Patočka and Diotima. Notes for a dialogue on the beautiful

Abstract

Negative Platonism is perhaps one of Jan Patočka's texts that has received the most attention in the academic world. Its importance is rarely doubted. However, today we are far from exhausting the implications of the Czech philosopher's interpretation of Plato. In particular, the conception of the Platonic Idea that derives from Patočka's reading does not seem to have been sufficiently confronted with what Plato himself said in his dialogues. According to the author, there seems to be a particular affinity between what Diotima says in her speech in the Symposium and Patočka's interpretation of Plato, which, until now, does not seem to have received enough attention in the academic literature on these two authors. In a similar way to what Patočka proposes with the experience of freedom as a door that opens to the consideration of the Idea, Diotima anchors the recognition of beauty in itself with the experience of beauty in the world. This "anchoring" would be given by the ascending path proposed in the scala amoris, in which eros, assumes an “integrative function” within the lover. Precisely, this integrative function carried out by eros seems to give reason to the link that Diotima establishes between that which is beauty in itself and the true virtue that the lover engenders by experiencing it.