Mine is Yours: Diotima’s Theory of Survival

Abstract

Abstract This paper revives a series of discussions held in mid-twentieth century about Plato’s Symposium and, based on this, provides a logical basis for a potential theory on virtue ethics, which holds that naturalism is consistent with evolutionary biology. Specifically, this paper demonstrates how Diotima (who is described as young Socrates’s teacher on love, or eros) could defend her theory of identity vis-à-vis how humans naturally tend to survive in ways characteristic of their species over time.