2025-12-08

What Did Aristotle Mean by Eros?

     In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes comparison between complete friendship and erotic love in two places. He seems to argue that erotic love, or eros, has similar qualities to virtue friendship, and that it can only be felt towards one person. These passages, considered alongside his famous erotic example from the Organon and other passages where he writes about mere sexual appetite, seem to suggest Aristotle has a distinct concept of eros, separate from but related to virtue friendship and sexual appetite.

      However, Aristotle’s rare invocation of eros and a paucity of scholarly commentary on this topic can make it difficult to know if he did have a consistent view or definition of eros. Moreover, it is unclear if the view presented in the Organon is Aristotle’s own, or merely a reproduction of a view of his contemporaries used for illustrative effect.

      Understanding his view is further complicated by the fact that he uses eros in places unrelated to interpersonal relationships, saying, for example, that the heavenly spheres feel eros for the unmoved mover, and that’s why they move.¹ Some scholars have tried to reconcile the interpersonal and cosmic accounts. Emmauela Bianchi, drawing from psychoanalysis, claimed that Aristotle’s negative interpersonal view of eros is “sublimated” into the positive cosmic one.[2] However, in her article she does not give a definition of the interpersonal eros, which is part of this paper’s goal. For clarity, I will bracket consideration of Aristotle’s cosmological eros.

      So, if it can be shown that the passages from the Ethics and the Organon present the same concept of interpersonal eros, then Aristotle’s interpersonal eros will be consistent, and we can attribute the view in the Organon to him, assuming the account in the Ethics is also his own.

      Such an interpretation would give a clearer picture of Aristotle’s concept of eros and confirm the view presented in the Organon as Aristotelian. To achieve this, I will first provide a definition of eros by showing what kind of friendship it is and by giving three criteria for eros common in each passage. I will then provide a view saying that there are discrepancies between the concepts in the Ethics and Organon, namely, the explicit pederastic and asymmetric connotation of the Organon passage, as well as the seeming disparity between eros’s primary activity in both, loving and being loved respectively. However, I will show that these are discrepancies only in appearance, and that the passages indeed give the same concept of eros.

      The two passages relating eros to friendship are from the Nicomachean Ethics VIII.6 and IX.10. They occur in two related discussions where Aristotle argues for how many complete friendships it is appropriate and possible for one to have. He compares the intense feelings and commitment involved in complete friendship to eros, arguing in both passages that eros is similar to complete friendship, and, insofar as eros is always directed to one person, complete friendship can only be had with a few.² The texts are as follows:

To be a friend to many people, however, in a way that accords with complete friendship, is not possible, just as it is not possible to be in love with many people at the same time (for sexual love toward many people³ is like an excess, and something of that sort naturally comes about in relation to a single person). (NE VIII.6 1158a 10-13).

Presumably, then, it is well not to seek to be too many-friended, but rather to have just as many friends as are enough for living together; for it would not seem even possible to be intensely friendly with a large number of people, which is why we cannot be in love with more than one person; for sexual love tends to be a sort of excessive friendship, and that excess is toward one person. Intense friendship, then, is toward few. (NE IX.10 1171a 8-13).

      From these passages, it would seem that eros either is a type of, or resembles closely, friendship. While complete friendship is obviously not an excess⁴ given that it is in accord with virtue, at first glance it seems that Aristotle views eros as the excessive counterpart of the loving feeling (philesis) in complete friendship, one that takes its appropriate intense feelings to a level that exceeds virtue. The relationship between eros and complete friendship will be further considered in the argumentative section.

