Reflections on the Symposium: Socrates (Diotima)
Posted by P.Dan on October 15, 2008
Now comes the final oration on the topic of Love. Socrates does not espouse his own view of Love, but affirms a theory of Love taught to him by a certain Mantinean woman named Diotima. He recounts their dialogue which amounts to something like:
1. Love is always a Love of something.
2. Love of something implies that the one doing the loving lacks that something.
3. Therefore, Love of beauty or good implies a lack of beauty or good.
This conclusion directly challenges all the previous orations on how Love is full of beauty and good. However, here’s a very intriguing insight:
1. Lack of beauty or good does not necessitate ugliness or badness.
2. Therefore, Love is neither beautiful & good nor ugly & bad.
This insight makes one wonder what is the exact nature of Love (if it is neither good nor bad). Diotima concludes that Love can’t be a god because the gods possess the good and the beautiful, but neither is Love, by definition, a mortal. She believes Love is an entity that exists between the two planes of existence (the heavens and the earth). She claims that these mediary entities “form the medium of the prophetic arts, of the priestly rites of sacrifice, initiation, and incantation, of divination and of sorcery….”
When applied to human beings, we are always longing for what we have not, and when we obtain what we have not, we still long to keep it continually. But since human beings are mortal, they cannot keep what they have obtained forever. Therefore, in order to reach immortality, they must either live on through their progenitors through procreation or through creation of art; through the former, one lives on through ones physical seed, while through the latter, one lives on through art (e.g., music, art, literature, mathematical formulas, etc.). This, she subsumed under a general theme: The longing for immortality or glory. She particularly commends a certain manifestation or creation brought forth from our longing for immortality/glory – the society.
In sum, Love is the High Priest, the mediator who binds mortality and immortality, the Force behind procreation and creation, the elevator that carries all human arts & sciences towards the top floor of Beauty.
