Even to Die for Their Young
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Diotima — πάντα καὶ ἐρωτικῶς διατιθέμενα, πρῶτον μὲν περὶ τὸ συμμιγῆναι ἀλλήλοις, ἔπειτα περὶ τὴν τροφὴν τοῦ γενομένου, καὶ ἕτοιμά ἐστιν ὑπὲρ τούτων καὶ διαμάχεσθαι τὰ ἀσθενέστατα τοῖς ἰσχυροτάτοις καὶ ὑπεραποθνῄσκειν, καὶ αὐτὰ τῷ λιμῷ παρατεινόμενα ὥστʼ ἐκεῖνα ἐκτρέφειν, καὶ ἄλλο πᾶν ποιοῦντα. τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους, ἔφη, οἴοιτʼ ἄν τις ἐκ λογισμοῦ ταῦτα ποιεῖν· τὰ δὲ θηρία τίς αἰτία οὕτως ἐρωτικῶς
all being affected with love, first for mating with one another, then for the rearing of the offspring, and they are ready, on behalf of these, even to fight it out, the weakest against the strongest, and to die for them, and themselves worn out with hunger so as to rear those, and doing all else. For human beings, she said, one might suppose do these things out of calculation; but the beasts — what cause makes them so full of love?
Diotima details the animals' love-madness: seized first for mating, then for the rearing of what is born, they are ready to fight — the weakest against the strongest — and to die for their offspring, wearing themselves out with hunger to feed them, and doing anything else. One might suppose human beings act so from calculation; but the beasts — what cause makes them so full of love? Continued in 207c.
The argument is a proof by elimination: the drive cannot come from calculation, so it must come from something deeper and universal — the mortal creature's reach for immortality through what it leaves behind. By dying for their young, the animals unknowingly enact the very thing Diotima has been describing: a perishable being securing the good 'forever' the only way it can, by perpetuating its kind. Plato thus grounds the loftiest reach of the soul in the humblest biological fact, and readies the human parallel to come — that the same instinct, in us, produces not only children but the deathless offspring of the soul: honour, poetry, law, and finally the contemplation of Beauty itself.
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