Neither Coming to Be nor Passing Away
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Diotima — ἀεὶ ὂν καὶ οὔτε γιγνόμενον οὔτε ἀπολλύμενον, οὔτε αὐξανόμενον οὔτε φθίνον, ἔπειτα οὐ τῇ μὲν καλόν, τῇ δʼ αἰσχρόν, οὐδὲ τοτὲ μέν, τοτὲ δὲ οὔ, οὐδὲ πρὸς μὲν τὸ καλόν, πρὸς δὲ τὸ αἰσχρόν, οὐδʼ ἔνθα μὲν καλόν, ἔνθα δὲ αἰσχρόν, ὡς τισὶ μὲν ὂν καλόν, τισὶ δὲ αἰσχρόν· οὐδʼ αὖ φαντασθήσεται αὐτῷ τὸ καλὸν οἷον πρόσωπόν τι οὐδὲ χεῖρες οὐδὲ ἄλλο οὐδὲν ὧν σῶμα μετέχει, οὐδέ τις λόγος οὐδέ τις ἐπιστήμη, οὐδέ που ὂν ἐν ἑτέρῳ τινι, οἷον ἐν ζῴῳ ἢ ἐν γῇ ἢ ἐν οὐρανῷ
always being, neither coming to be nor passing away, neither growing nor waning; next, not beautiful in one way, ugly in another, nor beautiful now and then not, nor beautiful set beside one thing, ugly beside another, nor beautiful here, ugly there, as though it were beautiful to some, ugly to others. Nor again will the Beautiful appear to him as some face or hands, nor anything else that body has a share in, nor any account nor any knowledge, nor as existing anywhere in something else, such as in a living creature or in earth or in heaven
Diotima's sentence continues without a break from 210e, where she promised what the initiate will suddenly see: "first of all, always being…". What follows is a single long chain of negations — the only way she will say what the Beautiful itself is. The unit breaks off mid-sentence at "or in heaven"; 211b finishes it.
Then the sentence turns from time to place, and the last clauses are the surprising ones. The Beautiful will not appear to the initiate — phantasthēsetai, the verb of images and apparitions, from the same root as phantasma — as a face, or hands, or anything a body has a share in. That much we expect from Plato. But then: not as a logos either, and not as an epistēmē — not an argument you could state, not a science you could master. Diotima has just walked her climber up through the epistēmai at 210c–d, and now she says the summit is not another one of them. This is the door a philosopher would most want left open, and she closes it. Whatever the ascent ends in, it is not a doctrine that could be written down and handed over, which is the warning Socrates gives about writing at the close of the Phaedrus (275d–e). The unit stops mid-breath at "or in heaven"; the thought finishes in 211b.
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