Complete Works (111 page)

“Yet everyone agrees he’s a great god,” I said.

“Only those who don’t know?” she said. “Is that how you mean ‘everyone’? Or do you include those who do know?”

“Oh, everyone together.”

And she laughed. “Socrates, how could those who say that he’s not a [c] god at all agree that he’s a great god?”

“Who says that?” I asked.

“You, for one,” she said, “and I for another.”

“How can you say this!” I exclaimed.

“That’s easy,” said she. “Tell me, wouldn’t you say that all gods are beautiful and happy? Surely you’d never say a god is not beautiful or happy?”

“Zeus! Not I,” I said.

“Well, by calling anyone ‘happy,’ don’t you mean they possess good and beautiful things?”

“Certainly.” [d]

“What about Love? You agreed he needs good and beautiful things, and that’s why he desires them—because he needs them.”

“I certainly did.”

“Then how could he be a god if he has no share in good and beautiful things?”

“There’s no way he could, apparently.”

“Now do you see? You don’t believe Love is a god either!”

“Then, what could Love be?” I asked. “A mortal?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then, what is he?”

“He’s like what we mentioned before,” she said. “He is in between mortal and immortal.”

“What do you mean, Diotima?”

“He’s a great spirit, Socrates. Everything spiritual, you see, is in between [e] god and mortal.”

“What is their function?” I asked.

“They are messengers who shuttle back and forth between the two, conveying prayer and sacrifice from men to gods, while to men they bring commands from the gods and gifts in return for sacrifices. Being in the middle of the two, they round out the whole and bind fast the all to all.
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Through them all divination passes, through them the art of priests in sacrifice and ritual, in enchantment, prophecy, and sorcery. Gods do not mix with men; they mingle and converse with us through spirits instead, whether we are awake or asleep. He who is wise in any of these ways is a man of the spirit, but he who is wise in any other way, in a profession or any manual work, is merely a mechanic. These spirits are many and various, then, and one of them is Love.”

[b] “Who are his father and mother?” I asked.

“That’s rather a long story,” she said. “I’ll tell it to you, all the same.”

“When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a celebration. Poros, the son of Metis, was there among them.
³⁶
When they had feasted, Penia came begging, as poverty does when there’s a party, and stayed by the gates. Now Poros got drunk on nectar (there was no wine yet, you see) and, feeling drowsy, went into the garden of Zeus, where he fell asleep. Then [c] Penia schemed up a plan to relieve her lack of resources: she would get a child from Poros. So she lay beside him and got pregnant with Love. That is why Love was born to follow Aphrodite and serve her: because he was conceived on the day of her birth. And that’s why he is also by nature a lover of beauty, because Aphrodite herself is especially beautiful.

“As the son of Poros and Penia, his lot in life is set to be like theirs. In the first place, he is always poor, and he’s far from being delicate and [d] beautiful (as ordinary people think he is); instead, he is tough and shriveled and shoeless and homeless, always lying on the dirt without a bed, sleeping at people’s doorsteps and in roadsides under the sky, having his mother’s nature, always living with Need. But on his father’s side he is a schemer after the beautiful and the good; he is brave, impetuous, and intense, an awesome hunter, always weaving snares, resourceful in his pursuit of intelligence, a lover of wisdom
³⁷
through all his life, a genius with enchantments, potions, and clever pleadings.

[e] “He is by nature neither immortal nor mortal. But now he springs to life when he gets his way; now he dies—all in the very same day. Because he is his father’s son, however, he keeps coming back to life, but then anything he finds his way to always slips away, and for this reason Love is never completely without resources, nor is he ever rich.

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“He is in between wisdom and ignorance as well. In fact, you see, none of the gods loves wisdom or wants to become wise—for they are wise—and no one else who is wise already loves wisdom; on the other hand, no one who is ignorant will love wisdom either or want to become wise. For what’s especially difficult about being ignorant is that you are content with yourself, even though you’re neither beautiful and good nor intelligent. If you don’t think you need anything, of course you won’t want what you don’t think you need.”

“In that case, Diotima, who
are
the people who love wisdom, if they are [b] neither wise nor ignorant?”

