Diotima’s Ladder of Love

The ladder of love occurs in the text Symposium by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato which

took place in 385 BC at Agathon’s house. It is about a contest at a men’s banquet, involving

philosophical speeches in praise of Eros, the Greek god of love.

Socrates summarizes the speeches of five of the guests and then recounted the teaching of a

woman, Diotima of Mantinea. She is the one, he says, who taught him the art of love. She also

corrected his original Understanding of Love which was like Agathon, for Socrates, too, believed

that Love was a great god and belonged to beautiful things.1

The first thing that Diotima taught Socrates was that Love was neither Beautiful nor good, but at

the same time neither ugly nor bad. She asserted that love is one of the spirits that mediate

between human beings and gods and mortal and immortal things, she argues that love is the

offspring of gods of plenty and poverty and that is why love desires beautiful things for his father

is plenty and he dwells in want because his mother is poverty, Diotima’s viewed love as a

continuum of beautiful and ugly things that human being desire to achieve and attain happiness. 2

The ladder is a metaphor for the ascent a lover must make from physical attraction to something

beautiful as a beautiful body, the lowest rung to actual contemplation of the form of beauty itself.

The ladder of love has multiple steps whereby Diotima introduces different stages where the

higher the steps the more intellectual it is, this means that to be able to climb the ladder, one

must understand the prior steps thoroughly.

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 Love of a particular beautiful body. Diotima begins by saying that if the man is normal, he

will naturally fall in love with one particular beautiful body, since love is a desire for something

we don’t have, it is first aroused by the sight of individual beauty as a physical feature because

the one going correctly towards this matter must begin while young to go towards beautiful

bodies and if one leading him leads correctly to be in love with one body and there give birth to

beautiful. Different particular bodies trigger different individuals, here one must consider the

similarities of the beauty in different bodies and try to understand them.3

Love for all beautiful bodies, after understanding that all bodies are beautiful and recognizing

the physical features that he is attracted to, he will become a lover of all bodies, not just a

particular body where he sees beauty in all bodies and learns to love the differences, all beautiful

bodies share something in common, something the lover eventually comes to recognize, when he

does recognize this, he moves beyond a passion for any particular body.4

Love for souls, at this stage the lover comes to realize that spiritual and moral beauty matters

much more than physical beauty, that is he realizes that physical beauty is meaningless and

impermanent, unlike souls, at this point physical features are put aside then spiritual and moral

beauty trigger love, so he will now yearn for the sort of interaction with noble characters that is

beautiful mind in this step that will help him become a better person, whenever he encounters

with other individuals that have beauty within their spirits and even if the bodies aren’t

particularly attractive, he will fall in love and cares about the immaterial part and gives birth to

and seeks of a kind that will make young men better.5

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 Love for laws and activities, at this level one, will learn to contemplate and appreciate what

those people with beautiful souls create, that is love for the practice, customs, or foundation that

are derived from people with beautiful souls and are Conditions that foster to gaze upon the

beauty in activities and that this is all akin to itself, so that he may consider the beauty that

concerns that body to be something slight from the beauty of bodies to beauty of activities. 6

Love for knowledge, at this stage the attention ascends from institutions to science, so now

he will accept the beauty of every aspect of knowledge but particularly in the end to

philosophical understanding and loves that there is knowledge to acquire everywhere that is from

beauty of activities to beauty of kinds of learning. looking towards the abundant beauty may no

longer be worthless and petty but being turned towards the great sea of beauty and gazing at it

may give birth to numerous beautiful thoughts in unstinting philosophy.7

Love for beauty itself, at this point, once he sees the beauty in a wide horizon, his vision of

the beauty will not be anything that is of the flesh, it will be neither words nor knowledge nor

something that exists in something else. it will be the beauty itself that he loves, he sees the

beauty in its form and loves the beauty of love as it is. the lover who has ascended the ladder

apprehends the form of beauty in a kind of vision nor thought words or in a way that other sorts

of more ordinary knowledge are known that is the form of the beautiful which neither comes nor

goes, which neither flowers nor fades. it is the way of essence of beauty, subsisting of itself and

by itself in an eternal oneness and every particular beautiful thing is beautiful because of its

connection to this form. Here one will suddenly catch sight of something amazingly beautiful in

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its nature, when someone goes up away from these things using correctly begins to see that

beauty is pretty much within his grasp and give birth, not to an image of virtue but true virtue. 8

To conclude Diotima tells Socrates that if he ever reached the highest rung on the ladder and

contemplate the form of beauty, he would never again be seduced by the physical attraction of

beautiful youths, nothing could make life more worth living than enjoying this sort of vision

because the form of beauty is perfect it will inspire perfect virtue in those who contemplate it.

