“The priestess Diotima was acknowledged by Socrates as his teacher in “matters of love [ta erotica]” (Symposium: 177). Diotima’s proto-Platonism echoes ancient Greek philosophy’s fixation on the ideal. The experience of love utilizes the phenomenal as a springboard to the noumenal: inspired by desire for the beautiful beloved, the lover aspires to transcendent Beauty and ultimately Goodness. Significantly, the creative flourishing is conveyed using images derived from experiences of procreation, pregnancy, and birth unique to women. This same imagery is found in Socrates’ self-designation as a midwife who assists others in bringing forth their noumenal insights; in the case of a true philosopher or lover of wisdom “at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science of beauty everywhere” (210)…”
Read the whole article about love in Diotima of Mantinea here. All ECC articles are offical publications that have undergone a peer review and are assigned with a DOI handle. If you want to contribute to the ECC, get in touch!
The Portuguese translation is available here! Thanks to Dr. Katarina Peixoto, Dr. Pedro Pricladnitzky and Professor Edgar Marques, the team responsible for the Portuguese translation of the ECC articles! Starting in summer 2019, Dr. Peixoto and her colleagues not only translate but also enrich the ECC with the production of entries about Brazilian women. This new International Cooperation between the Federal Universities of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and the University of Paderborn has just been concluded and we expect it to contribute greatly to the research on the history of women philosophers.
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