IMMORTALITY IN PLATO'S SYMPOSIUM: FINISHING

If we look for a meaning to give to Diotima's words that will convert seeming fallacies into valid reasoning, and if we are sensitive to failures of coherence at a non-doctrinal level (the play of the characters, the modes of expression used, the time of action etc.), the well-known doctrine of immortality resolves itself into pure phenomenological description: Diotima's assertions about immortality describe the paradoxical way in which happiness is not accessible to mortals.