Weaker at Every Point
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Socrates — ἥττω δὲ καὶ ὑποδεέστερον ἀεὶ ἀπεργάζεται· ἥττων δὲ ἀμαθὴς σοφοῦ δειλὸς ἀνδρείου ἀδύνατος εἰπεῖν ῥητορικοῦ βραδὺς ἀγχίνου.
Socrates spells out what 'inferior' means, and it is chilling. The lover cannot bear a beloved who is his equal, still less his better, so he labors constantly to make the boy lesser — and Socrates enumerates the ways, in four sharp antitheses. Lesser means ignorant beside the wise, cowardly beside the brave, unable to speak beside the eloquent, slow-witted beside the quick. In other words, the lover has an active interest in the beloved's stupidity, timidity, and helplessness. What passes for devotion is a steady sabotage of everything that would make the young man strong and free — and, Socrates will add, the lover does not merely prefer these defects but takes pleasure in them and works to produce them.
The harms sharpen into a list. The lover will never stand a beloved who is his equal or better; he works, always, to make him lesser — and 'lesser' means ignorant next to the wise, cowardly next to the brave, tongue-tied next to the eloquent, slow next to the quick. He wants the boy diminished in mind and spirit alike.
The list is built out of the very qualities Greek culture most prized — sophia (wisdom), andreia (courage), the power of speech, quickness of mind — and the lover, on this account, wants his beloved stripped of every one. The first pairing carries the most weight: amathēs against sophos, ignorant against wise. For Socrates amathia, ignorance, is the root of every vice, and its worst form is not knowing that you don't know. A lover who cultivates ignorance in the beloved is corrupting him at the source. This is the speech's genuine insight, and it is real: possessive desire does thrive on the dependence of the loved one, and does prefer him small. But notice the shape of the indictment. It measures love entirely by what it does to the beloved's independent excellence — and on that measure the palinode will agree, then reverse the verdict. There the true lover, far from diminishing the beloved, becomes the one person desperate for him to grow wise, brave, and winged, because the lover sees in him a reflection of the god they both once followed. Same standard — does love make the beloved greater or smaller? — opposite answer, once love is understood as more than appetite.
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