Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Diotima

Of all the speeches of Love, I think Diotima's is the most accurate.
While the others were overly hopeful or realistic, Diotima's really captured the transcendent nature of Love. Her description of Love as a spirit that is between mortal and god and acts as a messenger between the two is the perfect explanation for why we assign such grand characteristics to Love. We believe that Love can transcend lifetimes. We believe that Love persists in the afterlife. Whatever we believe about life itself, Love always makes an appearance; it seems to be able to adapt to any belief system and persist in a nearly intact form.
Diotima's spiritual explanation accounts for this adaptability of Love.

Another reason I really liked Diotima's speech is that is is even more realistic than the false hope of Phaedrus or the realistic view of Pausanias. She says that not only is Love not perfectly beautiful, it is also not perfectly ugly. She gives Love the same forgiveness she would a person, which is what makes Love so accessible. Just because Love isn't entirely good does not make it bad, otherwise we'd all be bad people.

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