An A–ZDiotima’s ascent inspired a whole tradition within philosophy.
In Platonism, the mystery that Diotima described to Socrates
becomes an ontology. For example, in Plotinus, the goal of
loving is a transcendent unity, and human beings can reach out
to it because this One itself gives forth divine emanations. One
of the most powerful adaptations of Diotima’s mystery is found
in Augustine with his comment that our hearts are restless until
they fi nd rest in God. God is, here, being identifi ed with the
climax of Diotima’s ascent. If one recalls the unknowability of
God that is a central theme in Augustine, then part of what he
is saying is that love itself is a mystery: like Socrates who never
ceased loving, because wisdom always ultimately eluded him,
Augustine remained a lover of God, who was the goal of the
pilgrimage of his whole life.
Someone might complain that this presents a perpetually
frustrated picture of love. They would prefer Aristophanes’ view
in which love can come to an end, even if in a form of death.
However, the more profound interpretation that Augustine
places on love is that to love is to be thrown onto the nature
of existence itself. Put more colloquially, it is why lovers say,
‘I am glad you are alive’: in loving they realise that they are alive
themselves. The mystery of love is not to be found in its satisfac-
tion, but simply in the attempt to love – to live ever more fully.
M – is for Mountains
In 2002, Tate Britain displayed a number of landscape artists,
well known in the US though hardly ever seen on the other
side of the Atlantic, in an exhibition entitled ‘American
Sublime’. With their massive mountains, rolling plains, tower-
ing clouds and vivid light, these artists of the so-called Hudson
River School played with nature and scale in a way that both
frightens and inspires. The pictures evoke the sense which, as
Edmund Burke wrote, is ‘when we have an idea of pain and
danger, without being actually in such circumstances. Whatever
excites this delight, I call sublime.’