Symposium - Part 2

In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the Beast asks two of his main advisors, Lumiere and Cogsworth, how he can impress Belle. Cogsworth replies, “There the usual: flowers, chocolates, promises you don’t intend to keep.” Though this comment is given in comic contrast to Lumiere’s much more romantic, and accurate, suggestion, it brings up an interesting point about lovers that the speakers of Plato’s Symposium also address. It is the notion that a man may be forgiven for breaking a vow, or acting in a manner completely unlike himself, if he is in love. Pausanias, in his speech, endorses such behavior as acceptable and even expected of lovers in order that their beloved understand the depth of their love.

To be more specific, Pausanias says:

Imagine . . . [a man] went to his knees in public view and begged in the most humiliating way, . . . swore all sorts of vows, . . . spent the night at the other man’s doorstep, . . . [was] anxious to provide services even a slave would have refused . . . [Let] a lover act in any of these ways, and everyone will immediately say what a charming man he is! No blame attaches to his behavior: custom treats it as noble through and through. And . . . the gods will forgive a lover even for breaking his vows – a lover’s vow, our people say, is no vow at all. The freedom given to the love by both gods and men according to our custom is immense. (183 a-c)

A man in love is given much leniency in society. Where in any other circumstance, enemies would jeer and friends are ashamed, a man may be encouraged in his actions. Rather, custom upholds the often strange actions of a lover as a right and honorable thing to do. But what they say in vows in taken with a grain of salt since it is an overflow of emotion rather than a sincere vow.

Now to me, this seems wrong. Why should a man no longer be accountable for his actions because he’s in love? Shouldn’t a lover’s vow be taken more seriously and be considered more binding because it is made in love and to the beloved, who Phaedrus has said must not see the lover as dishonorable? And in any other circumstance, breaking one’s vow would be deemed not only dishonorable but also impious. This double standard between lovers and non-lovers seems an easy way to brush aside responsibility for actions that one would normally be condemned for.