The Speech Of Socrates

Socrates then presented Diotima’s views. According to Diotima, a learned woman, Love is not a deity but a daimon, a spirit that exists between humans and gods.Diotima explained that Love’s role is to give birth to beauty in both the mind and the body. True beauty, she argued, is eternal and unchanging. Diotima outlined a "ladder of ascent" in which the lover progresses from an appreciation of individual bodies to a broader understanding of universal beauty, culminating in the vision of the eternal Good.