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Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

“Sorcerer Love” is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. E.K.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Hypatia, Inc.

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References

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