Ironically, the very eponym of this love, Plato, as well as the forementioned Socrates and Ficino all belong to the community of men who desired boys, and they all engaged in chaste but erotic pedagogic friendships with youths. The concept of Platonic love thus arose within the context of the debate pitting mundane sexually expressed pederasty against the philosophic or chaste pederasty elaborated in Plato's writings.