QuestionsWhat is love?The ladder of love
What is love?An ascent to beauty

The ladder of love

Diotima's ladder; Platonic love; the ascent to beauty

Plato c. 428 BC · c. 348 BCBeyond appearances, the eternal Forms.
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What it claims

Well-guided love climbs as on the rungs of a ladder: from one beautiful body to two, from two to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful pursuits, to beautiful kinds of knowledge, and up to the beautiful itself.

Why

To desire is to lack what we desire: love lacks the beautiful and the good, and wants to possess them forever.

The same idea through history
Plato380 BCIn the Symposium, Socrates reports the lessons of a priestess from Mantinea, Diotima. Love is there a desire for what one lacks, which leads us from one beautiful body to beauty itself.
In short

"The ladder of love" is an argument by Plato (Symposium, 201d-212a (c. 380 BC), 380 BC) on the question "What is love?" (answer: an ascent to beauty). Its claim: Well-guided love climbs as on the rungs of a ladder: from one beautiful body to two, from two to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful pursuits, to beautiful kinds of knowledge, and up to the beautiful itself. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P6). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Symposium, 201d-212a (c. 380 BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

In the Symposium, each guest praises love. Socrates reports what a wise woman, Diotima, once taught him. For her, love is not a perfect god: it is a desire, so it comes from a lack. We love what we do not have, namely the beautiful and the good, and we want to possess them forever. But a mortal being cannot keep the good forever; it comes close by giving birth in beauty, through the body (children) or the soul (speeches, laws, ideas). Well-guided love then climbs as on a ladder: from one beautiful body to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful souls, laws, sciences, and finally to beauty itself, which never changes. This thesis gave its name to "Platonic love", but the text is less shy than the phrase suggests: it starts from bodily desire. What is presented here is the thesis Plato gives to Diotima, not a proof by her.

P1To desire is to desire what one does not have and what one lacks. Love, being a desire, is therefore love of what it lacks: the beautiful, and the good, which is beautiful.
P2What people love is the good, and they love it to be theirs, and theirs always. Love is therefore also a desire for immortality.
P3If love wants to possess forever a good it does not have, and if we are mortal, the proper work of love is to give birth in beauty, in body and in soul: this is how a mortal being leaves something lasting behind.
P4The beauty of one body is akin to that of every other body, and the beauty of souls is worth more than that of bodies. Whoever has understood this stops loving a single person exclusively.
P5There is a beautiful in itself, always the same, without beginning or end, which is not like any face or any science: all beautiful things partake of it, while they come to be and pass away.
P6 · implicit premiseWhat one truly loves in a beautiful being is the beauty in him, so one must seek that beauty where it is fullest and most lasting.
Therefore well-guided love climbs as on the rungs of a ladder: from one beautiful body to two, from two to all beautiful bodies, then to beautiful pursuits, to beautiful kinds of knowledge, and up to the beautiful itself.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a case where love is a desire for a lasting good, beauty is one and beauty itself exists, yet love does not climb: one can stop at a person loved for herself. P6 is what turns "beauty is one" into "one must climb".
The argument is valid with the hidden premise P6. P1 to P3 say what love is (a desire for a lasting good, which gives birth in beauty); P4 and P5 say that beauty is one and that each beautiful thing is only a share of it. But the ladder follows only if P6 is added: what one loves in a being is the beauty it carries. Without P6, one could love a person for herself and stop there. That is exactly where the objections of Vlastos and Nussbaum strike.
Analogy. Picture a music lover who starts by loving one song. He finds that what he loves is the melody, then the rhythm, then music in general, and ends up loving music itself more than any piece. Diotima says the same of the love of persons. Her critics ask: is a person a piece we move beyond, or what we truly love?

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

A
Aristophanes 385 BC · attacks the conclusion

In the same Symposium, he defends a very different idea: each of us is the half of a whole being cut in two, and love is the constant search for one's own half. What is loved is therefore a particular person, ours, not beauty in general. The ladder, which asks us to shed any exclusive passion, describes something other than what we call loving.

Platon replies
see the argument
Plato (Diotima) 380 BC
She replies that there is indeed a story that those who seek their half are in love, but that, by her account, love is neither for the half nor for the whole unless it happens to be good. The proof: people are ready to have their own foot or hand cut off if they judge it bad. So we do not love what is ours because it is ours, but the good.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed. For Diotima, we love what is good and beautiful, not what is "ours"; for Aristophanes, love aims at belonging, this very person. The basic disagreement is whether we love a person for what she is worth or because she is ours. Both speeches are in the same dialogue, and Plato names no winner (our summary).
Gregory Vlastos 1973 · attacks premise 6

Summary: in this theory one does not love the person but what is beautiful, good and lovable in her. Persons are only places where beauty is found, and one can pass from one to another, or beyond all persons, without losing the object of love. This leaves out what we think we love in someone: that very person, irreplaceable.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1973, after the author's death (-348).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed. Many Plato scholars think Vlastos is too severe and that Plato leaves room for the love of persons; we have not yet gathered their texts. The ladder text does say to loosen one's attachment to a single person, which gives the objection real support (our summary).
Martha Nussbaum 1986 · attacks the conclusion

Summary: the Symposium does not stop with Diotima. Right after the ladder, Alcibiades enters drunk and praises Socrates as one particular man, whom he loves with his flaws and his harshness. This speech shows what the ladder cannot say: the love of a unique individual whom no one else replaces. Plato thus casts doubt on the value of a life that goes beyond persons.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1986, after the author's death (-348).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Disputed. Nussbaum reads Alcibiades's speech as an answer Plato gives to himself. Other readers take it differently, as the portrait of a man whom the ladder has not transformed. The text does not decide (our summary).