our relationships by trying that, and I have had enough loss in my life. I neither want to nor will I lose any more of my folks, especially over politics. My deal breakers with Donald Trump are many, but after listening Wednesday night in that living room, what is searing me is the cruelty. It cannot be America’s future.

Ashley Judd: We have the power to help women and girls caught in crises. Why won't we?

We can't risk a Trump presidency

I feel immense, bereft sadness at the beliefs Donald Trump holds, and that his supporters endorse. But that sadness is trivial compared to the hurt, devastation and loss millions will feel if Donald Trump is reelected. He would wield the power of the presidency with unprecedented, incalculable cruelty and unfairness.

Especially disturbing is his distortion of Christianity, the force of Christian Nationalism advancing him, and the risks for anyone who diverges from that.

Biden? Harris? I don't care. Stopping Trump and Project 2025 is all that matters.

This is not something I wrote easily, quickly or for political convenience. My belief in what President Biden has done for our country runs deep. My hopes for the next term run high. My investment is personal. I bring my body. I show up. I am a Democrat who relishes traveling up to Wisconsin for early voting, bringing coffee and doughnuts at 6 a.m. to first-time voters who have slept overnight on the sidewalk outside their polling place, so eager to cast their ballots for an inaugural experience.

Showing up publicly can cost me, and it absolutely will for far too many if Trump is reelected. When I read the “I am a Nasty Woman” poem at the Women’s March in 2017, I quoted Donald Trump. I was fired for doing so, by a company with whom I had an endorsement.

Trump said it . He was elected. I quoted him, I lose a life-altering paycheck. That is the double standard of American life for women under Donald Trump. And for all who disagree with him.

And writing this essay will cost me. Some, perhaps many, people will scorn me (and worse). Their outrage at me is insignificant compared to the harm that is assured under a second Trump term for, say, our LGBTQ+ families.

With Donald Trump in leadership, speech is chilled. Dissent is punished. Sharing your truth about your life in America can risk your livelihood. When a man raped me in 1998, I was able was have a safe, legal abortion that was accessible right where I live in Tennessee.

We already know many states ban abortions and 10 states have no exceptions for rape and incest , even for adolescent girls. This is reality for girls and women under Donald Trump and it must be the principle on which President Biden chooses to voluntarily, gracefully step aside.

Voters deserve a real choice on the Democratic ticket

Much has been said and printed about the historic progress of this Biden administration. Historic job creation . Visionary investment in America that future generations will feel. I have a deep appreciation and fond regard for him.

Equally, much has been said and printed about what Donald Trump has done and will do. I have been watching and listening.

As my mom’s dear friend Dr. Maya Angelou said , “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Donald Trump, I see you, and I believe you.

Thus, because of the very real hurt millions of people would feel when he is president again, the Democratic Party must not delay in thanking President Biden and supporting a talented, robust Democrat to be our party’s nominee. We do not have another day for distraction or division among ourselves.

Some in Washington may want to wait for the next week, the next press conference, the next network interview. Here, where I sit in rural Tennessee, it is clear that Americans have already made up their minds against President Biden, on top of the majority who love to vote for Donald Trump.

My folks are not bad people, despite what you may now think of them. They are facing bad options. We must give them a different choice from our Democratic Party for president of the United States.

Ashley Judd  is a humanitarian, writer and actor and has served as a United Nations Population Fund's Goodwill Ambassador since 2016. 

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page , on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter .

Breaking News

George Clooney calls on president to step aside: Aging Biden no longer the man he was

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Even George Clooney — a prominent donor and major fundraiser for President Biden’s reelection campaign — appears to have lost faith in the president’s ability to win the 2024 election.

The two-time Oscar winner, lifelong Democrat and high-profile campaign donor has formally asked the 81-year-old commander in chief to step aside so that the party can nominate a new candidate to take on former President Trump on the November ballot. Why? Because of Biden’s “fight against time,” which Clooney characterized as the only battle that POTUS cannot win.

Biden, Obama raise more than $30 million at glitzy L.A. event

President Biden joins former President Obama, George Clooney and Julia Roberts at star-studded fundraiser in L.A. that raises more than $30 million.

