The latest title in the Ensaio Aberto series, Três Discursos sobre Eros: Meditação sobre o Fedro de Platão, by Professor João Constâncio (IFILNOVA, NOVA), has just been published by Tinta-da-China in partnership with IFILNOVA and PUC-Rio. The work is available in open access and can be read or downloaded at the IFILNOVA Digital Library.

Três Discursos sobre Eros: Meditação sobre o Fedro de Platão, by João Constâncio

Três Discursos sobre Eros is a meditation on Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, and especially on the way it conceives the dual nature of eros: it is a form of “madness” — a desire for possession and a losing of oneself in a world of illusion — but it is also “divine”, an experience of beauty that awakens the soul to the questioning of truth. The thread of this meditation is the discussion of the relationship between philosophy and poetry, the poetic-literary character of the Platonic text, and the origin of Plato’s images of eros in the poems of Sappho and the broader poetic tradition of the Greeks. This thread also leads to reflections on the multiple echoes of Platonic questions in authors such as Nietzsche and Proust and, above all, on the interpretation of the Phaedrus in the works of Hegel, Heidegger, and Thomas Mann. In this way, the book invites us to think of Platonic eros as a surprisingly modern experience of subjectivization and authenticity — but, at the same time, as an experience of beauty and truth that we must question whether it is not irretrievably lost to us.

Ensaio Aberto series

In Western tradition, there was a certain assumption of separation between Philosophy and Literature, resulting in a historical understanding that divided, on one hand, the mind, reflection, or reason, and on the other hand, the body, creation, or emotion. Thus, the possibility of a knowledge that, instead of separating, brought Philosophy and Literature closer together was lost. One might ask: don’t writers philosophize, and don’t philosophers write? The essays in this series emerged from the desire to explore how, despite the well-known metaphysical critique that Philosophy directed towards Literature, they never ceased to draw closer.

Três Discursos sobre Eros: Meditação sobre o Fedro de Platão
Constâncio, J.
ISBN 978-989-671-903-6

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