Stoic Eros

Book excerpt: The Stoics distinguish two forms of eros. In vicious agents eros is indeed a passion and thus born out of a defective rational judgment about what is needed for happiness. But there is also a positive form of erotic love, practiced by the Sage on the basis of knowledge, which aims to reproduce his virtuous condition in others. In this Element, the author shows how the Stoics' wider theoretical commitments in ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and psychology support their duplex account of eros. They also consider the influence of Plato's Symposium on the Stoic account, arguing for hitherto unrecognized links with Socratic moral psychology. The Element concludes with an assessment of how the Stoic erotic ideal fares in relation to our intuitions about the non-egoistic and particularized nature of love.