Diotima By Socrates: The True Nature Of Love

Before Socrates explains to his peers what Diotima instructed him about the true nature of love, it is first important to highlight the first explanation of love discussed in dialogue. Like Aristophanes, Socrates also at one point believed that love was synonymous with the gods. Through treating the “gods with due reverence”, Aristophanes argued that: “he [Love] will restore to us our original nature, and by healing us, he will make us blessed and happy” (Reeve and Miller, 141). Although some ideas carry over to Diotima’s explanation of love to Socrates, such as love promising “the greatest hope of all”;the fundamental principles of what explains passionate love are drastically altered within Diotima’s account of love (Reeve and Miller, 141).

Diotima immediately provides clarity as to passionate love’s true identity, in that love is not a god, instead, love exists as “a great spirit”, serving as “messengers who shuttle back and forth between the two [men and gods]” (Reeve and Miller, 142). Diotima also goes on to explain that “Gods do not mix with men” and that “He who is wise in any of these ways is a man of the spirit, but he who is wise in any other way...is merely a mechanic” (Reeve and Miller, 142). Diotima’s preliminary clarification as to Love existing as an in-between, namely something that that rests between the mortal and immortal, man and god, and even the notion of beautiful and ugly. Only those who choose to live their

Through her explanation of love and her interpretation of mankind’s natural pull to the concept of immortality, Diotima effectively explained the difference between being loved and being a lover. The concept of being a lover requires that individuals are responsible for the development of not only themselves, but for their contemporaries and for future generations in order to keep our fundamental nature alive; possessing the good forever through