Barred From Philosophy
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Socrates — μεγίστης δὲ τῆς ὅθεν ἂν φρονιμώτατος εἴη· τοῦτο δὲ ἡ θεία φιλοσοφία τυγχάνει ὄν ἧς ἐραστὴν παιδικὰ ἀνάγκη πόρρωθεν εἴργειν περίφοβον ὄντα τοῦ καταφρονηθῆναι·
Socrates saves the worst for last. Of all the beneficial company the lover denies the beloved, the most damaging loss is of the pursuit that would make him wisest of all — and that pursuit, Socrates says, is divine philosophy. The lover must keep his beloved as far from it as possible. The motive is nakedly self-interested: he is terrified of being looked down on. A boy who took up philosophy would grow in judgment, see his lover clearly, and outgrow him — so the lover, to protect his own standing, works to keep him from the very thing that would set him free. Possessive love, followed to its end, is at war with wisdom itself.
The gravest harm of all. The lover keeps the beloved from every pursuit that would help him grow into a man — above all from divine philosophy, the one thing that would make him truly wise. And why? Because the lover is terrified that a beloved who learns to think will come to look down on him.
This is the deepest cut, and the exact pivot on which the entire dialogue turns. The harm that outweighs all the others is being kept from theia philosophia, 'divine philosophy' — the pursuit that makes a person phronimōtatos, most possessed of phronēsis, the practical wisdom that steers a whole life. On this the speech is unanswerable and, for once, wholly serious: a love that fears the beloved's wisdom, that needs him kept small to keep him near, is a love at war with the best thing in him. And the motive Socrates names is precise — periphobon, 'terrified,' of being kataphronēthēnai, 'looked down on.' The lover cannot bear to be surpassed. Now hold this beside what the palinode will claim, because Plato has built the two speeches to meet exactly here. The true lover, the second speech will say, does the opposite of everything catalogued in this first: not the enemy of the beloved's philosophy but its fiercest patron, wanting nothing so much as for the beloved to grow wise and winged, even past himself — because the two are fellow-followers of the same god, and love rightly understood is the shared ascent toward wisdom, not a jealous guarding against it. The first speech has just told us, without meaning to, exactly what real love would have to be: whatever this is not.
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