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    Diotima's account of love is not a general theory about a... — Carmelics
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    Diotima's account of love is not a general theory about all love, but specifically a story about correct or successful love.

    AestheticsVirtue Ethics
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    Reasons For

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    • 1.Alcibiades' love for Socrates has not led him to love the beautiful itself, which would refute a general theory.
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    • 2.None of the other symposiasts have been led to love the beautiful itself by their love, which would also refute a general theory.
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    • 3.Diotima explicitly frames her account as being about 'loving boys correctly' (to orthôs paiderastein) at 211b5–6.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Diotima's ladder culminates in the Form of Beauty itself, a metaphysical universal that transcends any particular erotic relationship or practice.
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    • 2.A theory whose endpoint is an absolute, eternal Form logically encompasses all instances of love as deficient approximations, not merely 'correct' cases.
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    • 3.Gregory Vlastos argued in 'The Individual as Object of Love in Plato' that Diotima's ascent systematically displaces particular loves, implying a comprehensive normative ontology of all love, not a subset.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The claim conflates prescriptive scope with descriptive scope: a theory can be prescriptive about all love while describing only the successful path.
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    • 2.Alcibiades and the symposiasts failing to ascend confirms the theory's universal diagnostic reach—their love is failed eros, not a different kind outside the theory's domain.
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    • 3.Martha Nussbaum in 'The Fragility of Goodness' explicitly treats Diotima's account as a general theory of eros that pathologizes all particular attachment, not merely a guide for the initiated.
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    Related

    A theory whose endpoint is an absolute, eternal Form logically encompasses all i...Alcibiades and the symposiasts failing to ascend confirms the theory's universal...Alcibiades' love for Socrates has not led him to love the beautiful itself, whic...Diotima describes her lesson as 'the correct way to go or to be led by another t...
    +6 moreShow less
    Diotima explicitly frames her account as being about 'loving boys correctly' (to...Diotima's ladder culminates in the Form of Beauty itself, a metaphysical univers...Gregory Vlastos argued in 'The Individual as Object of Love in Plato' that Dioti...Martha Nussbaum in 'The Fragility of Goodness' explicitly treats Diotima's accou...None of the other symposiasts have been led to love the beautiful itself by thei...The claim conflates prescriptive scope with descriptive scope: a theory can be p...

    Similar

    Self-love implies an inclination to feel and act as one with oneself78%Alcibiades is presented as a case where love does not lead to love of ...78%Egoistic love does not constitute genuine love of another person.77%A philosophical discussion of love requires a properly established def...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: plato-friendship
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    If what Socrates learned from Diotima was about all love, however, it would be refuted by the very fact of Alcibiades, whose love for Socrates has not led him to love the beautiful itself. It would be equally refuted, indeed, by all the other symposiasts, none of whom has been led there by his love. But Diotima’s love story is not so general. It is self-advertised as a story about “loving boys correctly (to orthôs paiderastein)” (211b5–6)—as a lesson in “the correct way to go or to be led by ano
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit