Diotima

So I’m sure you all know by now that this blog is called Disciples of Diotima. It is a subtle compliment to me for you to be so trusting of me as to be looking at it without knowing a great deal about the woman, or what her ideas were (alright, I had one very short post on it a while back). Eventually, all of you really ought to be a little curious about this. I certainly am! So, what does Diotima actually say about beauty?
Diotima is mentioned by Socrates in the famous philosophical dialogue the Symposium, a dialogue that deals with love and beauty. Socrates, who, though he called himself an annoying gadfly, was evidently liked well enough to be invited to banquets, speaks after several other speakers. Asked to give speeches In praise of love, the first few detail and praise numerous desires. Stating that he speaks what he thinks is true about love (as opposed to merely praising it with half-truths) and saying that he gained his wisdom from the woman Diotima, Socrates gives a radically expanded definition of love, including within it (as far as I can remember) all forms of human desire and attraction, including but not limited to friendship, hunger, and romance (Agape, Christian and Divine love, is understandably not, included; love is even “proven” to show that the beloved has something the lover lacks, which cannot be the case in Divine Agape).
The part we are concerned with, however, is one of the most central statements of desire. Diotima says that what humans most desire is “Birth in Beauty, whether of body or soul.” Furthermore, she paints the birth of one’s own children as a type of this most-desired birth, and also says that all that is desired [loved] must be good. What does this mean for beauty?
The sensible listeners in Socrates’s time could have inferred a few things. Drunkenness and other sins, obviously not beautiful, will not fulfill the greatest desire; the making of things: children, the Parthenon, poetry, ourselves, is much closer. And these things must be good things, or they will not satisfy the desire. But this sort of inference gives no definition of the noun “beauty” as distinct from the noun goodness, only a definition of the phrase “birth in beauty.” What the phrase would mean (unless it meant goodness) if the “birth in” were removed is unclear.
Another method of analysis only confirms the near-equivalence between beauty and goodness. In his Ethics, Aristotle teaches us that the object of our greatest desire is happiness, which consists in contemplation of (and, for the Christian, loving of and union with) the Good. If Diotima is not to contradict Aristotle, beauty and goodness must be more or less equivalent.
Then why is beauty associated with making in the Symposium, while goodness is not? Perhaps it is because when we make a thing for its own sake (such as a poem) we are concerned more with seeing of the goodness of the perfection of the thing than we are with things that we did not make. Language sufficient to get an idea across is good, a poem about the same idea is closer to perfect because we make it with care; emphasis is on the making of the thing in addition to the thing.
This coincides with Aquinas’ definition of beauty as well as the word’s common usage. Aquinas says:

“ Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical
fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the
form; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty. But they differ
logically, for goodness properly relates to the appetite (goodness
being what all things desire); and therefore it has the aspect of an
end (the appetite being a kind of movement towards a thing). On the
other hand, beauty relates to the cognitive faculty; for beautiful
things are those which please when seen.”

If the things were not made especially to approach perfection, why would they please us when seen in any special way? Take this example from common experience:

Consider that sort of rock that is called a Potato Stone. On the outside, it looks like a potato, but on the inside, it is filled with shining agate. Both are good, as both exist, but the inside is more beautiful than the outside because it is more obviously made to be special and perfect by God. The outside is just as Divinely fashioned, but this is not obvious, it cannot be seen.

In conclusion: Diotima coincides with Aquinas. Is she not a good person for us to be disciples of?