From the book
Symposium
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordVision supplies a comparison for understanding, but “the sight of the mind” is an explicit phrase only in this local exchange, not an automatic gloss on every verb of seeing.
- In the SymposiumSocrates tells Alcibiades to inspect his supposed inner treasure more carefully.
- In this editionThe edition has “sight of the mind” for a phrase using dianoia, not the noun nous.
- A place to readThe correction of a proposed exchange culminates in a contrast between bodily and mental sight.
Meaning
Vision supplies a comparison for understanding, but “the sight of the mind” is an explicit phrase only in this local exchange, not an automatic gloss on every verb of seeing.
Use in the book
Socrates tells Alcibiades to inspect his supposed inner treasure more carefully. His remark that mental sight sharpens as the eyes lose their prime challenges the young man’s confidence in youthful appearance and current judgement. Alcibiades is still far from that stage. The sentence does not assert that old age by itself makes everyone wise, or identify the unnamed seeing-capacity in Diotima’s earlier culmination as a technical faculty solely by this later phrase.
Places to read
- 218d–219aThe correction of a proposed exchange culminates in a contrast between bodily and mental sight.
Translation in this edition
The edition has “sight of the mind” for a phrase using dianoia, not the noun nous. At 212a “with what he must” leaves the faculty unnamed; the two passages should be compared without silently rewriting either.
ὀξύς (oxys)
oxys — Sharp or keen; the neuter used adverbially qualifies seeing rather than naming a physical eye.
- 219a — ὀξὺ βλέπειν. The phrase describes the acuity of mental vision.
Read: Sight of the mind.
ὄψις (opsis)
opsis — Sight or vision; Socrates distinguishes the mind’s sharpening vision from bodily eyesight.
- 219a — τῆς διανοίας ὄψις. Mental sight begins to see keenly as bodily sight leaves its prime.
Read: Sight of the mind.