Led Through the Labor Pains of Love

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John P. Brodeur

Dr. Smith

Honors 102

17 February 2009

Led through the Labor Pains of Love

The legacy of Plato is so much more than the legacy of a philosopher. While inexperience

with his texts might suggest otherwise, a close reading of Platos dialogues reveals a masterful art

by which they are constructed. These texts are not just philosophical dialogues; they are

components of a skillfully constructed ideological framework. Each work then becomes a lens for

understanding the others, a method of deepening ones understanding of the frameworks contour.

In this way, the analysis of love in the Symposium can be applied to the discussion of the Divided

Line as found in the Republic. It shows how the philosopher, by his own birth in beauty and in

mentoring a willing young boy, provides the guidance and encouragement which the youth needs

to overcome the labor pains of love and assure his own birth in beauty.

Foundational to this application is a concrete understanding of what love is. As it is

described in the Symposium, love is a desire to give birth in the beautiful (207A). In order to

explain this definition, Socrates first recognizes love as a desire. As a desire, it necessarily seeks

what it lacks, for it would not desire what it does not lack (200A). Socrates continues by

personifying love as a child of Poverty and Plenty in order to illustrate how, by its very nature,

love is both impoverished and acquisitive:

He is hard and rough and unshod and homeless, lying always on the ground without

bedding, sleeping by the doors and in the streets in the open air, having his mother's nature,

always dwelling with want. But from his father again he has designs upon beautiful and


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good things, being brave and go-ahead and high-strung, a mighty hunter, always weaving

devices, and a successful coverter of wisdom, a philosopher all his days (203C).

Not only does this passage help the reader better understand Platos conception of love as a whole,

it also alerts the reader to an intimate connection between love and philosophy. Notice that,

according to Socrates, the personification of love is himself a philosopher and a coverter of

wisdom.

The observation that love is closely associated with philosophy is not merely a throwaway

line in a list of hyperbolic imagery. Socrates revisits the idea a short while later: Wisdom is one

of the most beautiful things, and Love is a love for the beautiful, so Love must necessarily be a

philosopher, and, being a philosopher, he must be between wise and ignorant (204B). In this

particular passage, Socrates puts forth the idea that the object of loves desire is for the beautiful

itself. The claim here is that insofar as wisdom has a special closeness to true beauty, wisdom is

also desirable to love, and insofar as love desires wisdom, neither is it ignorant of wisdom nor

does it possess wisdom. This, as Socrates points out, is the same situation which the philosopher

is in. He is not ignorant of wisdom, but he does not contain it in its fullness either.

However, because Plato believes each soul to be immortal and to contain the form of the

good and the beautiful, no one essentially lacks beauty. This challenges the idea that love desires

beauty; for how can one desire what he does not lack? It is precisely for this reason that Socrates

says Love is not for the beautiful... but for begetting and birth in the beautiful" (207A). Birth in

the beautiful occurs when one has possession of the beautiful , i.e. when one can enquire amongst

ideals themselves by means of them alone (510C) in DE of the Divided Line. Then, and only

then, can one beget real virtue virtue which touches reality (212B). Thus, at every other

interval along the Divided Line before DE, the individual is pregnant with beauty, still without the


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means to beget and possess it. Thus, the journey across the Divided Line is a process of birthing

beauty; it is a journey of love, which yearns for the day of begetting.

In the Symposium, Diotima supports this ideology when she tells Socrates all men are

pregnant, and mans nature desires to beget something beautiful (206B). However, while it is

desirable to give birth to beauty, it is also acknowledged as a hardship (211A). Socrates himself,

while speaking of the journey across the Divided Line, exclaims, with what toil [is the idea of the

good] to be seen! (517C). These labor pains of pregnancy are represented well in the allegory of

the cave: One might be released, and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round,

and to walk and look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he would be too much

dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before (515C), and after being

dragged outside of the cave: when he came into the light, the brilliance would fill his eyes and he

would not be able to see even one of the things now called real (516A). Just as the eyes of the

man underwent hurt and pain when looking for the first time at the light of the fire and the light of

the sun, so also is the soul susceptible to pain as it begins to journey across the Divided Line. The

brilliance of the beautiful and good can prove to be a significant hardship to the fulfillment of

loves desire. It is possible for one to misinterpret reality in his initial blindness when he is first

exposed to the world of reason. In these moments of weakness, it is good for him to be aided by

something in addition to love; something more than desire alone can provide him.

