In the Symposium Diotima discusses beauty in relation to love. She starts by speaking about love in relation to creation and pregnancy. When most people think of pregnancy they think of a woman and the creation of a child. When the love of a mother brings a child in to existence it is with the hopes that that offspring will preserve the memories and aspirations of their creator, and in doing so make the parent immortal. Diotima relates this to the pregnancy of an artistic soul. The product conceived in this pregnancy is not a human child but a brain child of wisdom and virtue. The creation of this brain child makes the artist in to an inventor. What Diotima is trying to portray is that love creates an invention, this invention is art and the beauty of this art is wisdom and virtue.
Diotima then goes on to talk about the beauty created from the love of a family. She states that the man who wants to create a family will seek beauty that he can create offspring because if he produces deformity he makes nothing. When Diotima speaks of seeking beauty I assume she means the beauty of a woman. This statement seems a little sexist to me because the man is the only one seeking beauty and choosing to make a family, however Symposium is from long ago when times were very different and men had a dominant role in choosing a family. When Diotima mentions that a man who makes deformity makes nothing it sounds as if she is saying the man that makes an ugly looking child with an ugly looking wife should toss the child out in the street because the child is worth nothing. However, I believe her true meaning is: a man that finds beauty in a woman’s virtue and wisdom may have a child with her that can be molded in to an individual of like virtue and wisdom that will become beautiful and productive in his or her life. A man that chooses a woman that is selfish and unwise will have a child that is difficult and less attractive in his or her demeanor and who will be selfish and unwise like his or her mother. In this way a man has not created a child that he can be proud of or can provide positive things for his family or society, so he has made nothing for him self.
Diotima speaks of wisdom as synonymous with beauty and physical beauty as less important. She explains that many see beauty in one form or another but beauty is in every form. Only fools don’t see that beauty of the mind is a greater form of beauty and the law is an even greater form but the greatest form of love and beauty is family. I don’t believe that the law is a greater form of beauty then the mind because laws can be less then perfect but the beauty of law and the beauty of religion are similar to me though their nature is completely opposite in many ways.
Diotima says that in order to love completely one must realize that the essence of beauty is that beauty is absolute and a person who perceives absolute beauty with their mind will be able to bring the reality of beauty to existence and so becomes immortal.
I take this to mean that artists who make beautiful things love completely realize that beauty is absolute and the art that they create from the love of the absolute brings tham closer to god and so makes them immortal. However, the beauty of their art is a reality not an image and since we are a part of reality we can never define beauty because we are a part of it.
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