Many of us can give up all luxuries to gaze upon and be with someone we love. Imagine, then,

she urges, what it would be like to gaze upon Beauty itself, which is so much greater than the

beauty of boys, men, clothes, money, and all else that it is the source of the beauty of these lesser

things. Such a person would be able also to produce true virtue rather than images of virtue.
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Those who are obsessed with images of beauty can only produce images of virtue, but those

who can see Beauty itself can produce virtue itself, making themselves immortal and loved by

the gods. This is the end of Diotima’s speech as transmitted through Socrates, and Socrates

concludes that ever since speaking with Diotima he has known that there is no greater partner for

human nature than Love.

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This account of the ladder of love is the source of the familiar notion of Platonic love which is

meant as the sort of love that is not expressed through sexual relations. Here we see the mysteries

of love whereby even though love seeks beautiful things, all bodies have their inherent beauty

that depends on different perceptions of lovers. Beauty in one body relates to beauty in other

bodies because all are objects of love. Diotima advises that human beings need to pursue beauty

knowing that beauty in all bodies is similar.

Thus, if one needs to appreciate beauty, one should realize that beauty exists in all bodies and

that there is no single body that is beautiful, making it a mystery. Diotima further advises that the

unseen beauty of the soul is more salient and precious than the physical beauty of the body,

which is particularly deceptive. The beauty of the soul is precious because it gives rise to

wisdom and virtues that are critical in loving and caring for others.

Diotima argues that one needs to grasp the essence of love, as it is the knowledge that recognizes

and contemplates the world of beauty and ultimately gives rise to wisdom. Thus, Diotima views

love as one of the qualities of the soul that enables human beings to desire wisdom and values,

unlike the common view of beauty that concentrates only on physical attributes.

The best approach to pursuing desires of love is to begin from one body, then too many bodies,

and ultimately to knowledge and wisdom for one to attain the perfection of beauty and love.

The reason why love does not grow is that humans base their desires on the physical attribute of

their bodies and neglect the beauty of the soul.

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Diotima argues that human flesh and colors have defiled and adulterated the perception of beauty

because human beings hardly consider the beauty of the soul. The desire for physical attributes

of a body is not only deceptive but a sign of immature love that lacks wisdom and values.

In this view, Diotima perceives that physical attributes of a body obscure and obstruct real

attributes of beauty that lie in the soul. Wisdom and values are indispensable elements of the soul

that guide human beings in pursuing their desires according to passion facilitated by love. Thus,

human beings need to focus on the beauty of the soul since they derive considerable benefits

such as wisdom, virtues, ethics, and other values that are essential for personal development,

unlike the body which hardly has any benefits except sight.

The description of the ascent can be viewed as an account of sublimation, the process of

transforming one sort of impulse into another, usually, one that is viewed as “higher” or more

valuable, in this instance, the sexual desire for a beautiful body becomes sublimated into a desire

for philosophical understanding.

The ultimate purpose of the ladder of love is to help a person ascend from loving a particular

kind of beauty to loving beauty itself from which all beautiful things derive their nature, a person

should not only base on the physical or sensible things instead he or she has to go beyond that to

the love of beauty itself which is the best life one can lead.

Diotima shows how Love’s greatest service is to philosophy, for the weight of Love should carry

us up the ladder from beautiful bodies to ultimate beauty itself. The ascent passage in Diotima’s

speech is truly a crucial proposal for Love.

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Eros must be taught about the good and the beautiful, and how to seek it. It must be taught that

all desire is ultimately a desire for the good and the beautiful and that the good and the beautiful

are found in every category of human experience. But certain expressions of the good and the

beautiful are higher than others, and to rest satisfied at any level in which the good and the

beautiful reside, short of the absolute good and beautiful, is to fall short of the greatest good and

the most beautiful.

Hence, desire must be taught that there are indeed stages on life’s way, moving from an aesthetic

stage (beauty in all bodies), through an ethical stage (beauty in the soul, customs, and

knowledge), to the final religious (or metaphysical) stage of existence in which the good and the

beautiful are encountered directly. At each stage, the good and beautiful are revealed, but in each

case, that stage must be transcended for the sake of an even greater beauty until the top is

reached. This ascent to the top is not the result of grace but of work. Human beings, if they are

lucky, will discover this knowledge, possess the virtue necessary to pursue it, and not be

thwarted by the temptation to stop at any lesser level until they pull themselves up to the final

peak of enlightenment and felicity. The ultimate reward is the philosophic life.