Diotima of Mantinea

Diotima of Mantinea is the priestess whom Socrates names as the teacher from whom he learned the doctrine of eros he recounts in the [[plato-symposium|Symposium]]. Whether a historical figure, a composite, or a Platonic invention is disputed; her function in the dialogue is not. She is the voice through which plato articulates the account of love that the Seba tradition reads as foundational: eros is neither a god nor a mortal but a daimon, a great spirit mediating between mortal and divine, born of Penia (Poverty) and Poros (Resource), always in want and always resourceful, the principle by which the soul rises from the love of particular beauty toward beauty itself.

Diotima is load-bearing for the tradition because her teaching is the ancient source of what Hillman, Corbin, and Jung each articulate in their own idioms: eros as daimonic mediator, eros as metaxy, love as the middle voice of ascent. Her ladder — body, souls, practices, knowledge, the form of beauty itself — is the originary Western figure of what later tradition calls the scale of being. See also eros.

Relationships

• plato
• plato-symposium
• eros-as-daimon
• eros-as-metaxy