Abstract

What is often identified with Plato’s doctrine of love is greatly complicated, if not even compromised, by the dialogical form in which it is presented. In the first place, this account of love in placed in the mouth of a character, Diotima, who as priestess and woman seeking to initiate Socrates into mysteries he may not be able to follow is sharply distinguished from the philosopher. Furthermore, even the ideal portrait of the philosopher we find in the character of Socrates is rendered suspect by the fanaticism and erotic idolatry of those who narrate the dialogue, Apollodorus and Aristodemus. When these narrative complications are taken into account, what emerges is a tension between the mortal knowledge of the philosopher, continually demanding to be reborn by its continual retreat into oblivion, and that secure knowledge and possession of divine reality that the philosopher can only dream of.