Even funnier thing to imagine: resurrecting Diogenes too and telling him that “Platonic” relationships means not fucking, he’d probably laugh himself back to death.
So I actually know the origin of this term because it came up when I studied Plato in my classes. Basically, in ancient Greece it was a super common practice for teachers to fuck their students. Like all the time. It was considered a way for the student to “pay” the teacher. Plato thought this was bullshit. He felt that a student could not properly learn from someone who was truly only interested in having sex with them. He didn’t fuck his students and derided those who did. Other teachers who refused to fuck their students were said to have “platonic” teaching relationships with them – so named because they were following Plato’s example. So the reason it’s called a Platonic relationship is because Plato was heavily anti-teachers-fucking-their-students and it’s one of the few things he was ever even remotely correct about.
You guys what the fuck are you reblogging bullshit stories without even checking.
No this wasn’t a practice for students to pay with sex. Maybe in some. Occasions it was done just like sometimes this can happen nowadays if someone is a dick? But it wasn’t a, “practice” nor was it common? And it wasn’t a thing. And the term certainly did t come from that
Guys… Platonas was a fucking philosopher… He talked about things in life. One of the things he talks about, extensively esp in his work “Symposio” is about how love in itself is something more than sex, more than physical, because humans aren’t just their desires.
Anyway the whole work goes on about this and about how human beings can be more than their bodies and how human relationships can vary depending on the relation you have developed with someone.
So he goes on and on describing love that doesn’t necessarily coinside with sex or physical attraction but it happens through mental connections.
Literally what we use platonic love for…. Literally actual love. It’s just that modern meanings and vieews for love are so different and so fucked up that we can’t even think about love as separate from eventual sex.
He was trying to describe a kind of love between a man and a woman (specifically making a point on that) that isn’t necessarily physical. That being extended to same sex love of course
Give the man his credit he was a philosopher these are his works his legacy…. It’s not some shitty story about ppl fucking their students
The term platonic to this kind of love was given later by western European scholars who surveyed his work and at the time ( esp during the 19ntb century, romanticism Era) was a lot of controversy on what exactly could be platonic love and what could not.