The ladder of love is the moment in the Symposium where desire stops being merely a lack and gains direction. Diotima, the priestess from whom Socrates says he learned everything about love, describes an ascent by rungs: from the beautiful body to the soul, from occupations and laws to knowledge, and from there to Beauty itself. This article is the map of that ascent, rung by rung, with three details that everyday conversation tends to lose: the body is the first rung and not the enemy, no one climbs alone, and the summit arrives suddenly.
Where Diotima begins: desiring is wanting the good forever
Before the ladder, a premise. Diotima showed Socrates that love is not the beautiful but the lack of it, and that what we seek is not the half that completes us: it is the good, and forever (Plato's soulmate myth and Diotima's response tells that turn). Because we are mortal and do not have the forever, we beget in beauty, and we leave behind something that remains after us. That is where the ladder starts: the ascent is the path of this desire to beget in beauty.
First rung: a beautiful body, and no shame in it
Everything begins when someone loves a beautiful body, and Diotima sees no shame in this, because that is where everything starts. The passage is easy to skip over, and it is the one that most corrects the common image of the ladder. The body is not the enemy of the Beautiful: it is the first rung that leads to the Beautiful.
But the body is only the beginning. Then the person realizes that the beauty of that body is kin to the beauty of another, and the attachment to just one loosens. It is not that the first love was a mistake: it taught one to see something that is not exhausted in that person.
Second rung: the soul
Next, one discovers that the beauty of a soul is greater than that of any face. To see this is to see what the body only announced. It is on this rung that love stops depending on appearance and starts depending on who the other person is.
Third rung: customs and laws
Further on, the beauty one perceives is that of occupations and of laws. Here the object of love is no longer a person, but the beauty of what is done and of the laws that govern life in common.
Fourth rung: knowledge
And then, and only then, comes the beauty of knowledge. Plato sums up the whole journey in one sentence, which Diotima gives as the lesson of the right path of love: "to begin from what is beautiful here and, in view of that beauty, to climb ever upward, as if using steps, from one to two and from two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful occupations, and from occupations to beautiful sciences" (Symposium, passage 211c).
Notice that no rung is despised. Each is the foothold for the next. The error, the one the text really points to, is stopping at a rung thinking one has already reached the top. Whoever does this feels that something is missing, and something is, because that stage was only a rung. This is the subject of What Having a Platonic Love Means, According to Plato, which compares the everyday sense of the expression with the sense in the text.
The ascent requires a guide
There is a line of Diotima's that is almost always forgotten: the ascent needs someone to guide it well. No one climbs alone. The ladder passage itself speaks of proceeding correctly in the paths of love "or letting oneself be led by another" (passage 211b-c). For someone reading today, this moves the ladder: it stops being a solitary discipline of elevation and becomes a relationship, in which someone who has already seen a little further takes the other by the hand. It is what Diotima says she did with Socrates.
The summit: Beauty itself, and the "suddenly"
At the top of the ladder, Diotima describes what happens with a very precise word. Whoever has been guided this far, she says, will suddenly perceive "something wondrously beautiful in its nature" (passage 210e): in everyday terms, he suddenly sees an astonishing beauty. It is no longer a beautiful body, a beautiful law, or a beautiful idea. It is Beauty itself, that by which all things are beautiful. It always is, is not born and does not perish, does not grow and does not diminish. It is not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another.
Anyone who followed the lesson on the Theory of Forms recognizes here what endures and what passes, and the lesson on recollection had already presented the other side, that knowing is in a sense recognizing. The novelty of the Symposium is the road to get there. In the first ascent it was reason that climbed. Here it is desire that climbs.
And the "suddenly" matters for a reason: no one manufactures this vision. One climbs from rung to rung, and in the end it is given. The ladder prepares, but it does not produce the summit.
Alcibiades: the ladder enacted before everyone
No sooner does Socrates finish than Alcibiades walks into the house, drunk, the most beautiful man in Athens and the most ambitious. Instead of praising love, he praises Socrates, and says that he tried to seduce him and was turned away. Socrates would have told him that he wanted to trade the appearance of beauty for beauty in reality. The line reads: "instead of appearance, it is the reality of what is beautiful that you are trying to acquire, and truly it is 'gold for copper' that you mean to trade" (passage 218e). In other words, he wanted to trade bronze for gold, the common metal for the precious one.
This is Diotima's ladder enacted in front of everyone. The most desired man in Athens was only on the first rung, and Socrates, who had already climbed higher, refuses to stop there.
To remember
The map fits in a few lines: the beautiful body, the soul, occupations and laws, knowledge, and then Beauty, which is given suddenly. Whoever wants to see where this ladder fits in the whole book will find the complete path in Plato's Symposium: Summary and How to Read It. The invitation left at the end of the lesson is a question: if all beautiful things are rungs, which rung are you on right now? Am I mistaking the rung for the summit?
The quotations are our own English rendering. The references 210e, 211b-c, 211c and 218e follow Stephanus pagination, which lets you locate the passage in any edition.
Nous Readings
Read the classics with depth
Our list of more than 230 recommended books, annotated and organized by theme, so you never read in the dark.
View recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is Plato’s ladder of love?
It is the ascent Diotima describes to Socrates in the Symposium: one begins by loving a beautiful body, moves on to the beauty of souls, then to that of occupations and laws, then to knowledge, and finally arrives at Beauty itself. No rung is despised, but none is the summit.
What are the rungs of the ladder of love?
The beautiful body, first of one person, then of all; the soul, whose beauty surpasses that of any face; occupations and laws; and knowledge. At the summit stands Beauty itself, which always is, is neither born nor perishes, neither grows nor diminishes, and is not beautiful in one respect and ugly in another.
Who was Diotima of Mantinea?
A priestess from Mantinea whom Socrates, in the Symposium, says was his teacher in matters of love. It is to her that he attributes the central explanation of the book.
What is the "suddenly" on the ladder of love?
It is the word Diotima uses to describe reaching the summit: whoever climbs that far suddenly sees an astonishing beauty that is no longer a body, a law, or an idea, but Beauty itself. The crucial point is that no one manufactures this vision: one ascends step by step, and in the end it is granted.
Continue: What Having a Platonic Love Means, According to Plato · Plato's Soulmate Myth and Diotima's Response · Plato’s Symposium: Summary and How to Read It · Truth as coherence
Source lecture: O Banquete, de Platão | O que é, de verdade, o amor platônico