For Plato’s Symposium: How does the process of coming to a higher understanding of the nature of love compare to Socrates’ description of arriving at enlightenment in “Allegory of the Cave”?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In the cave one starts at the level of shadows and appearances; these have the lowest level of cognitive clarity and reality. They are copies of copies: reflections of artifacts, which are themselves reflections, albeit to a lesser extent to the Forms. Then, ascending, one sees that it is the puppet masters who manipulate the images through the fire in the cave. One, however, can come to see reality itself: the sun, which is analogous to the Form of the Good.
With Diotima’s ladder of love, one starts with finding beauty in one person, and then in many people, and then in institutions, such as laws, governments, sciences, art, and so on. Eventually one ascends to the Form of Beauty itself and falls in love with it. The purpose of love, then, according to Socrates, and by extension Plato, is to give birth to beauty “in both body and mind,” and, finally, to attain insight into the ultimate Form of Beauty. The Form of the Good and the Form of Beauty, then, are both similarly beyond being and aspects of the Ideal.