Symposium Notes
These are unusually sketchy notes. Sorry.
Love is a relative: 199d and 200e
Love is a type of desire: you cannot desire what you have: 200d
Love is neither beautiful nor ugly: rejection of exclusive divisions: between ignorance and knowledge, there is something: 202a (note that this is epistemology)
202c: you don't believe what you think you believe. You believe what your other beliefs logically commit you to believing.
"Mythical" origin of Love according to Diotima: 203b-d.
son of poros and penia,conceived on the day of Aphrodite's birth.
love is a lover of wisdom: 204
being loved is being beautiful and wise: being a lover is neither 204c
204e-the lover of beauty desires to make beauty his own, and when beauty is his own, he will have happiness, which is the goal, for there is no point in asking "why be happy?" When you reach that point, when you can no longer give a further reason, you have reached the goal.
everyone is in love: but they choose different avenues: some love sports, some philosophy, some money, some other things. 205d
Everyone wants the good: 206a
how can someone want the bad, then? Isn't it true that some people want bad things?
Everyone wants the good to be theirs forever: 206a-b
Actually, people do not want the beautiful, they want to "give birth in beauty"-this is a puzzling phrase, which might mean to give birth in the presence of the beautiful or it might mean to give birth into a beautiful person (or thing).206c-207a
reproduction is a form of immortality‹love wants not just to possess the good, but to do so forever-207a-that's why even animals are so concerned about sex and their young.
207e-everchangingness of humans-knowledge keeps departing and leaving behind its seed-constant reproduction. Immortals only are unchanging 208b
the desire for immortality motivates humans in their actions-208e (what of the serial killer? can that be "love"? Of course not, but what in Diotima's account prevents it?)
some are pregnant in body, others in soul-so some seek women, while others seek other men.208e-209c
Ladder of Love 210a ff.
beautiful bodies to beautiful souls to beautiful customs, ideas, ...to beauty itself.
211a beauty itself is not beautiful relative to something else.
When one "sees" true beauty, then one can give birth to true virtue.
Alcibiades' speech in praise of Socrates: 215 and following.
SIlenus