Speculum 73 (2):372-396 (
1998)
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Abstract
In the Phaedrus Socrates explains the attraction to beauty in terms of love: “one who loves the beautiful is called a lover” . He further describes such attraction as the lover's recognition in the beloved of their belonging to the same god . This sense of belonging that defines love, says Socrates, stems from the search for a reflection of oneself, an echo that can also, however, imprison the viewer in absorbing self-reflection: “[h]e does not realize that he is seeing himself in his lover as in a mirror”