“That’s obvious,” she said. “A child could tell you. Those who love wisdom fall in between those two extremes. And Love is one of them, because he is in love with what is beautiful, and wisdom is extremely beautiful. It follows that Love
must
be a lover of wisdom and, as such, is in between being wise and being ignorant. This, too, comes to him from his parentage, from a father who is wise and resourceful and a mother who is not wise and lacks resource.

“My dear Socrates, that, then, is the nature of the Spirit called Love. [c] Considering what you thought about Love, it’s no surprise that you were led into thinking of Love as you did. On the basis of what you say, I conclude that you thought Love was
being loved
, rather than
being a lover
. I think that’s why Love struck you as beautiful in every way: because it is what is really beautiful and graceful that deserves to be loved, and this is perfect and highly blessed; but being a lover takes a different form, which I have just described.”

So I said, “All right then, my friend. What you say about Love is beautiful, but if you’re right, what use is Love to human beings?” [d]

“I’ll try to teach you that, Socrates, after I finish this. So far I’ve been explaining the character and the parentage of Love. Now, according to you, he is love for beautiful things. But suppose someone asks us, ‘Socrates and Diotima, what is the point of loving beautiful things?’

“It’s clearer this way: ‘The lover of beautiful things has a desire; what does he desire?’ ”

“That they become his own,” I said.

“But that answer calls for still another question, that is, ‘What will this man have, when the beautiful things he wants have become his own?’ ”

I said there was no way I could give a ready answer to that question. [e]

Then she said, “Suppose someone changes the question, putting ‘good’ in place of ‘beautiful,’ and asks you this: ‘Tell me, Socrates, a lover of good things has a desire; what does he desire?’ ”

“That they become his own,” I said.

“And what will he have, when the good things he wants have become his own?”

“This time it’s easier to come up with the answer,” I said. “He’ll have happiness.
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”
³⁸

“That’s what makes happy people happy, isn’t it—possessing good things. There’s no need to ask further, ‘What’s the point of wanting happiness?’ The answer you gave seems to be final.”

“True,” I said.

“Now this desire for happiness, this kind of love—do you think it is common to all human beings and that everyone wants to have good things forever and ever? What would you say?”

“Just that,” I said. “It is common to all.”

[b] “Then, Socrates, why don’t we say that everyone is in love,” she asked, “since everyone always loves the same things? Instead, we say some people are in love and others not; why is that?”

“I wonder about that myself,” I said.

“It’s nothing to wonder about,” she said. “It’s because we divide out a special kind of love, and we refer to it by the word that means the whole—‘love’; and for the other kinds of love we use other words.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, you know, for example, that ‘poetry’ has a very wide range.
³⁹
After all, everything that is responsible for creating something out of [c] nothing is a kind of poetry; and so all the creations of every craft and profession are themselves a kind of poetry, and everyone who practices a craft is a poet.”

“True.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “as you also know, these craftsmen are not called poets. We have other words for them, and out of the whole of poetry we have marked off one part, the part the Muses give us with melody and rhythm, and we refer to this by the word that means the whole. For this alone is called ‘poetry,’ and those who practice this part of poetry are called poets.”

[d] “True.”

“That’s also how it is with love. The main point is this: every desire for good things or for happiness is ‘the supreme and treacherous love’ in everyone. But those who pursue this along any of its many other ways—through making money, or through the love of sports, or through philosophy—we don’t say that
these
people are in love, and we don’t call them lovers. It’s only when people are devoted exclusively to one special kind of love that we use these words that really belong to the whole of it: ‘love’ and ‘in love’ and ‘lovers.’ ”

“I am beginning to see your point,” I said.

[e] “Now there is a certain story,” she said, “according to which lovers are those people who seek their other halves. But according to my story, a lover does not seek the half or the whole, unless, my friend, it turns out to be good as well. I say this because people are even willing to cut off their own arms and legs if they think they are diseased. I don’t think an individual takes joy in what belongs to him personally unless by ‘belonging to me’ he means ‘good’ and by ‘belonging to another’ he means ‘bad.’ That’s because what everyone loves is really nothing other than the good.
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Do you disagree?”

