Reflection on Plato's Ladder of Love in the Symposium - Jacob Hamilton

 In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates recounts a conversation with Diotima, a priestess. In it she describes a divine ascent. One may begin by loving the beauty in a particular body. From there, one can ascend the ladder and begin to love the virtues found within an individual. Finally, one comes to love and be filled with beauty itself. The encounter with Beauty itself is the highest achievement a man can hope for and the best way a man can become immortal. Beauty is eternal and never increases nor diminishes. In becoming enraptured in the vision of the beautiful, a person is able to produce what is truly good and beautiful in the world. All other things, which men hail as being good, pale in comparison with the full splendor of the Beautiful itself.  

I think Diotima’s image of a ladder of love best gets at why Plato is suspicious of art. All art seeks to create images of beauty and therefore can be a distraction when one is pursuing beauty itself. Dr.Redick in one class brought up this idea of “Liturgical Action.” An artist encounters beauty and then produces a relic from his encounter. In Plato’s description of the encounter with the Beautiful, one is not called to produce a relic in the sense that one is called to produce a particular piece of art. Rather, one becomes the relic. In the rapturous vision of the beautiful, one cannot help but be transformed.