This document summarizes Aristophanes' speech from Plato's Symposium, in which he tells a myth about humans originally being spherical beings with four arms, four legs, and two faces who were split in half by Zeus as a punishment. The halves spend their lives seeking their other half to become whole again. The speech explores questions about the nature and aims of love, and whether romantic love can last or works towards its own end once completeness is achieved. It notes the potential issues with viewing a partner solely as a means to fill one's own gaps rather than as a whole person.

1. Aristophanes and the Origin of
Love
LATE/BFI Winter Conference 2015
Romance, Film and English

2. The Philosophy of Love: Some
Questions
• What is the definition of ‘romantic’ love?
What is the definition of erotic love? How do
the two relate?
• What are the origins of romantic love?
• What are its aims?
• What are its objects? And why do we fall in
love with the people that we do?

3. The Philosophy of Love: Some
Questions
• What are the effects of romantic love? Are
some kinds preferable to others?
• Is re-channelling or sublimation of romantic
love onto different objects either possible or
desirable?
• What happens if love is consummated? Can
romantic love last?

4. A Good Way In: Aristophanes’ Speech
in Plato’s Symposium

5. The Symposium by Feuerbach

6. Aristophanes’ Myth
• Originally, human beings were very different from
how we are now. They were entirely spherical,
and had 4 arms, 4 legs, 2 faces on one neck and
two sets of genitalia. They did not walk, but
bounded around the earth like acrobats.
• And there were 3 sexes: all male, all female and
hermaphrodite.
• There is no suggestion that these proto-humans
loved each other.

7. Aristophanes’ Myth
• And these proto-humans had great ambitions,
and challenged the gods.
• Zeus wanted to reduce their power, but he did
not want to destroy them completely, as the
gods liked all the libations and sacrifices and
general adulation.
• So he sliced each proto-human in two and
ordered Apollo,the god of healing, to sew
them up.

8. Aristophanes’ myth
• Each ‘half’ was then desperate to find its other ‘half’ and
went in search of them: male in search of male; female in
search of female or male/female in search of female/male,
depending on whether the original spherical being had
been male, female or hermaphrodite.
• There was no guarantee that their search would be
successful, but, even if it was, the positioning of their
genitalia made it impossible for them to make love.
• They would just cling to each other and yearn to be grafted
together again, and they began to perish through hunger
and idleness, as they refused to let each other go and get
on with the business of staying alive.

9. Aristophanes’ myth
• So Zeus moved their genitalia to make intercourse
possible – and, after making love, the pair would then
return to their daily tasks (though ideally in each
other’s company) and life continued.
• Those who do chance to meet their ‘other half’ are
‘amazed and overcome by affection and a sense of
belonging and eros – not even wanting to be apart for
a single moment. And these are the ones who go on to
be together throughout their lives, though they would
be unable to say what they want to have from each
other ...’

10. Aristophanes’ myth
• ‘ … For no-one could imagine this to be simply
sexual intercourse, or that it is only on account
of this that each so eagerly delights in the
other’s company – clearly the soul of each
wants something else that it cannot express,
but only dimly divines and obscurely hints at
what it wishes.’

11. Hephaistos’ Offer
• ‘And suppose [the god] Hephaistos were to
come and stand over them as they lay
together, holding his tools (!), and were to ask:
‘What is it, mortals, that you want to have
from each other?’ And suppose they were at a
loss and he were to ask them again: ‘So do
you desire this, to be together, in the same
place as far as possible, so as not to be
separated from each other either by night or
by day?’’

12. Hephaistos’ Offer
• ‘‘If this is what you desire I am willing to fuse
and smelt you together into the same thing,
so that from being two you may become one,
and as long as you live, the pair of you, being
as one, may both live a single life, and when
you die, there also in Hades you will be one
instead of two, having died a single death?’’

13. Hephaistos’ Offer
• ‘‘But see if this is what you are in love with
and if it would satisfy you if this were your lot.’
• We know that not a single person on hearing
such things would hold out in denying it, nor
would he be found wishing for anything else,
but he would think that he had heard what it
was after all that he had been yearning for for
so long, namely to be so joined and fused with
his beloved that the two might become one.’

14. The Definition of Eros
• ‘The cause is this, that our original nature was
as I have described and we were whole. Eros
is the name that we give to the desire and
pursuit of the whole.’
• (Symposium 192b-193a)

15. Should We Accept Hephaistos’ Offer?
• In Aristophanes’ myth, the lovers readily and
enthusiastically agree to Hephaistos’ offer.
But should we?
• Note that Plato makes Hepaistos say ‘ see if
this is what you really want and if it would
satisfy you’. (And there’s another ‘if this is
what you want’ as well.) Plato clearly wants
his readers to think very hard about this.

16. Could Eros Continue?
• Accepting Hephaistos’ offer would clearly
entail loss of physical identity and the
subsequent loss of kinetic sex.
• The suggestion is that we are also being
offered psychic as well as physical fusion – a
complete loss of identity. So it is not clear that
any sort of love could continue apart from
self-love.

17. Could Eros Continue?
• This point receives formal clarity when we are
told that eros is the desire and pursuit of the
whole – if you define something in terms of lack,
and a quest to fill that lack, then that thing must
disappear if the quest is completed.
• So: does the consummation of romantic and/or
erotic love cancel out the conditions that make
romantic and/or erotic love possible? Does love
work towards its own annihilation?

18. Beyond Love?
• And if romantic and/or erotic love are just
stepping-stones towards a further state, then
what is this further state?

19. The Romantic Egoist
• Also, note the extreme egoism of Aristophanes’
‘romantic’ lovers – each views the other not as a
whole person in their own right, but as their
missing ‘half’, to be absorbed back into them.
This situation is ethically highly disturbing (and
metaphysically highly questionable).
• So, are we meant to read the myth as two wholes
being reduced to one, or two halves added up to
one? Both scenarios are worrying!

20. Possible Conclusion
• Plato is certainly scrutinizing ‘romantic’ love with
a clear and steady gaze, and his analysis should at
least give us pause for thought.
• Perhaps the message that we are supposed to
take away is that love is only healthy, and indeed
can only continue at all, if we continue to see,
respect and love our beloved as other, as a whole
person in her/his own right, and not just to fill
gaps in our needy and appropriative selves.

21. The Influence of Aristophanes’ Myth
• Direct and indirect references to, and echoes
of, Aristophanes’ fabulous story appear in
philosophy, poetry, novels, psychology (Freud
was a huge fan of the speech, and of the
Symposium and Plato in general) – and film.
• Perhaps the most famous exploration of the
myth in film – with many direct references – is
the film of the musical Hedvig and the Angry
Inch.

22. Hedvig and the Angry Inch

23. Hedvig and the Angry Inch

24. Hedvig and the Angry Inch

25. Thank You!
• Angie Hobbs
• Professor of the Public Understanding of
Philosophy
• University of Sheffield
• www.angiehobbs.com
• @drangiehobbs