GSI: Kuan Hwa

08/10/2016

Diotima’s Argument in Plato’s Symposium

Diotima’s account of the pursuit of the Beautiful in Plato’s Symposium translated by Benjamin Jowett is embedded within five textual layers: Plato’s text contains a dialogue told by Apollodorus, who heard it from Aristodemus, who heard from Socrates the content of a dialogue with his teacher Diotima. She argues that if love is desire for what one lacks then highest form of love attainable is the love of wisdom, which permits one to see the “science of beauty everywhere.” While the force and coherence of Diotima’s account derives from the schematic structure of her claims, the authority of her argument is authorized only insofar as it allows Socrates to abstain from responsibility over the claims it makes. As such, Diotima’s argument is a rhetorical device that permits Socrates to advance claims on the nature of love without compromising the Socratic paradox of “only knowing that one knows nothing.”

Diotima’s account gives a clear outline of the successive stages one follow in the pursuit of love. In the trajectory the stages are described as directed “steps” from which one “mounts upwards” or “ascends”. The language employed by Diotima emphasizes a vertical structure where the attainability of each stage is a function of a linear progression through a hierarchy of stages. This schema parallels the analogy of beginning with “earthly” particular forms and ending with absolute “divine” forms, as if gradually distancing from earth to heaven. It also parallels the temporal structure of the beginning with the “youth” and ending with the promise of  “immortality.” Since the schema begins with the love of “one form” and culminates to the love of  “a single science” of love, from one to one, the account feels self-contained and cyclical. As such, the account obeys continuity of action, place, and time. This causal continuity between the onset and the eventual goal of the trajectory on three parallel levels forms the logical force of the account.

The linear ascent from the particular to the general contrasts the notion of human cyclicality. In the discussion of the immortal nature of love, Diotima says that man undergoes “a perpetual process of loss and reparation—hair, flesh, bones, blood.” By enumerating the components of the body, Diotima emphasizes the disjunction of the physical body. The body is represented as if composed of discrete parts, united in their evolution in unison. Absolute ideas, on the other hand, are “not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning.” The division between the mortal body and abstract absolute forms becomes the fundamental dichotomy of the subjects of love, here defined to be desire for what one lacks. 

Diotima preempts her explication of how one goes about pursuing that which one lacks by presenting an analogous dichotomy between the categories of love. She distinguishes between two categories: the “lesser mysteries” of the hierarchy of love which “even you, Socrates, may enter” while “the greater and more hidden ones… I know not whether you will be able to attain.” Diotima addresses Socrates directly in the opening statement of the passage in a somewhat disparaging tone when she says ‘even you’, where ‘you’ is immediately qualified to be Socrates. By singling Socrates by name, Diotima identifies an individual member of the category “mortals” captured by the premises of the popular syllogism “Socrates is a man / all men are mortal.” This may be a show of humility by Socrates’ himself, in contrast to the constant deification of Alcibiades’ account depicting him in “divine and golden images of such fascinating beauty.” Diotima’s tone emphasizes the asymmetry of her relationship with Socrates, reminding present listeners that Socrates becomes a pupil in the narrative while reinforcing her position as the guiding figure. As such, Socrates is dissociated from the formulation of the present argument and remains in the role of the messenger and loyal student disseminating Diotima’s argument.

At first it seems that Socrates is finally asserting a philosophical account after all the dialectic dialogues we have studied where he merely contests and refutes the interlocutor’s claims. Yet, the anecdotal (and putatively autobiographical) dialogue with Diotima becomes evidence for how perplexity motivates the dialogue. When Diotima asks Socrates “what is the manner of the pursuit” he deflects the question by declaring his ignorance, “the reason why I came to you.” While there is implicit praise in this response, Socrates’ careful avoidance of a reply positions him as lacking experience or knowledge in the field and justifies his interest in the conversation. First, this perhaps elicits the listener’s empathy as it depicts younger Socrates as characteristically curious yet humble, in contrast to his typical abrasiveness. The younger Socrates, victim of material love for “gold, and garments, and fair boys” seems more human than the “divine” and impenetrable teacher of Aristodemus’ narrative. Second, it posits Socrates’ ignorance as the intellectual motive for the philosophical exploration, paradoxical insofar as it suggests that the void of knowledge propagates attaining knowledge.

However, Socrates is careful to avoid explicitly claiming knowledge after retelling the dialogue. During the dialogue, Socrates does not amplify or expound on Diotima’s claims. He concludes by saying that these “were the words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth”. Again, the praise of Diotima’s wisdom conceals Socrates’ abstention from their claims. He emphasizes that these words are purely Diotima’s and not his own; there is a division between the message and the messenger as between the content of the words and their physical expression. It is important that Socrates chooses to claim he is “persuaded” rather than “convinced” of the truth. If persuasion is a manipulative rhetorical device, then Socrates again resorts to the asymmetrical and manipulative relationship between speaker and listener to suggest his impotence upon retelling the argument. This means Socrates can still claim neutrality while advancing an argument on the philosophical pursuit of knowledge that in turn serves the Platonic Theory of Forms, unveiling the manipulations of two different levels of the text. 

Works Cited

Plato, and Benjamin Jowett. Symposium. Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg, 2008.