Aristophanes’s Thorough Definition of Love
Symposium by Plato is set at a dinner party hosted by Agathon, who is entertaining other famous philosophers of his time who designate their night to giving speeches on the topic of praising love. One of the speeches told by Aristophanes being particularly successful in explaining all aspects of love, both as a human emotion along with it’s sexual components and where love comes from. This speech is contrasted with another one told by Socrates which goes deeper into what love really is despite not covering as many elements. Specifically Socrates retells a speech he heard from a wise woman named Diotima of whom he had a prior conversation with on the topic of love where they had concluded that love…show more content… While the two speeches have different focuses, Socrates more about the forces of love compared to Aristophanes who explains the origins of sexual love, Aristophanes also illustrates other ideas that Socrates fails to. The first idea of love that is explained in his speech making it superior, is this central idea of love in connection to sex and reproduction. His story about how humans came from creatures split in half, longing for their other halfs and eventually the gods moving the placement of genitals provides a solid answer to the question of love despite how abstract it may seem. This is an essential aspect of love which is left untouched in Socrates definition. Another important aspect which I thought was explained well in the context of his story was the origins of different sexual orientations. I thought it had clear reason for why some people are hetersexual and others are homosexual all while fitting along with the story, another idea of love absent by Socrates. In addition to all these answers provided about love within the speech, Aristophanes also gives his own overall force of love definition like Socrates does, that love is the pursuit of wholeness. This definition is more clear and understandable as humans than Socrates’s about love being the desire of immortality because we experience this feeling of looking for love. It also fits with the popular human belief of soulmates, that everyone has someone who they are destined to be with and therefore completes them, so it is not a foreign idea to us. The combination of Aristophanes definition being more relatable as well as being more thorough and answering more questions surrounding love, is why Aristophanes definition exceeds that of
