No Envy — Shaping the Beloved Toward the God
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Socrates — τὰ παιδικὰ πείθοντες καὶ ῥυθμίζοντες εἰς τὸ ἐκείνου ἐπιτήδευμα καὶ ἰδέαν ἄγουσιν… οὐ φθόνῳ οὐδʼ ἀνελευθέρῳ δυσμενείᾳ χρώμενοι πρὸς τὰ παιδικά.
Socrates spells out how the true lover treats the beloved, and every word is chosen to answer the first two speeches. Having won the beloved, the lover does not exploit or diminish him; he 'persuades and shapes' him — the verb is rhythmizein, to bring into rhythm and proportion — leading him toward the pursuits and character of the god they both once followed. And Socrates is emphatic about the spirit of it: this is done 'with no envy, no mean and illiberal ill-will' toward the beloved. The jealous, grudging, possessive lover of the first speech — the one who feared a rival, who wanted the boy kept small — is replaced by a lover whose whole labor is generous, aimed at forming the beloved into the fullest, most god-like version of himself.
Continuing the theology of love: followers of Hera seek a kingly soul, followers of Apollo an Apollo-like one, and so on. When they win the beloved, they imitate their god and, persuading and shaping the beloved, lead him toward that god's pursuits and character — using no envy or mean-spirited ill-will toward him, but drawing him into likeness with the god.
This is the palinode answering Lysias line by line, and it does so most pointedly with two words the first speech leaned on: phthonos, envy, and the mean, illiberal spirit, aneleutheros. Lysias's lover was defined by exactly these — jealous of the beloved's other friendships, grudging of his growth, working to keep him ignorant and dependent so as not to be surpassed. Socrates now says the true lover uses 'no envy, no illiberal ill-will' toward the beloved at all. The negation is deliberate and total. Where the first lover shrank the beloved out of fear, this lover enlarges him out of love — and the verb for it, rhythmizein, is exquisite. To rhythmize is to bring into proportion and harmony, the way one shapes music or trains a body; the lover forms the beloved's soul into the ordered pattern of the god, not to own him but to complete him. And the theology guarantees the generosity. Because the lover loves in the beloved the image of the god he himself follows, the beloved's flourishing is not a threat to the lover's possession but the very thing the lover most desires — the god made more manifest in the one he loves. So the deepest fear the first speeches raised, that love must be selfish because desire is selfish, is dissolved. The true lover's desire and the beloved's good point in the same direction. To want the beloved is to want him god-like, and to want him god-like is to labor, enviously of nothing, for his growth. Love and education have become one act, and the jealousy that the first speech thought inseparable from love turns out to belong only to its counterfeit.
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