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Socrates and DiotimaThe Work of Love

Socrates and Diotima: The Work of Love [Socrates is not alone in failing to understand Diotima’s teaching at this point. If Diotima’s suggestion of continuity between sexual desire and desire for the good has perplexed scholars, even more disconcerting has been her abrupt abandonment of “the good” and return to beauty. Are “good” and “beauty” no more than different names for the same thing? Do the two categories overlap with some things both beautiful and good, and others beautiful but not good, or good but not beautiful? Is it a question of genus and species with the “good” the more general category and “beauty,” along with virtue and justice, one of the concepts that fall under it? But even stranger than mixing beauty with good has seemed the introduction of generative language. “Bringing forth,” “τóкoς,” a word referring both to the birth and the siring of children, both to the reproductive act and its resulting offspring, to desire and action? Was Plato confused, putting words into Socrates’s mouth that make no sense? 1] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Socrates and DiotimaThe Work of Love

Part of the Breaking Feminist Waves Book Series
Nye, Andrea
Socrates and Diotima — Dec 1, 2015
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16 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2015
ISBN
978-1-349-57292-2
Pages
29 –45
DOI
10.1057/9781137514042_3
Publisher site
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Abstract

[Socrates is not alone in failing to understand Diotima’s teaching at this point. If Diotima’s suggestion of continuity between sexual desire and desire for the good has perplexed scholars, even more disconcerting has been her abrupt abandonment of “the good” and return to beauty. Are “good” and “beauty” no more than different names for the same thing? Do the two categories overlap with some things both beautiful and good, and others beautiful but not good, or good but not beautiful? Is it a question of genus and species with the “good” the more general category and “beauty,” along with virtue and justice, one of the concepts that fall under it? But even stranger than mixing beauty with good has seemed the introduction of generative language. “Bringing forth,” “τóкoς,” a word referring both to the birth and the siring of children, both to the reproductive act and its resulting offspring, to desire and action? Was Plato confused, putting words into Socrates’s mouth that make no sense? 1]

Published: Dec 1, 2015

Keywords: Sexual Desire; Small Thing; Physical Beauty; Erotic Arousal; Erotic Desire

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