As to what this additional resource might be, the Symposium offers an insight:

So again, a man with divinity in him, whose soul from his youth is pregnant with these

things, desires when he grows up to beget and procreate; and thereupon, I think, he seeks

and goes out to find the beautiful thing in which he can beget Being pregnant, then, he

welcomes bodies which are beautiful rather than ugly, and if he finds a soul beautiful and

generous and well-bred, he gladly welcomes the two body and soul together, and for a


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human being like that he has plenty of talks about virtue, and what the good man ought to

be and to practice, and he tries to educate him. For by attaching himself to a person of

beauty, I think, and keeping company with him, he begets and procreates what he has long

been pregnant with (209C).

The additional resource, according to this passage then, is a mentor, a guide, a teacher. The one

qualification is that the man be a person of beauty. In other words, he must be a philosopher

who has already progressed along the Divided Line to DE. He must be someone who has already

achieved a birth in beauty. Why? Because the love of the youth will be initially strengthened by

the beauty he finds in the life of his mentor. As a result, the youth will be more acutely aware of

what he seeks and will receive council on how to achieve what he seeks. So while initially love is

strengthened, the ultimate value of a philosopher-mentor is in the guidance of overcoming the

labor pains of love, so as to give birth to beauty itself in the life of the youth, to progress him into

DE of the Divided Line. As Diotima also says:

The right way to approach the things of love, or to be led there by another, is this:

beginning from these beautiful things, to mount for that beauty's sake ever upwards, as by

a flight of steps, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful

bodies to beautiful pursuits and practices, and from practices to beautiful learnings, so that

from learnings he may come at last to that perfect learning which is the learning solely of

beauty itself, and may he know at last that which is the perfection of beauty (211C).

Notice here how the usefulness of the philosopher-mentors beauty is not ultimately measured in

the things of love but in the perfection of beauty the arrival at DE of the Divided Line where

love is overcome by the actual possession of beauty.

In order for this system to work, however, the youth must be willing to be led.

Additionally, the philosopher-mentor must not abandon his position on the Divided Line in order


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to guide the youth. The man who comes down from outside into the cave to rescue his friends is

shunned (517A). Without his eyesight, he is taken as a deceiver. Coming down into the cave is

no act of sacrifice; it is an act of foolishness. Socrates observes those who come thither [into the

light of reality] are not willing to have part in the affairs of men, but their souls ever strive to

remain above (518A). He also says that any man of sense would pity he who blinks his eyes as if

he were coming from illumination to darkness (518B). Thus, the philosopher-mentor is like one

who stands at the mouth of the cave, and his pupil is like one who has begun his ascent. The

philosopher-mentor may not journey down to be with him, but he will assuredly shout words of

advice and encouragement to him. After all, while the youth cannot see the philosopher above due

to the brilliance of the sun, the philosopher can see the boy because of the illumination of the sun

into the cave. In the absence of his eyesight, the guidance and encouragement he receives through

his hearing strengthens and affirms the desire of the youth and gives him a greater sense of

direction. Just like a midwife helps guide and encourage a mother through her labor pains in order

to achieve a successful birth, so does the philosopher-mentor guide the youth through his labor

pains of love.

Although the aid of a philosopher-mentor in progressing along the Divided Line is not

strictly necessary for a successful birth in beauty, it is a welcome benefit to the youth. It affords

him a greater means of attaining the beauty he seeks. Not surprisingly, the philosopher is also

aided by his decision to mentor. In helping to assure someone elses birth in beauty, he also

assures himself of a dialectic partner with whom he can dialogue in the unending task of becoming

perfectly wise, of attaining a perfect possession of beauty. In the end, there is no reason for the

philosopher to remain in isolation. He will choose to be a mentor because he himself has already

given birth to beauty, and knowing full well the value of such beauty and the happiness it affords,

he will always choose to foster it in every circumstance.


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Works Cited

Plato. Great Dialogues of Plato. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse. Eds. Eric H. Warmington and Philip G.

Rouse. 1956. New York: Signet Classic, 1999.

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Led Through the Labor Pains of Love