CONTEMPLATIVE ASCENT

The pattern of reform that I shall call the “contemplative ascent” lies at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition. Articulated first by Plato, the pattern is influentially developed by Plotinus and finds adherents throughout history, from the later Neoplatonists to Augustine and other Christian thinkers, to Spinoza and, in recent times, imaginative writers such as Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. I shall focus here on Plato, Spinoza, and Proust. Plato gives the pattern its defining features; Spinoza deepens the account of love's necessary ambivalence and of the social benefits of ascent; Proust, alluding directly to the Platonic ladder, places it within a narrative framework, motivating it more explicitly, developing Spinoza's account of ambivalence, envy, and jealousy, and making clear what it comes to in a life.

The general idea behind this ascent pattern is that the cure for the vulnerability of passion is the passion for understanding. By focusing on that intellectual goal, and on the goal of creativity that the tradition links with it, one finds oneself able to deal with the very same worldly objects – or so it is claimed – without agonizing dependency, without ambivalence and the desire for revenge, without the self-centered partiality that makes love a threat in the social life. I turn now to Plato's Symposium, the source for this entire tradition – and also for Christian and Romantic views of the ladder of love as well, since they react to and critize Plato's account.