SYMPOSIUM (DIOTIMA’S SPEECH)

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2016

INTRODUCING DIOTIMA’S SPEECH

• Socrates tells us that Diotima of Mantinea was:

• “wise about many things besides [Love]”

• “the one who taught [Socrates] about the art of love”

• Diotima argues against Socrates’ original view, which he says he shared with Agathon, that “Love is a great god and that he belongs to beautiful things.”

A PRELIMINARY ARGUMENT

• If Love is neither beautiful nor good, is it ugly?

• If so, this seems to be like saying that if a thing is not wise, it’s ignorant.

• But isn’t there something in between wisdom and ignorance?

• “judging things correctly without being able to give a reason.”, i.e., correct judgment.

• If this is so, then whatever is not beautiful needn’t be ugly, and whatever is not good needn’t be bad.

• Love could be something in between!

WHAT ABOUT THE CLAIM THAT LOVE IS A “GREAT GOD”?

• Socrates seems to assert that everyone agrees that Love is a great god.

• But Diotima objects: how can Love be a great god if not everyone agrees that Love is a god in the first place.

• She then argues:

• All gods are beautiful and happy

• To be happy means to possess good and beautiful things

• Love needs (and desires, but does not possess) good and beautiful things

• Therefore, Love is not a god.

• But Love is not mortal either. Love is in between mortal and immortal.

• Therefore, Love is a “great spirit” whose function is to “shuttle back and forth between gods and mortals”.

THE GENEALOGY OF LOVE

• Socrates asks who the father and mother of Love are.

• Diotima responds with a long story about the celebration of the birth of Aphrodite.

• Poros, son of Metis, got drunk on nectar, and fell asleep in the garden of Zeus.

• Penia schemes to have a child with Poros, and becomes pregnant with Love.

• So, Love was born “to follow Aphrodite and serve her”.

• This is why Love is a lover of beauty – because Aphrodite is beautiful.

• Poros and Penia are metaphorical – what do they stand for?

LOVE’S LOT IN LIFE / LOVE’S NATURE AND SPIRIT

• As the son of Poros and Penia, Love inherits many similar features from both parents:

• He is always poor

• He is tough, shriveled, shoeless, homeless

• Always lying on the dirt without a bed

• Sleeping at people’s doorsteps, and in roadsides under the sky

• Always living with Need (like his mother)

• A schemer after the beautiful and the good (like his father)

• Brave, impetuous, intense, awesome hunter

• Resourceful in pursuit of intelligence

• A lover of wisdom (!)

• Neither immortal nor mortal – springs to life when he gets his way; but now dies, but keeps coming back to life.

• Never completely without resources, but never rich.

• Between wisdom and ignorance. Why?

WHAT USE IS LOVE TO HUMAN BEINGS?

• Diotima explains that Socrates mistook Love for being loved rather than being a lover.

• That’s why Socrates thought Love was beautiful in every way, because what is really beautiful deserves to be loved. But being a lover is different.

• Now Diotima asks: suppose someone asks: what’s the point of loving beautiful things? Or, what does the lover of beautiful things desire?

• Answer: to have beautiful things.

• But what will the lover have once he/she has these things?

• Socrates doesn’t know how to answer, but if we switch to “lover of good things”, the answer is…

• Happiness / Eudaimonia

• There’s no point in further asking “What’s the point of wanting that?”

GENERAL LOVE VS. SPECIAL KINDS OF LOVE

• The desire for happiness (a kind of love) is common to all human beings.

• But we don’t say that everyone is in love. Some people are, and others are not.

• We use the word ‘love’ to refer to the whole and we use other words for the other kinds.

• Every desire for good things or for happiness is the supreme kind of love.

• Love of making money, or sports, or philosophy – these people are not in love, and we don’t call them ‘lovers’.

• We only say this for one special kind of love.

• But in all cases, people love the good, and they want the good to be theirs forever. So, love is wanting to possess the good forever. This is the object of love.

• How do lovers pursue this object? Diotima tells us: “giving birth in beauty, whether in body or in soul”.

“REPRODUCTION AND BIRTH IN BEAUTY”

• Why does Love want reproduction and birth in beauty?

• Because reproduction goes on forever. Mortals have this in place of immortality.

• If Love wants to possess the good forever, then a lover must desire immortality along with the good.

• Love wants to possess the good forever, so Love must desire immortality.

• But since mortals don’t have immortality, this desire is for reproduction and birth.

• Is this a good argument? What does it tell us about the desire for the good/beautiful?

EVERYONE DESIRES IMMORTALITY

• “what is mortal shares in immortality, whether it is a body or anything else, while the immortal has another way. So don’t be surprised if everything naturally values its own offspring, because it is for the sake of immortality that everything shows this zeal, which is Love.” (208b)

• Diotima suggests to Socrates that human beings who seek honour would be irrational if they didn’t desire immortality. Why?

• “they’re ready to brave any danger… prepared to spend money, suffer through all sorts of ordeals, and even die for the sake of glory. […] I believe anyone will do anything for the sake of immortal virtue and the glorious fame that follows.”

“PREGNANT” IN BODY, AND IN SOUL

• Diotima uses this metaphor of pregnancy to explain why some people, who are “pregnant in body”, pursue immortality through childbirth, via “rememberance and happiness”.

• Others are “pregnant in soul”, and these people are concerned with the proper ordering of cities and households, i.e., moderation and justice.

• Diotima claims that “Everyone would rather have such children than human ones, and would look up to Homer, Hesiod, and the other good poets with envy and admiration for the offspring they have left behind.” (209d)

“THE FINAL AND HIGHEST MYSTERY”

• A lover of beauty should start by loving one body, but then “realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of any other… the beauty of all bodies is one and the same.”

• From this point, the lover must think that the beauty of people’s souls is more valuable than the beauty of their bodies. Here the focus moves to beauty of activities and laws.

• Next, the lover should see the beauty of kinds of knowledge, and then of knowledge of beauty itself.

• The goal of Loving: to catch sight of “something wonderfully beautiful in its nature”.

WHAT IS DIOTIMA TALKING ABOUT?(!)

• “First, it always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes. Second, it is not beautiful this way and ugly that way, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in relation to another; nor is it beautiful here but ugly there, as it would be if it were beautiful for some people and ugly for others. Nor will the beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else that belongs to the body. It will not appear to him as one idea or one kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form; and all the other beautiful things share in that, in such a way that when those others come to be or pass away, this does not become the least bit smaller or greater nor suffer any change. So when someone rises by these stages, through loving boys correctly, and begins to see this beauty, he has almost grasped his goal. This is what it is to go aright, or be led by another, into the mystery of Love: one goes always upward for the sake of this Beauty, starting out from beautiful things and using them like rising stairs: from one body to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful customs, and from customs to learning beautiful things, and from these lessons he arrives in the end at this lesson, which is learning of this very Beauty, so that in the end he comes to know just what it is to be beautiful.” (211a-d)