      The passage from the Organon comes when Aristotle is giving an example for a type of syllogism relating to preference. If a preference is ordered as follows: A>B>C>D, then one would rather have AC than BD. He brings in an erotic relationship to illustrate his idea, saying that having a lover disposed to have sex is preferable than one who simply has sex, so a lover would prefer to have a beloved who is disposed to have sex and never does rather than having one who is not disposed but actually does:

So, if every lover would choose, when it comes to his beloved, for him to be of such a sort as to grant [sexual] favors (A) without granting them (which C stands for) than for him to grant favors (which D stands for) without being of such a sort as to grant them (which B stands for), it is clear that A (being of such a sort) is more choiceworthy than granting favors. To be loved, therefore, is more choiceworthy than sexual intercourse, when it comes to his beloved. Therefore, love is more for friendship than for sexual intercourse. But if it is most of all for this, that is its end. (Apr. II.22 68a37-68b26).

      Here, Aristotle presents a view similar to those of the Ethics passages given above: namely, that eros is closely related to friendship. He clearly intimates that sex in the context of eros is done for the sake of being loved and not for its own sake. This contrasts a mere appetitive sexual desire, in which sex is done only for the sake of itself. It seems as if Aristotle gives us three concepts, complete friendship, eros, and appetitive sexual desire that are closely related but distinct.

      Eros and complete friendship seem to be more closely related than complete friendship and the other two friendships, those based on pleasure and utility, given that intense feelings of affection always occur in the first pair, while they are not required, and perhaps unlikely, in utility and pleasure friendships. Thomas Aquinas said the “superabundance” of love present in complete friendships is the same as in eros between a man and woman.⁵

      However, it is not the case that eros is most closely related to complete friendship. Its characteristic excess precludes it from being characterized as virtuous. And Aristotle thinks friendship is only pursued for its own sake in virtuous contexts.⁶ This would make the goal of eros either pleasure or utility. And, given that Aristotle says “sexual friendships…exist because of pleasure,”⁷ it is clear that eros’s goal is pleasure, and that it is a pleasure friendship.

      The passages suggest criteria for distinguishing eros as a distinct subtype of pleasure friendships, these are: (1) an intense feeling of affection for a love-object that exceeds the affection of complete friendships, (2) exclusivity of the excessive feeling towards that love-object, and (3) sexual desire for that love-object.

      Intense feelings (1) are present in both passages, implicitly in the Organon insofar as the lover wants reciprocated affection (thus, friendship) from his beloved. The beloved might have affection for his lover, but it is not to the same degree. Though it is not explicitly said to be excessive, the affection present in the Organon example is compatible with the Ethics view. A similar case can be made for criterion (2); though there is no explicit mention of exclusivity in the Organon, the lover clearly has desire and affection for only one love-object because the preference order is for one person, the beloved. The first two criteria apply to both passages.

      Though sexual appetite towards a love-object (3) is necessary for eros, it is not its only characteristic. There is no reason to think that the sexual appetite requisite for eros in the Ethics is primary such that it would violate sex’s secondary position stated clearly in the Organon. If sexual desire was primary, eros would be a kind of appetite and not a kind of friendship. And Aristotle acknowledges a type of state different from eros whose primary characteristic is sexual appetite; the intemperate (promiscuous) person. The promiscuous is different from the erotic lover insofar as they don’t necessarily have strong affection towards those they desire and are defined only by their appetite.⁸ Moreover, they can feel desire for more than one person. Thus, sexual appetite is a secondary, though requisite, characteristic of eros in both passages.

      The claims in these passages supplement one another. The excessive feelings of love for a sole object of eros attributed by the Ethics are implied in the Organon. The requisite but secondary aspect of sexual desire of the Organon’s eros is implied in the Ethics. It seems that both passages taken together give the full definition of eros. It therefore seems that eros is the same in both and that general pleasure- friendship, eros, and sexual appetite can be distinguished.

      However, the view in the Organon raises two interpretive difficulties. The first is that its interpersonal structure appears necessarily pederastic, as noted by David Halperin in his article on the passage.⁹ The second is that it is asymmetrical, and its preference ranking and characterization as seeking the beloved’s affection suggests eros’s primary activity is in being loved, not loving. This could seem to diverge from the conception of eros from the Ethics passages, which compare the affection involved in eros to the one involved in complete friendship, a relationship necessarily reciprocal and equal, and whose primary activity is loving.¹⁰ Moreover, the Ethics passages taken by themselves make no mention of pederasty. If these discrepancies stand, it is not clear that the view in the Organon is Aristotle’s or that he held a consistent conception of interpersonal eros across works.

