De structuur van liefde in Plato's Symposium

This article investigates the internal structure of ἔρως, as it is
conceptualized in Plato’s Symposium. The analysis first focuses on the three
constitutive elements of love on the lover’s side: a lack, a consciousness of it,
and the perceived worth of what is lacking. It explores these in relation to the
rest of the Symposium and to the Socratic elenchus. The second part of the
analysis turns to the beloved’s end of the relation. By means of a comparative
reading with the Lysis it explores possible ways of understanding the idea that
something is loved for the sake of something else. On the reading offered here,
the lover’s love of beauty is always for the sake of immortality, even if this
beauty be the Form itself. Finally, considerations about narrative framing and
the characterization of Diotima should prompt us to see some distance
between this conception and Plato himself. The Symposium’s primary aim is
not doctrinal but protreptic.