June 16, 2024

“None of us can,” Clooney wrote Wednesday in an opinion piece for the New York Times titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F— deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Democrats took in $30 million at that downtown L.A. fundraiser, setting a record for money generated by the party in a single night. In addition to Clooney, Julia Roberts and former President Obama headlined the event and Jimmy Kimmel moderated a conversation between Obama and Biden.

Clooney wrote that Biden was a “hero” who had “saved democracy” in 2020 and called upon him to “do it again in 2024.” But, citing Biden’s poor performance during CNN’s debate last month , he joined a growing number of Hollywood backers, including those who previously wrote large checks to the campaign, feeling skittish about Biden’s prospects despite the president’s resolve to remain in the race.

Some of those going public with their angst about Biden include “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, media titan Barry Diller, Disney heir Abigail Disney and Endeavor Chief Executive Ari Emanuel , brother of Rahm Emanuel, who is currently U.S. ambassador to Japan and formerly Obama’s chief of staff. Filmmaker Rob Reiner wrote Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter) that “Democracy is facing an existential threat. We need someone younger to fight back. Joe Biden must step aside.”

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July 5, 2024

In his op-ed, Clooney wondered if Biden was tired or suffering from a cold during his head-to-head with Trump. But he mostly took issue with the next-day narrative being spun by his party, arguing that Biden’s nomination was not yet a sure thing ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. (The GOP convention starts Monday.)

“[O]ur party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before,” Clooney wrote. “As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, who we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.”

Clooney said it’s “fair” to point these things out: “This is about age. Nothing more.”

He predicted the Democrats are “not going to win in November with this president,” nor would they win the House of Representatives or retain their majority in the Senate. He said this isn’t just his opinion, but “the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”

“[T]he dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth,” the “Argo” and “Syriana” Academy Award winner wrote. “It is disingenuous, at best, to argue that Democrats have already spoken with their vote and therefore the nomination is settled and done, when we just received new and upsetting information. We all think Republicans should abandon their nominee now that he’s been convicted of 34 felonies.”

As Biden flounders, why aren’t more Democrats sold on Kamala Harris?

Despite her qualifications, Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t been treated as a viable contender to Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee and a felon.

As such, Clooney also criticized the presumptive Republican candidate and “the revenge tour that Donald Trump calls a presidential campaign” and called for the Democrats to seriously consider potential replacements. Who? Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear or Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, he suggests.

“Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another but, in the short time we have, focus on what will make this country soar. Then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out.”

It would be “messy,” he said, but “democracy is messy” and a fresh contest would “enliven our party and wake up voters who, long before the June debate, had already checked out.”

Representatives for Clooney said Wednesday that they had “nothing to add” and that the essay presented his thinking “in its entirety.”

Also on Wednesday morning, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) sent a rare public signal that suggested she is trying to nudge Biden to consider dropping out of the election, telling MSNBC that it’s “up to the president to decide if he is going to run” and that “we’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.” She later tried to walk back those comments in an interview on CBS.

More to Read

Column: George Clooney is right about Biden, and maybe he should replace him

July 13, 2024

Column: ‘Retire and go back under a rock’: Biden loyalists push back on my call for Joe to get tested

July 11, 2024

Column: If the Democrats want Biden to drop out, they should follow Pelosi’s lead, not Clooney’s

July 10, 2024

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Gary Janetti really wants air travel attire to step it up.

The television veteran — he’s a longtime writer and producer of “Family Guy” and did the same on “Will & Grace,” “Vicious” and “The Prince” — chronicles his own travel in his new and third collection of essays, “We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay.”

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In the new book, Janetti recalls taking many cruises when he was a child because his father was a salesman for Cunard, hosting a charity event on the Orient Express to Venice with his celebrity stylist husband Brad Goreski , an unforgettable dinner with Maggie Smith in London and much more.

I talked to Janetti while he was – what else? — traveling to promote the book before vacationing in Italy.

You have a rule that no matter how long the trip is, you usually only bring a carry-on. You never check luggage.

I have one carry-on with me right now and I’m gone for three weeks. One carry-on and a backpack.

What kind of carry-on do you use?

It’s actually the one on the book cover. It’s an old Louis Vuitton bag from about 20 years ago. It’s soft and I know how to pack it. I can pack in about 15 minutes.

Did Brad get to read the book before it was off to the printers?

