Pausanias Objects: Love Is Not One
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Aristodemus — Φαῖδρον μὲν τοιοῦτόν τινα λόγον ἔφη εἰπεῖν, μετὰ δὲ Φαῖδρον ἄλλους τινὰς εἶναι ὧν οὐ πάνυ διεμνημόνευε, οὓς παρεὶς τὸν Παυσανίου λόγον διηγεῖτο. εἰπεῖν δʼ αὐτὸν ὅτι
Pausanias — οὐ καλῶς μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, προβεβλῆσθαι ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος, τὸ ἁπλῶς οὕτως παρηγγέλθαι ἐγκωμιάζειν ἔρωτα. εἰ μὲν γὰρ εἷς ἦν ὁ Ἔρως, καλῶς ἂν εἶχε, νῦν δὲ οὐ γάρ ἐστιν εἷς. μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἑνὸς ὀρθότερόν ἐστι πρότερον προρρηθῆναι
Phaedrus gave a speech of that sort, he said, and after Phaedrus there were some others, whom he did not quite recall. Passing over these, he related Pausanias's speech. And he said that: it does not seem right to me, Phaedrus, that our subject has been proposed — that we've been told, just like that, to praise Love. For if Love were one, that would be fine; but as it is, he is not one — and since he is not one, it would be more correct to have specified first —
Aristodemus's narration closes out Phaedrus's speech and admits to forgetting the ones that followed, then skips ahead to Pausanias, who opens by objecting that the whole assignment — simply 'praise Love' — was set carelessly, since Love is not a single thing to begin with.
There is a small symmetry in how this transition is built. Aristodemus admits he does not quite recall (diemnēmoneue) the speeches between Phaedrus and Pausanias, so the narration simply passes over them (pareis, literally 'letting them go by') — a gap tolerated without comment. In the very next clause, Pausanias opens his own speech by refusing to tolerate that kind of gap: the assignment to praise Love, he says, was accepted without anyone first specifying which Love was meant. The account enacts the very fault Pausanias is about to name, one sentence before he names it.
Pausanias's insistence on a definition before praise is the dialogue's first appearance of a method Socrates will make his own. No one has yet asked what Love is the way the Republic asks what justice is, but Pausanias has already noticed that praising something undefined produces nothing, however polished the speech. It is a strange place for the idea to surface: not from Socrates, but from the second speaker, and for a narrower reason than philosophical rigor — he needs the distinction between a common Aphrodite and a heavenly one to defend a particular kind of pursuit. The demand for precision and the motive for making it arrive in the same breath.
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