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Diotima Ladder Of Love Analysis

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Forms/ideas are the true object(s) of knowledge. They are unchanging ideas or concepts that exist outside of time and space. They are the true objects of knowledge, which we perceive with our soul, not our eyes nor ears – we contemplate them with our soul. According to Diotima, there are four intrinsic features associated with the form of beauty. The four features of beauty are: that beauty is unchanging, absolute, separate, and that other beautiful things participate in it without changing it. Furthermore, the love of beauty goes from the particular to the abstract, which is beauty itself – the ideal, perfect form of beauty. The process under which one must go in order to truly appreciate the form of beauty is demonstrated via the ladder of love. Moreover, the ladder of love is a concept put forth by Diotima in order to help fully comprehend beauty, in all of its aspects.
The ladder of love is a series of attractions to a hierarchy of different beautiful objects. As previously mentioned, the ladder of love is an abstract process put forth by Diotima used to explain the form of beauty, which shows that beauty can be recognized in many different ways, such as in bodies, minds/souls, laws/practices, and more. According to Diotima’s account of the ladder of love, in order to begin the process of …show more content…

Socrates learned from Diotima that love is a kind of neediness that can only be fully satisfied by a good, by a kind of happiness that is never fleeting, that is permanent – which is the form of beauty. For beings like us, who are mortal, this means that love looks to stretch out beyond ourselves, beyond our own life. A central part of love, an aspect of love itself, is some aspiration to live on beyond the bounds of our mortality – hence the intrinsic features of unchanging, absolute, and separate of which Diotima

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