Seneca distinguished love in friendship, as intellectual: and love in coupling, as erotic.
Undoubtedly, intellectual and erotic love share similar characteristics: however, Seneca perceived the tendency of erotic love to madden the intellectual love of friendship. This maddening characteristic of erotic love caused desire and passions to overrule reason in intellectual love. Erotic love was strictly, for Seneca, primarily for procreation.
By the love of friendship, ideal wisdom purports the need, but not want, of friends. Nor should want or need, nor utility pervade true friendship. Any utilisation of friendship for want or need contradicts the vital Stoic value of restraint from indulgence, the mastery of desires through reason and adherence to virtue. True love in friendship seeks no leverage for advantage by favour, expectation or utility.
For Seneca, love of friendship was
‘To have someone I can die for, to have someone I can follow to exile, for whose death I might exchange my own and pay the price instead’ (Letters on Morality)
In this letter Seneca indicates the characteristic of love of friendship: as sacrifice, ‘(to) die for someone: and loyalty, ‘(to) follow into exile’. They key value of ‘exchange my own and pay for the price instead’ determines virtue in love by what is given, not gained, from friendship.
Seneca reiterates what is to be given, not gained, in erotic love. Like, friendship, erotic love necessitates no leveraging for gain or advantage, by sheer gratification of lust and desires.
But ‘pure’ erotic as a perfect reciprocal harmony: ‘If you want to be loved, then love’ (9.6). This doctrine is encapsulated in Seneca’s letter 104.5, alluding to his wife Paulina:
‘For what could be more pleasant than to be so dear to a wife that because of this you become dearer to yourself’
Pure love requires sacrifice and loyalty, to be given, not gained. The Stoic notion of reciprocal harmony is governed by the will of virtue, concurring with the cosmic ‘laws of nature’.
Pure erotic love, as pure love in friendship, means one should live and die for another.
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