Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Symposium
Eros is the ascent — from beautiful bodies, to beautiful souls, to the Beautiful itself — Diotima's ladder of love
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Symposium |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Finite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Symposium
The Beautiful is eternal — "neither coming into being nor passing away" (211a). Within the temporal world, eros's task is the ascent. The Symposium presupposes the Phaedo's doctrine of soul-immortality and the Republic's framework of reincarnation.
Space
Symposium
Standard Platonic cosmology — a finite ordered cosmos. The Forms are not in space; they are "elsewhere" in the philosophical sense, seen by intellect not sight.
Matter
Symposium
Beautiful bodies are real but derivative — the lowest rung of the ladder. Matter is emergent, finite, conserved across transformations, but ontologically subordinate to the Forms.
Observer
Symposium
The Symposium's observer is the lover — embodied (the ascent begins from physical attraction), plural at the social level, active in the philosophical pursuit. Knowledge culminates in the direct intuition of the Beautiful (a total knowledge). Moral authority is reason guided by eros; the metaphysical agency is the cosmic order that draws the soul upward.
Energy
Symposium
Eros itself is the energetic principle — the dynamic striving by which souls ascend. Emergent within the order of Forms-and-particulars, conserved across the soul's pursuit, irreversibly directional.
Information
Symposium
The Beautiful is the substantival informational structure that the ascending lover progressively apprehends. Personal information is conserved across death; the philosophical lover's soul carries its knowledge of the Forms.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Aristophanes's comic-myth speech (the original pair-bond creatures split by Zeus) and Alcibiades's drunken final speech sit awkwardly with Diotima's philosophical ascent. Modern readers split on whether the dialogue's literary structure (the descent into Alcibiades's frank eros for Socrates) is a deliberate complication of Diotima's austere ladder or a confirmation of it. The Symposium's treatment of homoerotic love has also been the subject of much modern interpretive disagreement.