When Italian scholar Marsilio Ficino coined the term “platonic love” in the fifteenth century, the word reflected Plato’s vision of a love so powerful it transcended the physical. Platonic love was not romantic love undergoing subtraction. It was a purer form of love, one for someone’s soul, as Ficino writes, “For it does not desire this or that body, but desires the splendor of the divine light shining through bodies.” Platonic love was viewed as superior to romance.
