PLATONIC LOVE? ARE YOU IN A PLATONIC LOVE RELATIONSHIP?

SLATE: HUMAN INTEREST: ORIGINS OF PLATONIC LOVE  by Juliet Lapidos

EXCERPTS:  
The Florentine scholar Marsilo Ficino coined the term armor platonicus (Latin for "Platonic Love") in the 15th century.  He had in mind Plato's Symposium, in which Socrates describes a possible ascent from base desire to high-minded contemplation - a "ladder"? with love for a beautiful person at the bottom, and love of Beauty itself at the top.  (Step by step: Love of a beautiful body, love for all beautiful bodies, love for the beauty of laws, love for the beauty of knowledge, and the love of Beauty itself).  Fincini Christianized the concept, interpreting the final Beauty as a reference to God.  He further asserted that true lovers are drawn to each other's divine souls" The passion of a lover is not quenched by the mere touch or sight of a body," he wrote, "for it does not desire this or that body, but desires the splendor of the divine light shining through bodies, and is amazed and awed by it."