This is meant just to be a sample of the kind of thing you might expect at the end of a good Socratic discussion. I’ve gathered many ideas from listening to many class discussions of romantic love over about 20 years.
The following is a list of some of the main ideas that I discovered appeal to me:
trust, communication, intimacy, chemistry, intense feeling, passion, sharing, unselfish caring, lasting, mutual, reliable.
This is a list of familiar words and concepts. The problem for Plato is that all familiar words are vague and ambiguous when it comes to what is truly admirable. If it were just a matter of choosing between words on this list, I would choose "intimacy." But the trouble is that the word "intimacy" itself calls to mind many associations, some of which may turn out to just be "accompanying appearances" of what is truly admirable, rather than a precise explication of my sense of what stirs my admiration about romantic love.
The following three paragraphs are my attempt to make more clear and precise my sense of the core of what it is that makes admirable romantic love admirable. You will note that clarifying what the words mean to me requires some preparatory description setting a context that help make the meaning of my ultimate definition very clear and precise.
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"Impersonal" relationships are the extreme opposite of romantic love, and serve as a good starting point for describing romantic love by contrast. To have only impersonal relationships is to leave the deepest part of oneself untouched and undeveloped. Impersonal relationships are also relatively uninvolving emotionally. One can relate to others impersonally and remain emotionally rather dead. What makes Romantic Love admirable can be defined as the opposite of these things, as follows:
The reason romantic love can be important is that those aspects of a person’s being that are most unique, valuable, and precious are also very often aspects that tend to be most private, least able to be shared in impersonal interactions with the general public. That kind of "intimacy" which is an element in great romantic love is what happens when two people meet on this level – when each makes contact with the other in such a way that each feels thoroughly recognized and contacted by the other, in what each is able to now feel is the most precious and unique, private part of his or her being.
Often a person falling in love was previously unaware of this part of her own being, it was something lying dormant, unawakened and undeveloped. Deep personal meeting awakens it, making the person flower and feel more alive, more deeply alive. This explains why people in love feel carried away by passionate feelings beyond their conscious control.
Physical sex contributes to the greatness of great romantic love when and insofar as it serves as a concrete representation of this exposure and joining of the most private aspects of oneself to the other, and the intense emotional aliveness that this brings about.
(Of course individuals in love have to have other virtues such as being responsible [actually many other virtues] to make them good individuals, but I think "being responsible" is another virtue needing another discussion, not an intrinsic ingredient in the single virtue of romantic love.)
In the context described above, my present theory about the essence of what makes admirable romantic love admirable would be: That kind of deep personal meeting which more fully awakens in each partner, and causes to flower in intensely involving emotion, what each can feel is most uniquely precious about him or herself. (This sentence needs to be understood in the context of the above paragraphs. By itself it might not convey all it needs to convey.)
This proposal could be further developed by describing how further words on my list relate to each other and to this essence as a common core.
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What makes this better than other possible descriptions? The main test as to whether this is a good description of an "essence" of Romantic Love:
Unlike other descriptions, you can't have this kind of deep personal meeting without having admirable romantic love.
Unlike other descriptions, any increase in this deep personal meeting will result in an increase in the quality of romantic love.
Limitations:
1. I cannot know that this description is absolute and final, that no "counterexamples" will ever reveal weaknesses in it. I am confident (a) that it is an improvement over other more familiar concepts I had when I began, and (b) that every counterexample will reveal a particular weakness that can be remedied by a particular refinement in this definition.
2. I cannot know that this is the only "essence" of Romantic Love that meets the above tests. There may well be others. Technically, then, I should not claim that this is "the" essence of Romantic Love only "an" essence of Romantic Love.
Some may find it odd to speak of a Platonic Form of romantic/sexual love, in the light of the fact that the phrase "Platonic Love" is commonly used today to refer precisely to Love that is non-sexual.
According to prominent Renaissance scholar Oscar Kristeller, the phrase "Platonic Love" was first coined by Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499 a.d.). Ficino founded a community of like-minded Platonists in Italy, which he named an "Academy" on the model of Plato's Academy in Athens. He used the phrase Platonic Love to refer to the close bond between members of this group (mostly male) based on their sharing of Platonist personal ideals and spirituality. (Otto Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Columbia Studies in Philosophy. 1943. p. 285-88)
Modern Plato scholars do not think that Ficino's notion adequately represents Plato's full thought about love, so "[modern]French scholars found it helpful to distinguish between amour platonique (the concept of non-sexual love) and amour platonicien (love according to Plato)." (From Wikipedia article "Platonic Love" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_love, accessed 6/3/08).