“Zeus! Not I,” I said.

“Now, then,” she said. “Can we simply say that people love the good?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But shouldn’t we add that, in loving it, they want the good to be theirs?”

“We should.”

“And not only that,” she said. “They want the good to be theirs forever, don’t they?”

“We should add that too.”

“In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever.”

“That’s very true,” I said. [b]

“This, then, is the object of love,”
⁴⁰
she said. “Now, how do lovers pursue it? We’d rightly say that when they are in love they do something with eagerness and zeal. But what is it precisely that they do? Can you say?”

“If I could,” I said, “I wouldn’t be your student, filled with admiration for your wisdom, and trying to learn these very things.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” she said. “It is giving birth in beauty,
⁴¹
whether in body or in soul.”

“It would take divination to figure out what you mean. I can’t.” [c]

“Well, I’ll tell you more clearly,” she said. “All of us are pregnant, Socrates, both in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. That’s because when a man and a woman come together in order to give birth, this is a godly affair. Pregnancy, reproduction—this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it cannot occur in anything that is out of harmony, but ugliness [d] is out of harmony with all that is godly. Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine. Therefore the goddess who presides at childbirth—she’s called Moira or Eilithuia—is really Beauty.
⁴²
That’s why, whenever pregnant animals or persons draw near to beauty, they become gentle and joyfully disposed and give birth and reproduce; but near ugliness they are foulfaced and draw back in pain; they turn away and shrink back and do not reproduce, and because they hold on to what they carry inside them, the labor is painful. This is the source of the great excitement about beauty [e] that comes to anyone who is pregnant and already teeming with life: beauty releases them from their great pain. You see, Socrates,” she said, “what Love wants is not beauty, as you think it is.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“Reproduction and birth in beauty.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Certainly,” she said. “Now, why reproduction? It’s because reproduction
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goes on forever; it is what mortals have in place of immortality. A lover must desire immortality along with the good, if what we agreed earlier was right, that Love wants to possess the good forever. It follows from our argument that Love must desire immortality.”

All this she taught me, on those occasions when she spoke on the art of love. And once she asked, “What do you think causes love and desire, Socrates? Don’t you see what an awful state a wild animal is in when it [b] wants to reproduce? Footed and winged animals alike, all are plagued by the disease of Love. First they are sick for intercourse with each other, then for nurturing their young—for their sake the weakest animals stand ready to do battle against the strongest and even to die for them, and they may be racked with famine in order to feed their young. They would do anything for their sake. Human beings, you’d think, would do this because [c] they understand the reason for it; but what causes wild animals to be in such a state of love? Can you say?”

And I said again that I didn’t know.

So she said, “How do you think you’ll ever master the art of love, if you don’t know that?”

“But that’s why I came to you, Diotima, as I just said. I knew I needed a teacher. So tell me what causes this, and everything else that belongs to the art of love.”

“If you really believe that Love by its nature aims at what we have often [d] agreed it does, then don’t be surprised at the answer,” she said. “For among animals the principle is the same as with us, and mortal nature seeks so far as possible to live forever and be immortal. And this is possible in one way only: by reproduction, because it always leaves behind a new young one in place of the old. Even while each living thing is said to be alive and to be the same—as a person is said to be the same from childhood till he turns into an old man—even then he never consists of the same things, though he is called the same, but he is always being renewed and [e] in other respects passing away, in his hair and flesh and bones and blood and his entire body. And it’s not just in his body, but in his soul, too, for none of his manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, or fears ever remains the same, but some are coming to be in him while others are passing away. And what is still far stranger than that is that not only
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does one branch of knowledge come to be in us while another passes away and that we are never the same even in respect of our knowledge, but that each single piece of knowledge has the same fate. For what we call
studying
exists because knowledge is leaving us, because forgetting is the departure of knowledge, while studying puts back a fresh memory in place of what went away, thereby preserving a piece of knowledge, so that it seems to be the same. And in that way everything mortal is preserved, not, like the divine, by always being the same in every way, but because [b] what is departing and aging leaves behind something new, something such as it had been. By this device, Socrates,” she said, “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.”