Plato believes that people are in the most real world of ideas before and after death. There, everyone is a complete person, but in this world, we are all divided into two. So people always feel that if they lose something, they are trying to find their "other half". Plato also used this to explain why people have "relationships". In his theory, no half is more important, so both parties in love are equal. And your original half in the conceptual world is your perfect object. He/she is looking for him somewhere in the world. Only spiritual love. But there is no physical union. Such pure white love cannot be defiled. It's called platonic love.

Core idea

1. Equal love view of both sides;

2. Pure spiritual love rather than physical love;

3. Ideal love view, that is, extremely romantic or impossible love view;

There is only one person in this world. For you, he is perfect, only for you. In other words, everyone has his perfect partner, and there is only one.

People often only pay attention to 2 and 3, but in fact 1 and 4 are the core ideas of true platonic love. Plato believes that people are in the most real world of ideas before and after death.

At that time, same-sex love prevailed in ancient Greece, and the "love" they referred to was often the love between the same sex. From this perspective, Plato may try to incorporate this form of love into his love philosophy.

purpose

Modern Platonism is also called "realism" because mathematical concepts are considered to be real. Platonism has a considerable influence in modern western mathematics, and some great mathematicians, such as G. Cantor, Russell, Godel and bourbaki, basically hold this view. It is generally believed that this is not accidental, but a philosophical reflection on the simple belief that mathematics reflects the objective world and mathematics has objective truth. Because of this, Platonism has a certain positive effect on the historical development of mathematics: it urges mathematicians to take an objective and scientific position in their own research, and when some highly abstract mathematical theories are doubted by people because they can't find realistic prototypes, it may also give people some faith. Although this belief is blind, it may also lead to mistakes.

The mistake of Platonism is obvious: taking the form of reflection as the object of understanding; Regard abstraction as concrete objective existence; It is of course an objective truth to think that a form of thinking itself is objective. Studying truth without human practice will inevitably lead to fallacy. Platonism is objective idealism in philosophy.