Nobody’s reading it. Even my editor didn’t read it until it was done. Brad didn’t read it until very recently. I don’t like to share things. I don’t want anybody else’s voice in my head. It allows me to be as honest and as direct as possible.

Does Brad ever ask you not to write about something?

Never, not once.

Is there something you will never write about?

When are you going to write a TV series that takes place on a cruise ship?

I did. I wrote a pilot many years ago about cruise ship entertainers called “The Big Splash.” It didn’t go anywhere.

Do you watch “Below Deck?”

We love “Below Deck.” I always identify with people working on the boat. I worked in the service industry for so many years so I’m always identifying with the crew – never a passenger. I identify with the crew and their struggles and dealing with the passengers.

In one essay you write about your first trip to London when you were enrolled in an acting program in college. On the first night, everyone went to see a production of “Richard III” but you opted for “Starlight Express.”

I was 19 and it was my first time traveling by myself. I was in England for the first time. Everyone was like, “We’re going to see Richard III,” and I was like, “I want to see this big splashy spectacle of a musical called ‘Starlight Express.’” But it was it was kind of not the experience that I should have been having that night.

Will you go see the new “Starlight Express” revival?

I’m not a fan, so I don’t anticipate it. But I did see Nicole Scherzinger in “Sunset Boulevard” in London and she was brilliant. I love Andrew Lloyd Weber but “Starlight Express” again? No.

Have you ventured into writing for Broadway?

I have not yet, but I would love to write the book to a musical. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do.

I have to ask you to weigh in on Donald Trump once having a crush on Debra Messing while you were making “Will & Grace.”

[Laughs] I thought that was…odd. But I think I’ll leave it at that.

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From Scorsese With Love: A Tribute to Powell-Pressburger Movies

“Made in England” is an essay film about the artists whose passion and cinematography deeply influenced the American director.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

What you can learn about movies from just reading about them is pretty limited — an ironic admission from a movie critic, I know. The best way to understand what makes a film or a filmmaker interesting is to submerge yourself in their work, to binge a whole catalog. But when that’s not possible, or if you want more context, a great guide and a well-crafted essay film can be invaluable.

Few such guides could outpace Martin Scorsese, whose narration (often delivered directly to camera) powers “ Made in England : The Films of Powell and Pressburger” (in theaters), directed by David Hinton. Scorsese’s Film Foundation World Cinema Project restores movies from underrepresented and forgotten filmmakers from around the world, works that might otherwise be lost to time. Among those were “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes,” two seminal movies from the 1940s by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger . Scorsese has long counted the pair among his greatest influences; their movies pushed the boundaries of color, story and passion.

What makes “Made in England” so compelling is how effortlessly it swings from film analysis to cinema and cultural history to personal narrative. It’s a roughly chronological documentary about the filmmakers, but it’s also the story of personal obsession. For Scorsese, that story started in his own childhood, when he saw rough black-and-white transfers on TV that transfixed him. Later, he became obsessed with the filmmakers’ works, and Powell in particular eventually became a mentor and a friend. He and Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, were married until Powell died in 1990.

The film works through the history of both men, the origins of their collaboration and the ways their films evolved during and after World War II, particularly as commercial taste shifted. Their experimentations with sound, music and heightened realism are illuminated through “The Red Shoes,” “Colonel Blimp” and films like “Black Narcissus,” “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and the nearly career-killing “ Peeping Tom ,” all lovingly explored through Scorsese’s viewpoint.

Scorsese has narrated documentaries about film history before (including “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” and “My Voyage to Italy”), always with a distinctive angle. And it’s easy to see why. The average viewer — that is to say, someone not quite as obsessed with movies as Scorsese is — pops open the queue on a streamer of choice and starts drowning. There are, quite literally, more movies now than there have ever been, and even a fairly sophisticated viewer can struggle to choose.

“Made in England” is remarkably engaging thanks to Scorsese’s animated commentary and some flourishes, like comparisons between shots from Powell and Pressburger’s films and Scorsese’s. But whether you are lucky enough to attend the summer of Powell and Pressburger in New York’s cinemas, enjoy streaming from home or are just curious about these fascinating filmmakers, the documentary is a personal, vibrant gift.

An earlier version of this article misstated the organization responsible for restoring “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes.” It is Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, not the director’s World Cinema Project.

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Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson