Love Is Love OF Something
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Socrates — τόδε εἰπέ· πότερόν ἐστι τοιοῦτος οἷος εἶναί τινος ὁ Ἔρως ἔρως, ἢ οὐδενός; ἐρωτῶ δʼ οὐκ εἰ μητρός τινος ἢ πατρός ἐστιν— γελοῖον γὰρ ἂν εἴη τὸ ἐρώτημα εἰ Ἔρως ἐστὶν ἔρως μητρὸς ἢ πατρός— ἀλλʼ ὥσπερ ἂν εἰ αὐτὸ τοῦτο πατέρα ἠρώτων, ἆρα ὁ πατήρ ἐστι πατήρ τινος ἢ οὔ; εἶπες ἂν δήπου μοι, εἰ ἐβούλου καλῶς ἀποκρίνασθαι, ὅτι ἔστιν ὑέος γε ἢ θυγατρὸς ὁ πατὴρ πατήρ· ἢ οὔ;
Agathon — πάνυ γε, φάναι τὸν Ἀγάθωνα.
Socrates — οὐκοῦν καὶ ἡ μήτηρ ὡσαύτως;
Aristodemus — Ὁμολογεῖσθαι καὶ τοῦτο.
Tell me this: is Eros such as to be love of something, or of nothing? I am not asking whether of some mother or father — for it would be ridiculous, the question, whether Eros is love of a mother or father — but just as if I were asking about a father, whether a father is father of someone or not: you would surely tell me, if you wished to answer well, that the father is father of a son at least or a daughter; or not? Quite so, said Agathon. Then the mother too, likewise? This too was agreed.
Socrates asks the question that will overturn Agathon's whole speech: is Eros love of something, or of nothing? He guards it carefully — he doesn't mean whether Eros has a mother or father, which would be silly, but as when you ask whether a father is necessarily a father of someone (a son or daughter). Agathon agrees, and agrees the same holds for a mother.
The care Socrates takes to fence off the wrong reading — no, not who Eros' parents are — is Plato showing the method's precision: fix the exact sense of the question before the answer can be pinned. From this small agreement the whole argument unrolls: if love is always of something, it is of something it does not yet have, and so Eros is need, not possession — the reverse of Agathon's radiant, self-sufficient god. The same relational analysis drives the arguments of the Republic on knowledge and its objects. Here it quietly dismantles the evening's most beautiful speech.
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