A Great Daimon
Read the full text in our reader
Diotima — ἀλλὰ μὴν Ἔρωτά γε ὡμολόγηκας διʼ ἔνδειαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ καλῶν ἐπιθυμεῖν αὐτῶν τούτων ὧν ἐνδεής ἐστιν.
Socrates — ὡμολόγηκα γάρ.
Diotima — πῶς ἂν οὖν θεὸς εἴη ὅ γε τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἄμοιρος;
Socrates — οὐδαμῶς, ὥς γʼ ἔοικεν.
Diotima — ὁρᾷς οὖν, ἔφη, ὅτι καὶ σὺ ἔρωτα οὐ θεὸν νομίζεις;
Socrates — τί οὖν ἄν, ἔφην, εἴη ὁ Ἔρως; θνητός;
Diotima — ἥκιστά γε.
Socrates — ἀλλὰ τί μήν;
Diotima — ὥσπερ τὰ πρότερα, ἔφη, μεταξὺ θνητοῦ καὶ ἀθανάτου.
Socrates — τί οὖν, ὦ Διοτίμα;
Diotima — δαίμων μέγας, ὦ Σώκρατες· καὶ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ δαιμόνιον
But indeed you have agreed that Eros, through want of good and beautiful things, desires these very things of which he is in want. I have agreed, indeed. How then could he be a god, who has no share of the beautiful and good? In no way, as it seems. Do you see, then, she said, that you too do not consider Eros a god? What then, said I, would Eros be? Mortal? Least of all. But what, then? As in the former cases, she said, between mortal and immortal. What then, Diotima? A great spirit, Socrates; for everything daimonic
The conclusion arrives. Since Eros desires the good and beautiful he lacks, he cannot be a god (a god lacks nothing). So Socrates, by his own admissions, does not really think Eros a god. Then what is he? Not mortal either. As with the earlier cases, he is between — between mortal and immortal. And what is that? A great daimon, says Diotima; for everything daimonic is between god and mortal.
The move rescues Eros from the deflation of the refutation and turns lack into vocation. A being that lacks the good and knows it, and reaches for it, is precisely a daimōn — and, Diotima will soon say, precisely a philosopher, a lover of the wisdom he does not yet have. The Greek daimōn is not the later "demon": it is a power between gods and men, the medium through which prayer, sacrifice, prophecy and love pass. By placing Eros here, Plato makes desire itself the great connector, the force that binds the mortal to the divine. The definition of the daimonic that follows (202e) will spell out this mediating work — and the myth of Eros' birth (203b), from Poverty and Resource, will give the in-between being a story.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Plato, Symposium 202d in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
You are reading a page of the Plato, Symposium — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Plato, Symposium 202d — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/symposium/202d/