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. (204C)
A bit before this point in her speech, Diotima, a wise woman from Mantinea and an acquaintance of Socrates, begins to completely turn our notion of Love on its head; once thought of as an ethereal, supple, nascent, and beautiful god, Love, through the course of Diotima’s speech, becomes a vagabond spirit who is "tough and shriveled and shoeless and homeless...always living with Need" but also "brave, impetuous, intense…[and] a lover of wisdom" (203D). At first, Diotima’s account seems to contradict our conception of Love; according to Diotima, Love does not have the qualities of that which is truly beautiful, that which deserves to be loved. In fact, Diotima shows that the object of Love is knowledge of true Beauty, and that the purpose of Love is not to make two halves whole again, as Aristophanes elaborates, or to be admired and coveted, as Agathon tells, but rather to give birth in beauty. Diotima accomplishes the remarkable feat of completely changing our notion of Love by using Socrates’ own arguments to deconstruct his and our ideas of Love simultaneously. She then skillfully reassembles those fractured thoughts into a new conception of Love that seems unrecognizable at first, but soon comports with our fundamental conception of Love after an examination of the nature of virtue in light of what Plato writes concerning forms and the purpose of philosophy in the Phaedo.
Unlike in the speeches made preceding Socrates’ narration of Diotima’s speech, Diotima’s discourse does not bring Love into light by the narrow definitions of common accoutrements of Love often used to address the whole of Love. Instead, Diotima defines Love by its object and its purpose: knowledge of true Beauty and giving birth in beauty. Socrates introduces Diotima’s arguments by using them to question Agathon in the same way he was once questioned by Diotima. Building each question upon Agathon’s previous responses, Socrates shows by mutual agreement that Love is a desire to have the beautiful things and to have them forever. Socrates and Agathon agree that something that desires something else cannot possess the object of that desire, so it is also established that Love is not beautiful, and since all that is beautiful is good, Love also lacks the good things and is not good. The progression of this discourse continues when Socrates shares the dialog he had with Diotima. Socrates and Diotima agree that Love is a spirit, being neither good nor bad, beautiful nor ugly, wise nor ignorant, God nor mortal. The reason Love desires beautiful and good things is because having beautiful and good things is in harmony with the gods; what is bad or ugly is inharmonious with the divine. Love leads us to the good things, and once we have the good things we are in harmony with the gods and are thus in beauty. Diotima tells Socrates that we are born pregnant in body and in soul, a concept that disagrees with our conception of pregnancy. We desire to be in beauty because in beauty we give birth; therefore, the ultimate purpose of Love is giving birth in beauty. Being pregnant in body and in soul, we give birth in body and in soul, giving birth to human children in body and beautiful ideas and knowledge in soul. Children of the body are mortal, whereas children of the soul, beautiful ideas and knowledge, are immortal, as detailed by Plato’s Theory of Recollection in the Phaedo. Beautiful ideas and knowledge, due to their immortality, are in harmony with the gods and are therefore preferred to children of the body. Through these arguments, Diotima shows that the purpose of Love is giving birth in beauty, and that the ultimate object of love is a child of the soul begotten in beauty: knowledge of Beauty itself.
As remarkable as Diotima’s revelations about the true nature of Love are, her ability to completely change our notion of Love using only our previous conceptions of Love, and her facility of doing so in such an irrefutable manner are all the more astonishing. After using the arguments Diotima made for Love’s true nature to demonstrate the same to Agathon, Socrates recalls, "she showed how, according to my very own speech, love is neither beautiful nor good" (201E). Socrates then recounts his dialog with Diotima for the edification of the guests at the dinner party:
What do you mean, Diotima, is Love ugly, then, and bad? …Watch your tongue! Do you really think that if a thing is not beautiful, it has to be ugly? (202A)
To allay his confusion, Diotima leads Socrates to understand that Love is a spirit; a messenger "who shuttles back and forth…conveying prayer and sacrifice from men to gods…and gifts in return for sacrifice" (203A). Diotima then uses mythology to explain that Love is the progeny of Poros and Penia, the gods of Resource and Poverty. This parentage is responsible for Love’s duality, mentioned in the questioning of Agathon by Socrates. Once she has revealed the true nature of Love through the explanation of Love’s parentage, Diotima points out that, until this point, Socrates, along with Agathon, the other dinner guests, and ourselves, thought Love was being loved instead of being a lover. Socrates provokes Diotima to explain the purpose of Love by asking, "what use is Love to human beings?" (204D) Diotima then shows Socrates that the true purpose of love is giving birth in beauty. After proving this to be the true purpose of Love, Diotima has succeeded in completely turning our conception of Love on its head, weaving her arguments for why Love must be so from the tangled, knotted mess of our previous notions of Love.
Diotima’s depiction of Love in the Symposium might initially strike the reader as alien and untrue; however, once one overcomes the initial shock caused by Diotima breaking the false bonds that previously existed between Love and that which deserves to be loved, creating a dichotomy between two concepts before seen as one, it is clear that the purpose of Love is giving birth in beauty and that the object of Love must be knowledge of true Beauty. Additionally, after considering Plato’s Theory of Forms and his conclusions on the purpose of philosophy, both featured in the Phaedo, Diotima’s conception of Love becomes even more intuitive. In the Phaedo, Plato explains that the objects we encounter in the sensible realm are merely imperfect images of the true forms of those objects, residing in the intelligible realm. Objects in the sensible realm inherit their characteristics from the absolute forms; an apple might inherit its "appleness" from the Apple form of the intelligible realm. Plato uses this reasoning to introduce the form of Beauty, among others. Diotima demonstrates that the purpose of Love is giving birth in beauty, the highest form of which is giving birth to knowledge of the true Beauty. This paramount act of procreation is only accomplished in the presence of the form of Beauty. Being a denizen of the intelligible realm, Beauty only affords proximity to the soul, the part of us that is immortal and, therefore, is able to enter the intelligible realm. Regarding the purpose of philosophy, Plato writes that philosophy is the practice of approaching the truth in order to gain knowledge, achieved by progressively separating the mortal body from the immortal soul for the purpose of ultimately entering the intelligible realm and gaining true knowledge. This separation is accomplished by leading a pious life in which the philosopher models his thoughts and actions in accordance with the virtues of justice, moderation, bravery, and wisdom. The knowledge that the philosopher seeks is, coincidentally, the object of Love; therefore, Love is the force that drives us to seek knowledge. The means by which we approach knowledge being the path of virtue, it can be affirmed that those who are virtuous and those who practice philosophy are Lovers in the truest sense. Most, if not all, would agree that the virtuous man harbors love for himself, his culture and its customs, his country, his friends, and even for his enemies. It is also common belief that a virtuous person esteems inner beauty more highly than outer beauty. This is what Diotima means when she speaks of preferring the beautiful soul to the beautiful body. Although it seems unrecognizable at first, Diotima’s conception of Love proves concordant with our fundamental understanding of love after examining her words in light of what Plato writes about intelligible forms and the nature of philosophy in the Phaedo.
