Making Is Manifold
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Diotima — εἴπερ γε πάντες τῶν αὐτῶν ἐρῶσι καὶ ἀεί, ἀλλά τινάς φαμεν ἐρᾶν, τοὺς δʼ οὔ;
Socrates — θαυμάζω, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, καὶ αὐτός.
Diotima — ἀλλὰ μὴ θαύμαζʼ, ἔφη· ἀφελόντες γὰρ ἄρα τοῦ ἔρωτός τι εἶδος ὀνομάζομεν, τὸ τοῦ ὅλου ἐπιτιθέντες ὄνομα, ἔρωτα, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ἄλλοις καταχρώμεθα ὀνόμασιν.
Socrates — ὥσπερ τί; ἦν δʼ ἐγώ.
Diotima — ὥσπερ τόδε. οἶσθʼ ὅτι ποίησίς ἐστί τι πολύ· ἡ γάρ τοι ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἰς τὸ ὂν ἰόντι ὁτῳοῦν αἰτία πᾶσά ἐστι
if indeed all love the same things and always, yet we say some love, but not others? I wonder at that too, myself, said I. But do not wonder, she said; for marking off one kind of love, we name it, laying on it the name of the whole, love, but the other kinds we call by other names. Like what? said I. Like this. You know that making is manifold; for the cause, you know, of anything's coming from not-being into being is all
Diotima explains why we don't call everyone a lover, though all wish the good to be theirs always. We take one kind of love, put on it the name of the whole — 'love' — and call the other kinds by other names. She offers an analogy: 'making' (poiēsis) is a broad thing — the cause of anything's passing from not-being into being is all making. The thought continues into 205c.
The maneuver does more than solve a verbal puzzle. It reframes erōs as a genus with many species: the money-lover, the athlete, the philosopher are all, at bottom, reaching for the good and for happiness, and so all 'love' in the wide sense (205d spells this out). Ordinary usage narrows 'lover' to the sexual pursuer, just as it narrows 'poet' to the versifier — but the philosophical truth is broader. And the definition of making as a passage from mē on to on, from not-being to being, quietly plants the seed of the whole ascent: love will turn out to be a kind of bringing-to-birth, a making of immortality in the beautiful (206b ff.). Language's narrow habit hides the wide truth Diotima is recovering.
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