Transcript for Interview with GRF Ferrari on Plato's Phaedrus

Read the full interview transcript.

0. Introduction

Plato's Phaedrus begins by examining what we would today call casual sex. The question is, is it better to have sex with someone who loves you or someone who does not and so will not get attached? Now, we might think, look, if it is two consenting adults, there is nothing wrong with sex outside a relationship. That is the message of hookup culture; this is what sexual liberation has freed us to do. Plato, however, was writing to a liberal culture very similar to our own, and he forcefully rejects it. Casual sex not only hurts our souls but is structurally analogous to prostitution. And Plato does not stop there. Not only does he reject casual sex, he also rejects sex even in a loving relationship. True lovers should abstain from sex.

Let me repeat that. Wise couples should not be having sex. Instead, they should redirect their passion for each other towards something much better: philosophy. Philosophy is the better form of sex. My guest today is Berkeley's Giovanni Ferrari. He is a great Plato scholar and will help us make sense of all this. I know this all sounds pretty crazy now, but if you listen to this interview with an open mind, I think you will walk away with a profound understanding of what is really at stake in your life when it comes to sex and love.

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1. Two Speeches Against Love

Johnathan Bi: So in the Phaedrus, we are presented with a question about whether you should accept the sexual advances of someone who loves you passionately or someone who just wants to have sex with you, a non-lover. And this first speech that we are given is by a rhetorician called Lysias, and he actually gives a speech in favor of accepting the advances of the non-lover. So tell us about Lysias' arguments for why.

G.R.F. Ferrari: Basically, it is a very economic argument. It is like, it will just be a much better deal for you because the trouble with passion is that passion comes and goes. It is very intense, and then it burns itself out. So passionate lovers are inherently fickle, says the non-lover. I will just be your friend. There is this thing that I want from you, and in return, you will... It is going to be a great deal. You have already heard what you are going to get from me and then just says, what you are not going to get from me is all the bad stuff about lovers.

G.R.F. Ferrari: And perhaps I should mention that we are talking here about a relationship... A standard same-sex relationship between Athenian males at this time would involve an older man, a younger, a teenage boy. And the teenage boy is giving the older man sex, not expected to particularly take pleasure in that aspect of it, and the older person is. And the older person is giving the younger one an entrée into society, supporting them, becoming a patron of that boy.

Johnathan Bi: Right. So this relationship is, the technical term is pederasty. And it is a common feature of many aristocratic societies, east or west. However, I do think that this dialogue is quite relatable because it made me think of, at least, the current debate over casual sex, friends with benefits versus committed relationships, right? Because there is a similar argument going on today or after the sexual revolution, which is committed relationships, marriage, someone who loves you, that is so much work.

Johnathan Bi: What if you could just split out each of the parts of this committed relationship, okay? So you use Uber Eats instead of someone who cooks for you, right? You use Task Rabbit instead of someone who helps you do your chores. And even sex, you can find someone who does not love you but just wants to have sex with you, right? So this is hopefully a key discussion that our modern audience would relate to as well, because it is fundamentally about can you almost disentangle sex from the love, right?

G.R.F. Ferrari: Yes, that is right. And the way that the first half of the dialogue progresses is to show how much is being missed. It is not that it could not work, it could be very efficient, but how much is missed if you restrict yourself to this?

Johnathan Bi: Let me give you a quote from your work.

One of the functions served by conventional erotic behavior was to mark off sexual relationships between aristocratic peers from those commercially procured from prostitutes. Accordingly, the outrageous twist in the arguments of the non-lover is that by pooh-poohing the traditional agonies, he comes close to using the boy as his whore. He is buying sex from him, not with coin, of course, but with the value for money of a trouble-free friendship.

(GRF Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas)

That gave me a lens to view casual sex today, where it is, in some sense, transactional and it is like prostitution. But instead of one giving sex and pleasure and the other paying it with money, in casual sex you are just paying each other with sex. But it still has that kind of rational transactional nature.

G.R.F. Ferrari: Yes, we have experienced this with hookup culture, which luckily seems to have, well, I do not know, but it did seem to... I certainly noticed a lot of adverse press against it. It seems to have burned itself out, thankfully.

Johnathan Bi: Before we get to Socrates' arguments for love, what is interesting is that Socrates is, after Lysias, forced into giving a speech against love. And so they are like, well, Socrates, you give a better speech. So tell us about Socrates' speech against love.

G.R.F. Ferrari: Well, there are two interesting things about it, two big developments. One is it is a bad idea to... For the boy to bind his destiny to a person that is in passionate love because it is a desire that will lead the lover to want to completely dominate and entrap the young boy. So it is based on, rather than being based on a completely transactional economic argument as Lysias', almost economic argument, as Lysias' non-lover speech was, this starts by describing the difference between reason and desire, giving an analysis of the soul and disparaging romantic love as, you know, desire taking a... Desire, overwhelming reason to cast the relationship in a really bad light. So it is a kind of morally improved version of the same argument that therefore you should not go there, do not engage in a passionate relationship, but instead keep your reason in charge.

Johnathan Bi: Right. So Lysias says, do the friends with benefits. Do not go to the passionate loving relationship of passionate lovers because of all these rational, these instrumental benefits you get. Like, it is much less turbulent, but Socrates, what he says is the lover is going to try to control you. The lover is going to try to reduce down your other social relationships so you have nothing but him. The lover is going to make you stop going to the gym because he is worried if you get too attractive, other people are going to chase after you. The lover is going to stunt your very own development. The lover is essentially trying to clip off your wings. Why is this speech, as you described, more moral?