Aristophanes

Speech About Love in Platos Symposium

A comic playwright by trade, Aristophanes uses his time to give a speech honoring love to
tell a ribald, heres how this came about story about the origin of sexual attraction. It is
famous for its image of the human being as seeking his or her other half in the lover.
Aristophanes also frames Love as a desire for the whole i.e. for completeness.

His speech can be broken down into several main sections:
Section 1: the original state of human beings
Section 2: Zeus remedy for human hubris
Section 3: explaining how things work now
Section 4: what Love really is

Section 1:
In the beginning, Aristophanes tells us, human beings were quite different from what we
are today. They were different in two main ways.
Each human being had double the appendages they do at present four arms, four
legs, two faces on a single neck, and most importantly, two sets of genitals
There were also three sexes those with two male parts, those with two female
parts, and those with one of each.

The other characteristic of these creatures were that they were very powerful, so much in
fact that they decided to take on the gods a classic case of what the Greeks call hubris.

So, the gods are placed in a problem
If they kill off these troublesome creatures, then the gods wont get to enjoy the
sacrifices that these human beings were making to the gods
If they dont do something, these human beings are going to get more and more out
of control and unruly and who knows what they might do?

A third course suggests itself to Zeus: take them down a notch and weaken them.

Section 2:
Zeus proposes to cut the human beings in half that will both make each of the resulting
halves weaker, and result in twice as many people making sacrifices, so it works out well.

So, he slices each troublesome human being right down the middle:


Old type of

Human
Being

New
Human
Being

each human being is now much more manageable

Copyright 2013 Gregory B. Sadler, ReasonIO

New
Human
Being

ReasonIO: philosophy into practice

Aristophanes
Speech About Love in Platos Symposium


Aristophanes describes how some of the features of the new human beings are created:
The head is turned around, so that the human being can look at where the cut was
made, to remind them about their punishment
The cut is brought back together, and tied off at the belly-button, and a few wrinkles
are left in the belly
Their genitals are also turned around to their front, so that they can actually have
sexual intercourse.

Section 3

Each of the three original types of human beings, when cut in half, yield different kinds of
men and women.

Original

Male/Male

Human Being


Male who
Male who

desires
desires

desire for missing half
Male(s)
Male(s)




Original

Male/Female

Human Being



Female who
Male who

desires
desires

desire
f
or
m
issing
h
alf
Male(s)
Female(s)





Original

Male/Male

Human Being


Female who
Female who

desires
desires

desire
f
or
m
issing
h
alf
Female(s)
Female(s)


So we end up with people with desires for the opposite sex or for the same sex, in each
case, wanting to be reunited with their missing half.

Copyright 2013 Gregory B. Sadler, ReasonIO

ReasonIO: philosophy into practice

Aristophanes
Speech About Love in Platos Symposium



When a person meets their missing half then both persons are lost in amazement of love
and friendship and intimacy a very telling phrase. They want to spend all their time
together, and they feel a desire for each other that cannot even be entirely articulated or
satisfied.

Section 4:
What love at least love for ones missing half (or even for those who are like it) is really
about is wholeness, being complete. It gets expressed through companionship, desire, and
sexual intercourse, but really it is about something deeper, more fundamental.

If it was proposed to the lovers that they be made back into one that they spend all of
their time together, in life and even in death this would express what they really desire.

So, the allegorical and amusing story is a way to tell us this: the emotion of Love which we
feel really has an origin at its foundation each of us has a missing other half, which we
are searching for, and hopefully find. When we do find that other person, we can recognize
that it is them by the fact that both halves now want to experience wholeness a
completion that we can never fully realize, but which we can at least enjoy in some ways.

Copyright 2013 Gregory B. Sadler, ReasonIO

ReasonIO: philosophy into practice