Love & Temporality

I found strange, and unsatisfactory, the Socratic argument that one cannot love what one already possesses.  This argument makes me suspicious about Socrates’ theory of love. His argument goes something like this. 

Love is desire for what is loved. 

It is necessary that desire is always of something of which one is in need.

If one has something, it is no longer in need of it

Therefore, one cannot love something that one already possesses

Socrates says that (given the previous argument) if one thinks one desires something already possessed, this is a kind of illusion that must be given a temporal explanation.  Socrates says that if you are already in possession of something, what you want “is to possess these things in time to come, since in the present, whether you want to or not, you have them.”  (200d) Therefore, it is more appropriate to say, “I want the things I have now to be mine in the future as well” (200d).  According to this theory, there seems to be a kind of odd temporal dimension to love.  For the things we do not possess, we can desire now, but for things we do possess, what we desire is really some future state.  This temporal effect also seems to have an impact on the metaphysics of what is loved.  The referent of what is loved switches from something actual to something possible, from an actuality to a potentiality. 

There does seem to be something intuitive to the claim that Love desires to possess what is loved through time.  It would hardly be worth arguing that love desires what love possesses now also in the future.  But what seems unacceptable is the notion that one cannot love what one possesses now, in this very moment.  If this is a result of the “love is desire” thesis, then the worse for that thesis.  If anyone has ever been in love, one knows that the fullest joy of love is the very moment of loving and being loved in return.  In this moment, one does possess what one loves, the beloved.  Perhaps we need to augment Socrates theory with something like “enjoyment”.  That Love is the desire and enjoyment of what is loved.  Perhaps I’m way off base here.  I would be interested in discussing this in class.