Eromenos

of the beloved, of the eromenos, or, put it in the neuter, of the eromenon because in so far as one eromene's, what one ere's, what one loves in this whole business of the Symposium is what? It is something which is always said and very frequently in the neuter form, it is ta paidika.

Lacan argues that the eromenos is structurally positioned as a neuter object — ta paidika — whose grammatical neutralisation reveals the beloved's function as the 'strong term,' the site of the agalma that orients the erastes's desire.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis

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Achilles, an eromenos, transforms himself into an erastes. The text says it and affirms it: it is as erastes that Alcestis sacrifices herself for her husband. This is less of a radical, total, spectacular manifestation of love than the change of role which is produced at the level of Achilles when, from being an eromenos he transforms himself into an erastes.

Lacan reads Achilles's role-reversal from eromenos to erastes as the most radical manifestation of love in the Symposium, a structural transformation exceeding even Alcestis's self-sacrifice.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis

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the substitution of the erastes for the eromenos which we have said constitutes by itself the phenomenon of love - and whose inflaming effects it is no surprise for us to see in transference love from the beginnings of analysis.

Lacan identifies the structural substitution of erastes for eromenos as the defining mechanism of love itself, directly homologous to the inflammations of transference love in clinical analysis.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis

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We stopped the last day at the position of the erastes and the eromenos, of the lover and the beloved, as the dialectic of the Symposium will allow us to introduce i

Lacan marks the erastes/eromenos dyad as the foundational dialectical structure through which the Symposium's logic of love — and, by extension, the theory of transference — is to be developed.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis

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Self-sufficiency, 195, 217, 233, 246, 366, 380-1, 417; of eromenos, 188, 192, 210; and ethics, 8; and good life, 3, 331, 341, 343, 344-5, 352; and 'irrational' parts of soul, 7; of love, 177, 183, 199, 210, 364, 368; Platonic conception of, 5, 18, 87, 120, 137, 159, 184, 264, 310, 381, 420

Nussbaum's index links the eromenos explicitly to the problem of self-sufficiency, situating the beloved's position within the broader Platonic tension between erotic vulnerability and ethical stability.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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EN 115 7a6-io, where the relationship between erastes and eromenos is treated simply as an example

Nussbaum notes that in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle treats the erastes/eromenos relationship as an exemplary case of ethical excess (huperbole), drawing it into the analysis of friendship and virtue.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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Praxilla PMG 753 = Paus. 3.13.5 makes Karneios the 'eromenos of Apollo'.

Burkert situates the eromenos within Greek religious practice, citing the mythological designation of Karneios as Apollo's beloved as evidence of the term's reach into ritual and theogonic narrative.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting

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an erastes, as a desirer, but nothing is further from the image of Socrates than the radiation of love which emanates, for example, from the message of Christ.

Lacan contrasts Socrates's position as erastes — defined by knowing rather than by eros — with the Christian model of radiating love, clarifying what is structurally distinctive about the Platonic lover/beloved economy.

Lacan, Jacques, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting

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Alcibiades, asked to speak about eros, talks about one person. He cannot describe the passion or its object in general terms, because his experience of love has happened to him this way only once, in connection with an individual who is seen by him to be like nobody else in the world.

Nussbaum's reading of Alcibiades's speech emphasises the irreducible particularity of erotic attachment, implicitly illuminating the singularity of the eromenos as an object that cannot be generalised or substituted.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside

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