Aristophanes' Speech on Love

In this paper I will discuss Aristophanes’ speech on love found in Plato’s Symposium. I will summarize his speech and explain the characteristics of love as Aristophanes thinks of it. I will also explain Aristophanes’ definition of love, and whether or not love is an admirable or good thing. And finally, I will critically discuss the plausibility and implausibility of Aristophanes’ view of love.
Aristophanes, being a comic poet, offers an engaging and mythological perspective on the topic of love. Aristophanes’ speech begins by explaining the nature of man and what has become of it. Aristophanes suggests that long ago, the nature of the original human being was very much different from what it is today. He proposes that human beings once were comprised of two halves; that is to say, they were twice the people they are today. According to Aristophanes, this original primeval man had a round body, his back and sides formed into a circle from which two pairs of arms and legs protruded, he had two faces, and most importantly, two sets of genitalia.
Aristophanes goes on to say that there were three different kinds of these original human beings, all of which were differentiated by their gender. Not only were there a female and

How plausible are the views presented by Aristophanes in his speech on love? From an analogous stand point he does provide us with an elegant explanation for the ploysxuality of human beings, however, in light of the theory of evolution and other scientific findings regarding the origins of the human race, we cannot accept it. He does however touch on a very significant point that none of the other speakers in the Symposium have touched on. Aristophanes speaks of love and our innate social need to be with others as an attempt for unification into a whole. This translates well into what we today perceive to be the ideal relationship, whether it is a heterosexual one or not. We often consider a healthy loving relationship as a union between two people, where two become one, embedded with virtues of friendship and loyalty that go beyond the physical desire for sexual gratification.

and a male, but a third, a unified androgynous creature that possessed both female and male genitalia. Symbolically, these beings were said to be the children of the sun, earth and the moon. The male was the child of the sun, the female of the earth, and the unified androgynous creature was a child of the moon.

In essence, Aristophanes defines love as the driving force that compels us to seek out such unification “Love does the best that can be done for the time being: he draws us towards what belongs to us” (Aristophanes, p.30). Aristophanes does however betray a bias towards male homosexual love as being better and nobler than heterosexual love when he speaks of heterosexual love “Many lecherous men have come from this class, and so do the lecherous women who run after men” This view is further exemplified when Aristophanes says that boys who seek out men are “the best boys and lads, because they are the most manly in their nature” (Aristophanes, p.27).

These beings were extremely powerful, so powerful that at one point they even decided to challenge the gods. The Gods fought back, but fearing that a total annihilation of these beings would leave the world barren with no one to worship them, instead, decided to sever these creatures in half with a bold of lightning. Upon being severed, these beings became obsessed with unifying themselves into their former whole selves. They w