Aristophanes on the Origin of Love

In Plato’s Symposium, the comic playwright Aristophanes recounts a lovely myth about the origin of Love. Together with other Athenians, like Socrates and Alcibiades, he is one of the guests at this symposion (‘drinking party’), in which the men hold a contest of speeches in praise of Eros, the divine personification of Love or Desire. While some laud it for its ability to inspire men with bravery and some regard it as as the prime mover of all things, Aristophanes views Love from quite a different angle. He claims that one can only truly understand Love if he knows how it relates to our human nature. Resorting to an amusing myth, he explains why Love makes us feel ‘whole’.

“Long ago, our nature was not the same as it is now but quite different. (…) The shape of each human being was a rounded whole, with back and sides forming a circle. Each one had four hands and the same number of legs, and two identical faces on a circular neck. They had one head for both the faces, which were turned in opposite directions, four ears, two sets of genitals, and everything else was as you would imagine from what I’ve said so far.”

Plato, The Symposium 189d-190a (trans. Christopher Gill)

These conjoined beings, with doubled bodies, were so strong and mighty that they even attempted to scale the dwelling of the gods at Mount Olympus (cf. the Tower of Babel), an act of hubris that could not go unpunished. The gods did not know how to respond. If they killed them, there would be no one left to revere the gods and make sacrifices to them. But neither could they let them get away with such an act of transgression. And so Zeus at last decided to cut each of them in half, separating the conjoined bodies so that they would be too weak to pose a threat. And ever since, human beings longed for nothing else than to be reunited with their missing half.

“Since their original nature had been cut in two, each one longed for its own other half and stayed with it. They threw their arms round each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to form a single living thing. So they died from hunger and from general inactivity, because they didn’t want to do anything apart from each other. Whenever one of the halves died and one was left, the one that was left looked for another and wove itself together with that.”

Plato, The Symposium 191a-191b (trans. Christopher Gill)

Zeus took pity on them and ‘moved the genitals round to the front and in this way made them reproduce in each other’, so that they could reproduce and ‘at least have the satisfaction of sexual intercourse’, of unifying and fusing together if only for a brief moment. It is said that those who were cut from a male counterpart are attracted to men, and that those cut from a female half are attracted to women. This, the myth implies, explains why people are heterosexual, homosexual, or lesbian. And whenever one would meet his missing half, he is overwhelmed with affection, concern and love. From then on they spend their whole lives together, but still they cannot say what it is that they want from each other. Surely it is not just sexual intercourse they want, Aristophanes continues, for it is clear ‘each of them has a wish in his mind that he can’t articulate.’ Although we may not wholly understand it, we all feel this longing to fuse into one. This desire to be reunited with our missing half and to become whole again, Aristophanes concludes, is what we call ‘love’.

“Everyone would think that [this is] what he’d longed for all this time: to come together and be fused with the one he loved and become one instead of two. The reason is that this is our original natural state and we used to be whole creatures: “love” is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness.”

Plato, The Symposium 192d-192e (trans. Christopher Gill)

Analysis

The myth Aristophanes recounts in Plato’s Symposium is interesting for three reasons. Firstly, because it is not clear how to interpret this tale. As a playwright who has frequently made fun of Socrates, Aristophanes might be poking fun at these serious and self-indulgent philosophers. Many scholars argue that Aristophanes’ origin myth functions merely as comic relief or satire. Others argue that it is very well relevant to the philosophical debate. The central idea to Aristophanes’ myth is that we humans are essentially incomplete and lacking. This fills us with a longing to be reunited with our missing half, but we can never regain this state of being whole, no matter how hard we try, whether it by having sexual intercourse or by establishing an emotional connection.

Secondly, in this aspect of lacking, the myth is reminiscent of the Christian notion of the original sin. Just like Zeus punished mankind’s hubris for scaling Mount Olympus, the Bible recounts God punishing mankind for similar acts of transgression. Two passages come to mind: the Fall of Man, with mankind losing its innocence and perfection it had in Paradise, and the Tower of Babel, with mankind losing a common tongue after building a tower that would reach to the heavens. These biblical accounts of man’s inherent weakness and imperfection after a fall from grace are strikingly similar to Aristophanes’ origin myth. And in both, the pursuit of wholeness or innocence is futile.

Thirdly, the myth touches on some psychoanalytic insights. Lacanian psychoanalysis, for example, states that man’s desire can never be truly satisfied, because the object is of desire is unobtainable and because people are unable to identify the things that will satisfy their desires. Aristophanes echoes the same idea, when he states that people desire to be together, but still they are unable to say exactly what it is they want from each other. Furthermore, the myth conveys the idea that we are essentially dependent on the Other for meaning and our sense of self, which is a welcome message in this modern day and age of increasing individualism and growing dissatisfaction.

The myth also touches on the Freudian idea of Eros and Thanatos, the forces of reproduction and self-destruction, of tension and relief, of coming together and falling apart. As the Belgian psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe states, we form our identity through the opposing processes of identification – mirroring others – and separation – distancing ourselves from others. The same basic ideas can also be found in Aristophanes’ tale. By our very nature, we are bound to be separate beings. Any attempt to fuse together with the Other and to regain our wholeness is futile. The frustration that ensues will urge us to keep others at bay, but it does not keep us from trying again and again to pursue this desire of finding our missing half, to become one instead of two. And neither does it keep Aristophanes from praising Love as the greatest blessing known to mankind.