The path of love in the Symposium: a deviated ascent to the divine

Abstract

Here I intend to show the nature of the path of love of wisdom in Plato’s Symposium. My starting point will be a reciprocal reading among all the voices in the symposium, moving away from the interpretation that prioritizes only the Socrates-Diotima speech. Then I will try to show that in the Symposium we find an anthropological model of unity between the body and the soul, with which the sensitive aspect is also considered useful for the philosophical search. I will support this thesis in a double way: I will show that (1) the scala amoris steps imply not only a vertical ascent but also a necessary deviation towards the horizontal character of immanence; and (2) that the vertical ascent does not imply a disregard for the previous steps but rather a detachment that frees the lover from the enslaving ties which bonds them to the particular objects of their love, be they corporeal or spiritual.

Keywords

• platón
• banquete
• dualismo
• amor
• cuerpo