      However, closer attention to the Ethics passages and their context shows that their use of eros is consistent with an asymmetrical, pederastic model. First, the comparison with complete friendship does not require eros to be reciprocal or equal. As noted above, its similarity with complete friendship is only its intense feelings of affection that are not necessarily present in the other types of friendship. Eros is a type of pleasure friendship, which, unlike complete, can be asymmetrical.¹¹ Moreover, the primary activity of pleasure friendship is being loved, not loving.¹² Thus, the Ethics eros is compatible with the asymmetric conception of eros from the Organon. Furthermore, other Ethics passages explicitly state that eros is an asymmetrical relationship, where the lover receives pleasure and the beloved receives utility.¹³ The Ethics passages thus support an eros which is characterized by a lover’s intense affection and desire rather than a symmetrical relation.

      Second, all of Aristotle’s explicit examples of the relationship composition of eros elsewhere in his corpus are clearly pederastic. They treat the older partner as the locus of desire whose love-object does not reciprocate in kind, and who does not feel eros for the older partner (insofar as he does not have sexual desire for him). As such, it is more plausible to treat the Ethics passages as implicit uses of the same pederastic definition rather than in a novel, non-pederastic light. If his own examples consistently depict eros as the desire and feelings of the older lover, it would make little sense to assume that the Ethics passages introduce an alternative relationship composition without any textual signal.

      Indeed, the pederastic model explains the asymmetry in the Organon case. In all pederastic examples, the lover’s sexual desire, and probably his requisite intense affection, are not reciprocated by the beloved. Given that eros is a pleasure friendship, it is compatible with the asymmetric, unequal, pederastic model. Since the conception of eros in other passages in the Ethics is explicitly pederastic, the same pederastic and entailed asymmetrical dynamic can be assuredly applied to the passages under consideration.

      The fact that pederasty and asymmetry are common to the eros from the Ethics and the Organon means a fourth criterion must be added. Our complete definition of eros is as follows: A pleasure friendship characterized by (1) an intense feeling of affection for a love-object that exceeds the affection of complete friendships, (2) exclusivity of the excessive feeling towards that love-object, (3) sexual desire for that love-object, and (4) an exclusive ability to be felt by the older partner in a pederastic relationship.

      This fourth criterion reconciles the seeming disparities between the Ethics and Organon passages without strain. In turn, it justifies treating the Organon view as Aristotle’s rather than as a purely rhetorical or illustrative example.

      Indeed, It makes sense for the eros in the Ethics passages to definitionally require the same pederastic relationship, and its entailing asymmetry, as eros does in the Organon, because of its characterization as excessive and thus unethical. Many scholars have suggested Aristotle was not a homosexual and that his distaste for pederasty created academic difficulties for him.¹⁴ This is one possible explanation for why the type of strong feelings and sexual attraction present in eros are only explicitly unethical in a pederastic context. Though he characterizes general sexual appetite negatively as well, there is room for Aristotle to have believed that strong feelings coupled with sexual desire for a heterosexual partner were not inherently excessive, though he never considers this kind of relationship.

      This definition of eros, with four criteria, gives us a clear idea of how eros is different from other pleasure friendships, mere sexual appetite, and potential non-pederastic erotic love. It also allows us to maintain that the view presented in the Organon is Aristotle’s own.

      Aristotle seemingly never thought eros interesting enough to give it an explicit definition or close study, instead relegating it for use in examples. However, the consistency of its characterization, though not explicitly stated in each use, shows us he did have a distinct concept. This exercise has shown that historians of philosophy should always be open to conceptual consistency in the philosophers they study, even if those philosophers do not give explicit definitions in every case.