Diotima's speech on the ladder of love posits a way of progressing from love of physical beauty, which does not bring happiness, to love of the Form of Beauty, which does.

The ladder begins with physical attraction towards a particular body, which everyone experiences and which has, of itself, no moral value. Instead of dismissing such attraction as shallow, Diotima sees this love of physical beauty as the first step on a ladder. The lover progresses from loving the beauty of one body to perceiving the beauty in many, and eventually all bodies. He then progresses to seeing and loving the beauty in the minds of others.

The subject who loves beautiful minds will then learn to love the products of those minds, such as laws, institutions, and customs, and will then progress to a love of knowledge in the abstract. Finally, he will see that the reason to love all these manifestations of beauty is their connection to the Form of Beauty. It is love of this form which will bring the happiness denied to baser types of love.