Wondering About Aphrodite

[sdi]

Plato (in the Symposium) and Plotinus (in III v "On Love" and VI ix "On the Good") made a pretty big deal of the distinction between vulgar love and heavenly love, treating the former as being of the sensible world and the latter as being of the intelligible world, and therefore capital-B Better. But I'm not so sure this is so: is it not the case that the nature of the sensible world is separation, while the nature of the intelligible world is unity?

This would lead me to expect that while there are many kinds of love here in the sensible world, all of them should blend together into a harmonious whole There in the intelligible world. Here we speak of physical sex, emotional affection, imaginal devotion; but There, Love is all of these at once and more. Here, we have Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Ourania; but There, there is only Aphrodite.