Season One: On beauty

The final step on Diotima’s ladder is the most enigmatic. Diotima says that we encounter the beautiful “in itself,” without any form or shape. This seems impossible, given that beauty is something we sense - or at least discern in some particular person or thing… 

Dalia and Simon think about this enigma in light of Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic.” Can Lorde’s notion of the “erotic” - as presence, attentiveness, and playfulness - help us to understand what it means to experience the beautiful immediately? And what exactly would this experience be like?

Lorde’s essay can be found through Sage publications here.