Aristophanes views erotic love as a punishment originating from God (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 18). A punishment due to the fact that erotic love involves searching for our soulmate and until we find our missing half, we are incomplete (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 18-19). Comparatively, Alcibiades views on erotic love is shown in how he longs for his love interest, Socrates. Unfortunately, Alcibiades pursuit of Socrates fails and he experiences being rejected by Socrates (Solomon & Higgins, 1991
Erotic Love in Symposium In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes and Alcibiades share a specific view on love, while Diotima and Socrates share another. Aristophanes sees love as a pursuit of wholeness and ultimately the desire for humans to be complete. Aristophanes explains the origins of how humans came to have two arms and two legs as well as one sex organ. Humans used to be creatures who existed with eight limbs as well as two sexual organs, however they were far too ambitious and had even made
Erotic Ascension and Stylistic Hoverance: The Symposium Body The initial sentence of the Symposium—“In fact, your question does not find me unprepared”—operates with an odd and mordant brevity. The close sandwiching of “in fact” and “does not” is a performative linkage of qualifiers that, in consideration of later text, functions as stylistic foreshadowing—what might be read as subtle mockery of the dialogic form (in that the sentence responds to an unknown provocatory referent) also hesitantly establishes
Plato’s Symposium is a glimpse into antiquity of some philosophical conversations on love. The focus here is on two different perspectives between Aristophanes and Socrates. Aristophanes gives us his view on love by telling a mythical account on how human nature came to be. There were once three types of beings, male-male, female-female and male-female, which the later would be known as androgynous. They were each round with four arms, four legs, and two faces on opposite sides of their being and
is motivated by love. While Augustine tells us that the hero saint is moved by love for God, the secular saint as the humanist thinkers of our modern age assert is moved by love for self and/or fellow man. Thus, love appears to be at the heart of the meaning of life. Throughout history love has been given many different names. For the pagan Greeks, there was eros (erotic or sexual love), agape (spiritual love), and phileos (a kind of platonic, friendly love). For the Christians, love was best described