On 29th June, Prof Scherto Gill provided a closing keynote lecture at the Scientific and Medical Network’s 2025 Annual Gathering, entitled: Love: Mediating the Earthly and the Heavenly, Integrating the Immanent and the Transcendent. Other speakers at this event were Prof Federico Faggin and Prof Sarah Stewart-Brown.
In her lecture, Scherto sets the challenge in an era defined by profound tensions, stark oppositions and fragmenting contradictions. While unprecedented technological and material abundance enriches the lives of a small minority, pervasive deprivation, both economic and environmental, continues to diminish the lives of the majority. Whereas monetary wealth is pursued as precious goods, nature’s beauty and goodness are being irreversibly destroyed. Claiming to seek growth beyond human constraint, modern life often ignores the value and wonder of grounded everyday experiences, such as the depth of friendship, the delight of gardening, the inspiration of the creating and appreciating arts, the awe of nature, and the joy of living in congenial political communities.
She then asks: what if the very tensions and paradoxes we face hold the key to a richer and more integrated life? How might we bridge these oppositions and restore a vital connection between our immediate, earthly living and transcendent aspirations?
In pursuit of answers, she turns to Diotima of Mantineia, whose teachings on love, as depicted in Plato’s Symposium, offer profound insights into harmonising these opposing realms. Most of us are familiar with Plato’s ladder of love, a vision of ascending from possessing physical beauty and attraction towards the seeking spiritual and eternal goodness or beauty itself. This is typically described as a transcendent vision. Yet Diotima’s insight goes further, inviting us not merely to ascend but to integrate, honouring every rung of experience as essential and sacred, in an infinite process of creative becoming.
The lecture delves deeper into Diotima’s teachings, particularly her conception of Erôs as a daimon, a powerful spirit neither wholly divine nor simply mortal, born of Poros, the god of abundance, and Penia, a mortal embodying poverty. This symbolic lineage endows Erôs with both creative potential and persistent need, perpetually dwelling in the vibrant tension between gratification and longing, contentment and aspiration.
Through engaging dialogue and reflective practices, her session further explores how embracing this daimonic tension can help mediate contemporary divides. Scherto asks the participants to consider how recognising and honouring the inherent goodness, beauty, and creative possibility within our everyday, our earthly lived experiences can bridge us towards transcendent ideals and values, enriching our personal, communal and political life in peace.