PLATO, SOCRATES, AND LOVE

In Plato’s “The Symposium”, Socrates tells to the guests of the dinner a conversation that he had with a midwife, and where he learned about the nature of love:

Love was neither fair nor good.

“What do you mean, Diotima,” I said, “is love then evil and foul?”

“Hush,” she cried; “must that be foul which is not fair?”

“Certainly,” I said.

“Do not then insist,” she said, “that what is not fair is of necessity foul, or what is not good evil; or infer that because love is not fair and good he is therefore foul and evil; for he is in a mean between them.”

“Well,” I said, “Love is surely admitted by all to be a great god.”

“By those who know or by those who do not know?”

“By all.”

“And how, Socrates,” she said with a smile, “can Love be acknowledged to be a great god by those who say that he is not a god at all?”

” “What then is Love?” I asked; “Is he mortal?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.”

“What is he, Diotima?”

“He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.”

“And what,” I said, “is his power?”

“He interprets,” she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together”.

I said, “O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to be such as you say, what is the use of him to men?”

“That, Socrates,” she replied, “I will attempt to unfold: of his nature and birth I have already spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?-or rather let me put the question more dearly, and ask: When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?”

I answered her “That the beautiful may be his.”

“He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils) — a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. ”

from Paulo Coelho