The greatest good which two men can do to each other is to unite, that is, to become one soul in two bodies. If they do this, then each one will have gained all the good that was in the other’s soul, and also gain a whole other body to control, with which to fulfill his ends. There is simply no more which a man can give to another than his body and soul – except his estate, of course, which should go with the body. To unite is to achieve the perfection of friendship, and friends hold all things in common.
Union is unachievable on this earth. Simply put, we cannot join our souls to one another and have this new, greater soul, control both of our bodies. It is not something we can do. The closest we can do is to get into relationships, which are perfect insofar as they participate in the ideal of union.
Given any two men, it would be good for them to unite, as described above. Similarly, given any two men, it is good for them to get into a relationship, which is the closest we can get to this. But given the diversity of men, there needs also be a diversity of relationships to accommodate for these differences. They fall into two main kinds – equal, of which the type is friendship, and unequal, of which the type is submission.
Friendship is the ideal case. The two men are almost already united. Their souls are alike and similar in all things. They have the same likes and dislikes, the same habits, and the same knowledge. The goal of friendship is simply to maintain this closeness to a perfect union – for one man to improve the other insofar as he gains any new perfections – and to exchange bodies and estates, that is, do activities together. They can achieve much more of their ends with the aid of the other’s body and estate than on their own.
Submission is the more common case. The two men are different in some respect, which necessarily means that one is better and one is worse. The worse must submit to the better, in the respects in which he is worse – which, since he is worse absolutely speaking, is the preponderance of respects. By this means, they also achieve another kind of closeness to union.
Submission is asymmetrical, of course. The subject does not, initially, gain the use of the master’s body as much as the master gains the use of the subject’s. The mere control of one body over another is sufficient for the economic benefits of submission to be attained, and is therefore common in real life.
But perfect submission is of soul as well as of body. Ideally, every time the worse man submits, he should be taught the wisdom of his master’s command, by word or example, and so become closer to him. Given enough time, and supposing that the master does not gain new perfections more quickly than the subject can catch up with him – which would be impossible in the case of a perfectly good master –, he should become his friend. Which is to say, master and subject would become equals. The subject would no longer need to submit, because he would will the same things the master does.
Friendship attempts to overcome the material obstacles to union – the fact that, being different men, we cannot be of one mind without communication – while submission attempts to overcome spiritual obstacles as well. Both kinds of relationship have the same end, and that end is to give, insofar as we are able on this earth, the greatest good which a man can give.
That fable in Plato’s Symposium, where men also become of one body, is, of course, only a simplistic and carnal image of true union. It is impossible to achieve a better poetic depiction, but it should not be taken literally; to unite our bodies back-to-back like that would be cumbersome, eroding a main benefit of friendship, which is the greater utility of having more bodies.
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