Pregnant in Soul
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Diotima — ψυχήν— εἰσὶ γὰρ οὖν, ἔφη, οἳ ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς κυοῦσιν ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν, ἃ ψυχῇ προσήκει καὶ κυῆσαι καὶ τεκεῖν· τί οὖν προσήκει; φρόνησίν τε καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ἀρετήν— ὧν δή εἰσι καὶ οἱ ποιηταὶ πάντες γεννήτορες καὶ τῶν δημιουργῶν ὅσοι λέγονται εὑρετικοὶ εἶναι· πολὺ δὲ μεγίστη, ἔφη, καὶ καλλίστη τῆς φρονήσεως ἡ περὶ τὰ τῶν πόλεών τε καὶ οἰκήσεων διακόσμησις, ᾗ δὴ ὄνομά ἐστι σωφροσύνη τε καὶ δικαιοσύνη— τούτων δʼ αὖ ὅταν τις ἐκ
soul — for there are, she said, those who in souls are pregnant even more than in bodies, with things it befits a soul to conceive and bear. What, then, befits it? Wisdom and the rest of virtue — of which all the poets are begetters, and of the craftsmen as many as are said to be inventive; but by far the greatest and finest of wisdom is that concerning the ordering of cities and households, whose name is temperance and justice — and of these, in turn, when someone from
Diotima describes the higher pregnancy. Some are pregnant in soul even more than in body, with what it befits a soul to conceive and bear: wisdom and the rest of virtue. Of these all the poets are begetters, and those craftsmen said to be inventive. But by far the greatest and finest kind of wisdom is that concerning the ordering of cities and households — whose name is temperance and justice. When someone is pregnant with these from youth — continued in 209b.
The ranking quietly reorders the values of the room. Homer and Hesiod, the great lawgivers, the founders — these are the truly fertile, and their 'children' (poems, laws, constitutions) win them the deathless memory that Alcestis and Achilles died for. Plato is claiming that the works of the soul are more immortal than bodily children, because they last longer and are more beautiful; a poem or a law outlives any family line. The elevation of civic virtue — the ordering of cities — as the greatest wisdom shows the political stakes of the Symposium, continuous with the Republic. And it prepares the final turn: if the soul's offspring are begotten in the beautiful, then the lover pregnant in soul will seek not a beautiful body merely but a beautiful soul to create in and with (209b–c) — the first step onto the ladder that climbs, past persons and laws and knowledge, to Beauty itself.
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