on love

Diotima’s Ladder of Love

“The Six Stages of the Ladder of Love

1. Love for a particular body
Love is a desire for physical features, usually those missing from one’s own body. Each person is drawn to a particular type of body, based on our individual triggers.

2. Love for all bodies
A person recognizes that all bodies possess beauty of different kinds

Socrates

• Love as ‘Pro-Creation’ (not just children, but of ideas etc.)

• Love as being the inspiring force that propels us towards the cultivation of virtue

“...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to

The Aristophanic Ideal of Love (very modern!) → Completion (““Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”)

““Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”

“According to Greek mythology, humans were

“Today, love is being positivized into sexuality, and, by the same token, subjected to a commandment to perform. Sex means achievement and performance. And sexiness represents capital to be increased. The body—with its display value—has become a commodity. At the same time, the Other is being sexualized into an object for procuring arousal. When

The Other.

Enchantment.

Awe.

Invasion of the Exterior.

Transcendance.

Transformation.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,