A Wish Common to All
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Diotima — κτήσει γάρ, ἔφη, ἀγαθῶν οἱ εὐδαίμονες εὐδαίμονες, καὶ οὐκέτι προσδεῖ ἐρέσθαι ἵνα τί δὲ βούλεται εὐδαίμων εἶναι ὁ βουλόμενος; ἀλλὰ τέλος δοκεῖ ἔχειν ἡ ἀπόκρισις.
Socrates — ἀληθῆ λέγεις, εἶπον ἐγώ.
Diotima — ταύτην δὴ τὴν βούλησιν καὶ τὸν ἔρωτα τοῦτον πότερα κοινὸν οἴει εἶναι πάντων ἀνθρώπων, καὶ πάντας τἀγαθὰ βούλεσθαι αὑτοῖς εἶναι ἀεί, ἢ πῶς λέγεις;
Socrates — οὕτως, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ· κοινὸν εἶναι πάντων.
Diotima — τί δὴ οὖν, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, οὐ πάντας ἐρᾶν φαμεν
For by the possession of good things, she said, the happy are happy, and no longer is there need to ask, for what end does the one who wishes wish to be happy? But the answer seems to have an end. True, I said. This wish, then, and this love, do you think it common to all men, and that all wish the good things to be theirs always, or how do you mean? So it is, said I: common to all. Why then, Socrates, she said, do we not say all love,
Happiness, Diotima says, needs no further explanation: the happy are happy by possessing good things, and no one asks why a person wishes to be happy — the answer has reached its end. Socrates agrees. Then she asks: is this wish, this love — to have the good be one's own forever — common to all people? Socrates says yes, common to all. So why, she asks, do we not say that everyone loves?
The crucial widening comes next. If love is really the wish for the good to be one's own forever (aei, "always" — the first appearance of the permanence that will lead to immortality), and if that wish is koinon pantōn, common to all, then in the broadest sense everyone is a lover. The puzzle Diotima poses — why, then, do we not call everyone a lover? — will be answered in 205b–d: because we reserve the word "love" for one form of a universal desire, just as we reserve "poet" (poiētēs) for one kind of maker though all making is poiēsis. Love, properly understood, is the whole human reach for the good; erotic love is its most vivid instance. The stage is set for the ascent, where that reach will climb from bodies to Beauty itself.
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