It is amazing to see a simple word such as ‘love’ can have such a great meaning to it, to the extent that there is a greek god for it. In the time that these books were written, love between 2 men were interpreted much differently than the same love today. Phadrus begins by saying how the strongest love is between a man and a boy. Being that both parties are at risk of getting caught, this supposedly brings the love closer. I think that Aristophanes also brings a very deep point about ourselves. The idea that we all have a missing half, and are in a life long search for what we might think is another person, but really we are in search of ourselves. Many people say that they need to “discover themselves”, which in the sense of Aristophanes speech, makes sense.
3 thoughts on “Love and our missing half”
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It is interesting how accepting of different love they were at the time. According to Aristophanes’ mythological story, the human always looked for his/her other half and when they found their other half they became happy and settled. Aristophanes seems to indicate that it doesn’t matter who you love as long as it is your other half. In his myth he says that love between a man and boy is strong because they would value each other masculinity. So I agree we are all missing our half and we may find it in anyone.
I definitely agree with you on the whole shift of love between then and today. There definitely is a drastic change. Also, I really like how you touch up on the fact about the need to discover oneself. This definitely is an ongoing theme that Aristophanes keeps using, and gets us thinking.
It’s interesting when you say that when someone is looking for one’s “soul mate”, in reality, they are just trying to find themselves as a person.I do believe that in order do love someone else you have to love yourself first and foremost. However, I don’t believe that’s what Aristophanes was getting at in his speech. I think he really believed in soul mates and that there is a person out there for each and every one of us.