Symposium

Socrates then asks who Love’s parents are, which Diotima agrees to tell him, though it is “rather a long story” (43). At a celebration for Aphrodite’s birth, Poverty was impregnated by Plenty and gave birth to Love, who became a follower of Aphrodite because he “was conceived during her birthday party” and “is innately attracted towards beauty” (44). Because his parents are Poverty and Plenty, Love always hovers between lack and abundance.

Socrates asks Diotima “what do humans gain from” Love (46)? Diotima answers that “possession of good things” makes “people happy”; this is “common to everyone” and is the generic form of Love (46). Further, people do not want goodness temporarily; they want it “to be theirs for ever,” which Diotima links to the desire for immortality (48). Achieving the kind of immortality available to humans—who, unlike the gods, are temporary and mutable—requires procreating “in a beautiful medium,” since it is beauty that creates the attraction necessary for procreation (49). Since, as Socrates and Diotima previously agreed, the goal of love is to possess goodness forever, it must also follow that humans “desire immortality along with goodness” (49).

Every person is “physically and mentally pregnant,” meaning that all want to procreate (49). Men who are physically pregnant tend to be attracted to women because they seek immortality through having children. The offspring of men who are mentally pregnant tend to be virtue and wisdom: They are “the creations brought into the world by the poets,” craftsmen who do “original work,” and wisdom that enables “self-discipline and justice” (52).

Those who are impregnated with virtue from childhood, when they become adults, seek beauty in the form of an attractive mind so they “can give birth,” meaning they seek a lover who will oversee their education (52). According to Diotima, this creates stronger bonds than in a couple who shares “ordinary children” (52). She cites the poets Homer and Hesiod as well as the lawmakers Lycurgus and Solon as examples because their “children,” their poems and law codes, “themselves are immortal” (53). Such men “have even been awarded cults” due to their children’s immorality, something “no human child has ever yet earned for his father” (53).

Diotima did not know if Socrates was ready to “be initiated into the ways of love” (53), but she would tell him about them and see if he could keep up.

A young man should begin by “focusing on physical beauty,” loving “just one person’s body” and giving birth “in that medium to beautiful reasoning” (53). His next realization should be that “the beauty of all bodies” is “absolutely identical,” which should make him realize how “ridiculous and petty” loving one body is (53). From here, the young man can become attracted to “mental beauty” over physical, which will lead him to pursue “the kinds of reasoning which help young men’s moral progress” (53). This enables him to see the beauty in human “activities and institutions” and that physical beauty is not important (54). From this, he “must press on towards the things people know,” to find the beauty there too (54). At this point, he has ascended to the point that he can face “the vast sea of beauty” and give birth to “beautiful, expansive reasoning and thinking” that enables him to move to the next stage (54).

Encouraging Socrates to try his hardest “to pay attention,” Diotima explains that at this point, the young man can now see “a unique kind of knowledge” that is eternal and immutable and of a piece with all beautiful objects (54). The young man who achieves this is now in the presence of truth and can see the kind of beauty that creates “true goodness instead of phantom goodness” (55). He receives the gods’ favor and has the greatest potential to achieve immortality. Having concluded recounting what Diotima taught him, Socrates explains that he believes Love is the best partner in the humans striving to achieve immortality. This is why he believes Love should be treated “with reverence” and why he praises “Love’s power and courage” (56).