Erōs and Anterōs in the Phaedrus: Rivalry, Reciprocity, or Reflection?

The very unique appearance of anterōs in the Phaedrus (255e1) has for a long time puzzled many readers and commentators, both ancient and modern, of Plato’s sublime dialogue. Some have translated it by “counter-love”, strengthening the theme of rivalry; others prefer “love-in-return” and its cognates, focusing on its reciprocal dynamics; still others understand it as “reflected love”, highlighting its qualification as an “image of love” (εἴδωλον ἔρωτος). The aim of this paper is to propose a comprehensive understanding of anterōs, encompassing these three lines of interpretation and translation, both by giving maximum coherence to the difficult passage in which it appears and by replacing it in the movement of the whole dialogue. To do so, we first analyse the complex entwining of the similes in which anterōs seems to have a pivotal role: erōs being successively described as himeros within a physiological simile, as anterōs within an optical one, and as soul’s struggle within the psychic simile of the winged chariot (255b7-256a6). Then we conceptualise this correction of the successive similes in view of the eschatological passage about the three different kinds of lives immediately following: paiderastic erōs, by desiring a physical and asymmetric contact with the beloved, can only trigger rivalry; whereas honour-loving erōs, by desiring something beyond the beloved, can foster emulation and reciprocity; but only philosophical erōs, by reflecting intelligible beauty to the beloved, can truly guide to its recollection (256a7-b7). Finally, we see in this passage a kind of nub of the analogical unity of the dialogue, between the erotic brothers and the discursive ones: anterōs being qualified by Socrates as an eidōlon of erōs just as written logos will be qualified by Phaedrus as an eidōlon of spoken logos (276a9). Thus, the very ambiguity of anterōs is not only due to the polysemy of the prefix anti- but also to its qualification as an eidōlon of erōs. We think that it is only by acknowledging this profound complexity of the text that we both recognise the merit of Plato’s comprehensive theory of love and the unity of surely his most beautiful dialogue.