The Life Worth Living
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Diotima — καλόν. ἐνταῦθα τοῦ βίου, ὦ φίλε Σώκρατες, ἔφη ἡ Μαντινικὴ ξένη, εἴπερ που ἄλλοθι, βιωτὸν ἀνθρώπῳ, θεωμένῳ αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν. ὃ ἐάν ποτε ἴδῃς, οὐ κατὰ χρυσίον τε καὶ ἐσθῆτα καὶ τοὺς καλοὺς παῖδάς τε καὶ νεανίσκους δόξει σοι εἶναι, οὓς νῦν ὁρῶν ἐκπέπληξαι καὶ ἕτοιμος εἶ καὶ σὺ καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοί, ὁρῶντες τὰ παιδικὰ καὶ συνόντες ἀεὶ αὐτοῖς, εἴ πως οἷόν τʼ ἦν, μήτʼ ἐσθίειν μήτε πίνειν, ἀλλὰ θεᾶσθαι μόνον καὶ συνεῖναι. τί δῆτα, ἔφη, οἰόμεθα, εἴ τῳ γένοιτο
beautiful. There in life, dear Socrates, said the Mantinean stranger, if anywhere else, is it worth living for a human, contemplating Beauty itself. Which, if you ever see it, will not seem to you like gold and clothing and the beautiful boys and youths, whom now, seeing, you are struck, and ready, you and many others, seeing your darlings and being always with them, if it were somehow possible, neither to eat nor to drink, but only to gaze and be with them. What then, she said, do we think, if it should come to someone
Diotima delivers the moral. There, in the contemplation of Beauty itself, if anywhere, is life worth living for a human being. And if you ever see it, she says, it will not seem to you like gold and fine clothing and the beautiful boys and youths whom now, seeing, you are struck by — you and many others, ready, if it were possible, neither to eat nor drink but only to gaze at your darlings and be with them always. The thought continues into 211e.
That image is doing careful work. It is not mockery but recognition: the wish to gaze on the beloved and be with him always, forgoing food and drink, is real and powerful — and it is a distorted, body-bound shadow of the true beatitude. The vision of Beauty is what that longing was really reaching for; beside it, the beautiful body is what gold is beside the good. Plato thus honours erotic passion even as he transcends it: the same intensity that fixes on one boy, rightly educated, becomes the contemplative rapture that fixes on the Form. 211e–212a completes the thought with the decisive question and answer — what would life be for one who saw Beauty itself, pure and unmixed? Seeing it with the faculty by which it can be seen, and touching the true, he would give birth not to images of virtue but to true virtue, and become theophilēs, dear to the gods, and immortal if any human may.
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