OMNIPOTENCE AND THE SIN OF PRIDE

The contemplative ascent set itself a goal: to retain the energy and beauty of erotic love while ridding it of three grave defects: its partiality or uneven focus, its excessive neediness and dependency, and its connection with anger and revenge. All three versions of the ascent appeared to achieve this goal, purifying love through the joy of understanding. And yet the claim to have rendered the lover godlike and self-sufficient, no longer needy, introduced grave problems, both for the love itself and for related social concerns. A lover who repudiates bondage to human need is ill-placed to assess properly the needs of other humans, or to see the importance of coming to their aid; thus it is no surprise that all three Platonic thinkers repudiate compassion as something contaminated by bondage to worldly objects. Nor will a lover whose original aim involves the possession or incorporation of the good be likely, so long as he or she retains and even fulfills that aim, to appreciate the worth of political reciprocity, or of respect for the dignity and separateness of others. And a lover who focuses on objects as sources of good and well-being will be unlikely to love them in all their full particularity. I have suggested that these three defects in Platonic love all derive from what I have called a pathological narcissism, but what, from our present perspective, we might call the vice of pride, the idea that one can and should achieve godlike omnipotence, removing all passivity and need.