From One Body to All, and to Souls
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Diotima — τὸ ἐπὶ ὁτῳοῦν σώματι τῷ ἐπὶ ἑτέρῳ σώματι ἀδελφόν ἐστι, καὶ εἰ δεῖ διώκειν τὸ ἐπʼ εἴδει καλόν, πολλὴ ἄνοια μὴ οὐχ ἕν τε καὶ ταὐτὸν ἡγεῖσθαι τὸ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς σώμασι κάλλος· τοῦτο δʼ ἐννοήσαντα καταστῆναι πάντων τῶν καλῶν σωμάτων ἐραστήν, ἑνὸς δὲ τὸ σφόδρα τοῦτο χαλάσαι καταφρονήσαντα καὶ σμικρὸν ἡγησάμενον· μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα τὸ ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς κάλλος τιμιώτερον ἡγήσασθαι τοῦ ἐν τῷ σώματι, ὥστε καὶ ἐὰν ἐπιεικὴς ὢν τὴν ψυχήν τις κἂν σμικρὸν ἄνθος
on any body whatever is sister to that on another body, and if one must pursue beauty in form, it is great folly not to consider one and the same the beauty on all bodies; and realizing this, to become a lover of all beautiful bodies, and to slacken this intense love of one, despising it and thinking it a small thing; and after this to hold the beauty in souls more honourable than that in the body, so that even if someone decent in soul has even a small bloom,
The ladder's next rungs. The lover must see that the beauty on any one body is sister to the beauty on any other; and if he is to pursue beauty of form, it is great folly not to regard the beauty on all bodies as one and the same. Realizing this, he becomes a lover of all beautiful bodies and slackens his intense love of one, despising it as a small thing. After that, he holds the beauty in souls more honourable than that in the body — so that even a decent soul with only a small bloom of body suffices him. Continued in 210c.
The next rung leaps from body to soul: beauty of soul is timiōteron, more honourable, than beauty of body, so that a fine soul with even a slight physical bloom is enough to love. This is the decisive turn of the whole ascent — away from the sensuous toward the moral and intellectual — and it is exactly the love Alcibiades will complain Socrates practised on him: caring for the soul, indifferent to the body's bloom. The ladder will continue (210c) from beautiful souls to the beauty in practices and laws, then to the sciences, each step a further release from the particular and a widening of the object, until the lover is turned toward 'the great sea of beauty' (210d) and, finally, Beauty itself. Plato's daring is to make the erotic drive itself the vehicle of this climb: the same erōs that first fastened on one lovely body is what, rightly guided, carries the soul to the vision of the Form.
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