Ascending For Love Diotima s Ladder - 2353 Words

Cara Pace Dr. Anna Cremaldi PHL 3000 3 October 2016 Ascending to Love: Diotima’s Ladder In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates recalls a speech told by priestess Diotima from Mantinea. In this speech, Diotima counters Socrates’s belief that Love is beautiful and good, scolds him, and tells him that just because something is not beautiful does not mean it has to be ugly. In the same way, just because something is not wise does not mean it has to be ignorant, and so on. In other words, Love is not beautiful nor ugly; it is not immortal nor mortal; it is in between. While discussing Love with Agathon and Phaedrus at a party, Socrates recalls Diotima’s speech and retells it. Socrates portrays Diotima as all-knowing of Love, and refers to her idea that one must ascend in Love, first loving one beautiful body and eventually reaching love for Beauty itself. This implies that the ultimate form of Love cannot be reached without having stepped on the first rung of the ladder, and each one before the next. Readers of Plato’s Symposium may believe that as the in dividual moves upward on the ladder, he or she must renounce the things they have learned on each of the previous rungs. In other words, he or she should forget the previous rungs entirely and continue moving upward to other stages or forms of Love. Rather, I believe that one cannot reach Love (the top rung of the ladder) without simultaneously having knowledge of the previous things he has learned on the ladder. In this paper, I will