Eros: body or soul? part 2, Note 4

To say this opens a fascinating topic for further consideration: why does it happen sometimes that our bodies assert a strong preference for someone that our minds reject? It's easy to think of examples from popular imagery: the sex kitten with brains of cotton candy; the dangerous man who is violent and dashing. The answer is just that these people answer our longing for some goods but not others. It's a common enough experience when we look for any kind of good. In an opera, who is the prima donna: the cute young slip of a girl who is the right age to play the character as written, or the "great fat contralto with a voice like a foghorn"? Too often the only woman who can sing the part doesn't look the part, and the director has to choose. Or who is the best general to lead your armies: the brilliant youngster who can plan circles around your enemy, but whose personal commitments are fickle and unreliable (Alcibiades); or the seasoned veteran whose courage and loyalty are never questioned, but whose strategic sense is decidedly pedestrian (Nicias)? Either one can go wrong. (In fact, they both did.) So when our bodies suddenly feel a powerful lust for those whom our minds tell us are altogether unsuitable, it's the same thing: they exhibit a set of goods that is detectable on one wavelength, while conspicuously lacking those that are detectable on another. In other words, I think all selection of sexual partners involves choices that are at some level "voluntary" if not always fully conscious.

What is fascinating is that a strong decision in one area can shape one's judgement in another area. We've all heard stories of guys who are so smitten with how sexy some girl is that they overlook any number of unsavory personality traits. But it works the other direction too. All sources agree that Socrates was surpassingly ugly; yet he had the handsomest boys in Athens following him about like puppies, longing (if we can rely on Alcibiades's speech in The Symposium) for some quiet, solitary night to slide under his blanket. If anything, I take this as further evidence that body and soul are not opposites but a continuum of some sort. If they were opposites, it is hard to understand how the goods of one could prejudice our evaluation of the other so easily. Seeing an elegant mathematical proof doesn't make me find my food tastier, after all; nor does a luscious dessert make me cleverer at solving problem sets.