Summary: Symposium (page 3)

Love occupies an intermediate position in the realm of knowledge too. No god is a philosopher, for a god is wise from the outset. Nor is any ignoramus a philosopher, for they believe themselves already wise. Between the two stands the philosopher, who is not wise but aspires to become so.

As for Love, while his father is wise, his mother is not. Love is therefore a philosopher—one who desires to attain wisdom.

Love seeks the possession of good things, for happiness lies in them. All people strive for happiness and are therefore lovers in some sense. But why, then, do we say that some love while others do not ¹?

Every aspiration towards the good and towards happiness—this is what all-powerful Love, full of cunning, truly is ². Yet the paths to happiness are many and varied: business, sport, science—all these pursuits are forms of love. We do not recognise them as such, however; we reserve the name Love for only one particular form: that which concerns human relationships.

If human beings love nothing but the good and desire it for eternity, we may say that love is the perpetual pursuit of what is good ³.

For this reason, Love seeks to beget and give birth in beauty, for procreation constitutes the part of eternity and immortality that is accessible to mortals ⁴. Yet begetting is only possible in beauty—in ugliness, Love withdraws ⁵.

Hence this paradox: to achieve a form of immortality through procreation, human beings are willing to fight, even at the risk of death.

Man is, therefore, irrational. Observe humanity, and its irrationality will perplex you—such is the power of Love. People are ready, for the sake of this end, to take every risk—far more than for their own children. They are willing to stake their fortunes, to endure endless hardship, even to sacrifice their lives ⁶.

Diotima distinguishes between the fecundity of the soul and that of the body. The soul, too, can be fertile: poets, creators, and inventors produce a far nobler progeny—their works. What they share are far more beautiful, more imperishable children! ⁷.

Love is the pursuit of absolute beauty. This is not, however, attainable straightaway. It is reached only at the end of a long journey, during which Love educates itself, ascending towards a higher kind of beauty through various stages.

First, Love begins with the love of a beautiful body—the first and lowest stage.

Love then realises that the beauty of one body is found in others, and so it becomes love of beautiful bodies in the plural. This is progress.

It then turns to something more spiritual and profound: the love of beautiful souls.

Next, it seeks the source of beauty in those souls—knowledge. It becomes love of knowledge.

At the summit of this ascent stands Absolute Beauty, eternal and non-relative—it is not beautiful at one moment and ugly at another ⁸. It has no face and does not exist in any singular being. Diotima offers only a negative definition: she tells us what it is not, rather than what it is.

Socrates summarises this ascent:

We must begin with the beauties of our world in order to move towards that ultimate beauty, always ascending as if climbing rungs of a ladder—progressing from the love of one beautiful body to two, then from two to all beautiful bodies, then from beautiful bodies to beautiful activities, and from beautiful activities to the beauty found in the sciences. Finally, through the sciences, we ascend to that single knowledge which is concerned with no other beauty than that one alone. And in reaching the end, we come to know what the Beautiful itself truly is ⁹.

This is what makes life worth living: reaching the moment of contemplating Beauty itself ¹⁰. And the only path to it is Love. This is why I, for my part, affirm that every human being must pay homage to Love ¹¹.

The discussion is suddenly interrupted by the boisterous arrival of a new guest: Alcibiades. A young Athenian aristocrat, he joins the gathering in a half-drunken state—and instead of delivering a eulogy to Love, he offers one to Socrates.

He compares Socrates to the Silenes—figurines which, when opened, reveal statues of the gods—and to the satyr Marsyas, whose flute-playing enchanted his audience. But whereas Marsyas charmed with music, Socrates captivates with words.

Socrates, he observes, was indifferent to physical beauty and wealth—which is why he rebuffed the advances of the enfant terrible of Athens, courted by all. Alcibiades notes, too, that no one has ever seen Socrates drunk.

He recounts how, after a battle, Socrates stood motionless all day, lost in thought, and goes on to thank him for saving his life in combat and for keeping his nerve during the retreat at Delium.

This speech brings the dialogue to a close, and the banquet dissolves into general drunkenness. By dawn, only Agathon, Aristophanes, and Socrates remain awake.

¹ 205b
² 205d
³ 207a
⁴ 206c
⁵ 206d
⁶ 208c-d
⁷ 209c
⁸ 211a
⁹ 211c
¹⁰ 211d
¹¹ 212b