Today I learned that Platonic love isn't what we thought it was. In fact, Plato didn't even believe in it, was pro-sex, thought erotica was a spiritual force that helps us find our true selves, and expressed these real values in a hidden mathematical and musical code.

Platonic love has always been considered "a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual." In other words, love without sex. According to common belief, this is the type of love that Plato thought most morally correct and romantic. It's where the term "platonic friends" comes from. He supposedly thought that an appetite for erotic love would drive us to excess and irrationally rule us.

But, wouldn't you know it, Plato very much subscribed to eroticism. He sanctioned a middle path between promiscuity and abstinence. For Plato, everything in moderation.

The person who discovered Plato's secret code also was able to put together that "the musical and mathematical structures he hid in his writings show that he was committed to the radical idea that the universe is controlled not by the gods on Olympus but by mathematical and scientific law." Although each of Plato's dialogues used a different scheme for the code, Plato put a hidden primer in each dialogue to use for interpretation.

Putting aside how fascinating it is that Plato had a hidden code in his speeches and dialogues, does this mean we now can have erotic sex with our friends without guilt? After all, one of the greatest philosophers of all time certainly approved.

University of Manchester science historian Dr Jay Kennedy, who hit the headlines last year after revealing he had cracked the code in the great thinker's writings, has now published a decoder's manual that lays bare the secret content of Plato's ancient works.

"Plato - the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age - was long thought to favour love without sex, or 'Platonic love', but this new research reveals Plato was far from being a prude," says Dr Kennedy…

Plato led a colourful and fascinating life. Born four centuries before Christ, when Sparta defeated plague-ravaged Athens, he wrote 30 books and founded the world's first university, called the Academy. In addition, he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery before being ransomed by friends.

Dr Kennedy added "The decoded symbols in fact show that Plato was not an advocate of Platonic love at all; rather he urged a middle path. For him, morality meant moderation - he wanted people to avoid both promiscuity and abstinence.

The research shows a different side to Platos ideas "Before Plato, sex was about rutting and producing heirs. Plato marks a shift in the history of Western sexuality and some say he invented romance, but, for him, erotic passion was a spiritual force that helps us find our true selves within the deepest, human bond. Eros, or love, was a creative force that inspired art, literature, and the sciences…"

"Plato's teacher Socrates famously spent the night alone with the leading sex-symbol of ancient Athens but resisted temptation," says Dr Kennedy. "Plato tells the story to show that true love aims at the soul and not the body, so many thought he was anti-sex and the myth of Platonic love spread far and wide. But Plato also celebrated eroticism and homosexuality, and shared the Greek view that naked bodies were beautiful, so historians have long debated his views."

Socrates was later executed for corrupting the morals of young people and Dr Kennedy has now shown that Plato, also fearing persecution, hid his own philosophy using a system of musical symbols…

There are also a number of symbols that reveal that Plato rejected both promiscuity and asceticism. It can now be definitely shown that, for Plato, virtue was a middle path or mean that avoided extremes.

The Truth About Greek Sex-Plato Style

What did you learn recently?

DISCUSS!

Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Nov 8, 2011 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=667