[B-Greek] Was there any word for ...

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Oct 26 08:53:43 EDT 2010


On Oct 26, 2010, at 7:22 AM, James Ernest wrote:
> John,
> If I were pursuing the question you pose, I think I would start by rereading
> Plato's Symposium. I'm not sure whether it will answer your question, or
> lead you to revise it, or neither. But that's where I'd look. At worst,
> you'll be reading some lovely (pun intended) Greek.

Indeed, and, for what it's worth, it was through a careful reading of the
Symposium that I came to see that Anders Nygren's insistence that ERWS
is fundamentally a selfish love of the other for one's own benefit, is not
quite adequate to Plato's handling of the word. The problem here is that
one tends to think of ERWS as exploitative and sexual, although in Plato
it becomes mutually beneficent and generative of shared good. The
repercussions of Plato's notion of ERWS are to be noted in Aristotle's
notion of the unmoved mover of the universe (κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον,
ΚΙΝΕΙ hWS ERWMENON) in the Metaphysics, and Dante's final-line
vision of "l'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle" in the Paradiso.
An endeavor to define Greek words for "love" in a carefully-nuanced
fashion may readily founder on a discovery that usage is not consistent
among all Greek authors nor necessarily consistent within a particular
Greek author.

T. S. Eliot in Quartet #1, "Burnt Norton" writes:

"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still."

Even to Greek, that paragon of precise discourse, Eliot's
words appear readily applicable. Seems to me that the
subject-header of this thread is extraordinarily apt!

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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