Not of Beauty, but of Birth in Beauty
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Diotima — περὶ τὸ καλὸν διὰ τὸ μεγάλης ὠδῖνος ἀπολύειν τὸν ἔχοντα. ἔστιν γάρ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔφη, οὐ τοῦ καλοῦ ὁ ἔρως, ὡς σὺ οἴει.
Socrates — ἀλλὰ τί μήν;
Diotima — τῆς γεννήσεως καὶ τοῦ τόκου ἐν τῷ καλῷ.
Socrates — εἶεν, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ.
Diotima — πάνυ μὲν οὖν, ἔφη.
Socrates — τί δὴ οὖν τῆς γεννήσεως;
Diotima — ὅτι ἀειγενές ἐστι καὶ ἀθάνατον ὡς θνητῷ ἡ γέννησις. ἀθανασίας
about the beautiful, because it releases the one who has it from great birth-pangs. For love is not of the beautiful, as you think, Socrates. But of what, then? Of generation and birth in the beautiful. So be it, said I. Most certainly, she said. Why, then, of generation? Because generation is everlasting and immortal, as a mortal can be. And of immortality
Diotima delivers the correction. The lover's agitation is about the beautiful because the beautiful releases him from the great pangs of what he carries. So — love is not of the beautiful, as Socrates thought, but of generation and birth in the beautiful. Why of generation? Because generation is the everlasting and immortal thing, as far as a mortal can have it. And love, therefore, is also of immortality. Continued in 207a.
The final clause explains why, and it names the deep aim at last: athanasia, immortality. Generation is called aeigenes, ever-coming-to-be — the one deathless thing a mortal can have, since a mortal cannot persist unchanged but can leave a new thing in place of the old. So the reach for the good 'forever' (206a) is satisfiable only by begetting, and love turns out to be, at bottom, the mortal's love of immortality. This reframes everything the earlier speakers praised: the lover's longing for a beautiful body, the poet's for fame, the lawgiver's for lasting honour are all the same hunger to outlast death through what one brings forth. The argument that immortality is love's real object is spelled out next (207a–208b), and it is the platform from which the ascent to Beauty itself will finally launch.
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