The Highest Form of Love
In Plato’s Symposium love is much more than an emotional state experienced with other humans. Two of my favorite Romantics (Shelley & Novalis) were deeply influenced by Plato and it’s understandable why. He saw love as more than an exchange of emotions between humans. He saw love as a yearning for idealism, beauty, and truth.
In Platonism, the highest form of love was not between humans, but the pursuit of beauty and truth.
This is central to Romanticism and Plato is a major undercurrent throughout the entire Romantic movement.
The romanticism of our writers is, therefore, largely a record of this feeling of their love for things to be loved, a record of the properties of their own heart, a love-gospel of soul-experiences.
Robert Maxmilian Wernaer
As Romantics, we experience the world deeply and are constantly longing for beauty and truth. Some of us (like myself) lean toward absurdism, not believing in inherent meaning, but as a Romantic there remains a desire to infuse, create, or discover meaning anyway.
Why?
Because it makes life more beautiful. It’s really as simple as that.
We Romantics believe our brief time on this earth is worth savoring. Even in the midst of suffering and pain, we long to find some morsel of beauty. Romantics are notorious for finding beauty in darkness. Look at Tolkien—turning his shadows into the most epic fantasy of our lifetime.
We don’t shy from the shadows, we go into them. All in an effort to discover that Platonian ideal of love beyond emotion.
And then, many of us choose to record this love-gospel in some artistic form.
I believe some of us, such as Thomas Wolfe, record our love for things in order to hold on to them ourselves. Tom experienced life with such passionate intention and felt the loss of things before they were even lost. He was known to stand in front of iron gates for hours recording what he saw and experienced. His records were often a desire to hold on a little longer and appreciate life as profoundly as possible. I can relate to this.
Others record their love of things in order to share and spread this love to the world. They want to light a candle in the dark for others. Or perhaps simply keep the light shining in their own dark corners. I can also relate to this. Much of what I write is my own effort to keep my lamp lit in a world constantly trying to snuff it out.
As Tom says so beautifully:
It seemed to him that all man’s life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and… he would die with defiance on his lips, and the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all‑engulfing night.
Art for many of us is an act of defiance against a sterile world. In today’s culture, with AI turning human life into data to replicate, reducing us to numbers and patterns, this act of defiance is more important than ever. This Platonic ideal is going to become less and less sought as people choose ease and production over the slow burn of discovering beauty and wonder.
Love of truth will go out the window. Love of ease will replace it.
But not for all of us. No.
Some of us will die with defiance on our lips, and the shout of our denial will ring out with the last pulsing of our hearts into the maw of an all-engulfing night.
The Romantic ideal lives on.
For some of us, it will never die.