Read more quotes from Plato. This establishes the background against which Socrates presents Plato's case that love is the pursuit of beauty, but a more abstract beauty than Diotima's creations. From this, western culture has derived the concept of "Platonic love," an affection that is not based in bodily pleasure. This understanding of Diotima suggests an interpretation of her teaching to show that, for all that can be said of love it is, importantly a re-orientation from self-centred interest to other-centred interest and it is this re-orientation which impacted on Socrates and by which he was persuaded. “According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Diotima's Ladder of Love, also known as Plato’s ladder of love or Plato’s ladder of Eros is a philosophy of different types of love that originated in Plato's Symposium.Socrates had a speech contest of praising Eros, the god of love.In the end, they summarized the ideas based on the teachings of a priestess, Diotima. There are six types of love, and each kind is put on a rung of a ladder. This view of love is a little problematic however, and a number of critics popularly accuse the Ladder of Love to be instrumental, impersonal and abstract. The ascent via Beauty is described in the famous speech of Diotima in the Symposium, sometimes known as the Ladder of Love. Diotima explains that love is an ascent through a number of stages or steps on the ladder that ultimately lead to the Form of the Beautiful. Diotima, Originator of Platonic Love Despite these little bits of information, Diotima played an important role in the Symposium without even having attended the banquet. Love, said Diotima, must not be confused with the object of love, which, in contrast to love itself, is perfectly beautiful and perfectly good. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.” ― Plato, The Symposium. This is Diotima's second speech below, beginning with section 210.