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Eryximachus and Aristophanes banter, and Aristophanes says he will take a different approach to that of Pausanias and Eryximachus.
Aristophanes proposes that if Love’s power really were appreciated, temples and altars would be built in his honor because he “looks out for mankind’s interests” more than any other god (24). Aristophanes notes that human nature “has changed” (25): Initially, there were three sexes: male, female, and a third that was a combination of male and female. Each was round, with four hands, ears, and legs, two identical faces on one head, and so forth. Citing Homer, Aristophanes explains that these strong, powerful, and ambitious humans challenged the gods, who held a council to decide how to deal with them.
The gods could not destroy the humans since this would eliminate their worship and offerings, but they had to put them in their place. Zeus decided to split them in half and thus weaken them. Initially, the humans missed their other halves so much that they began to die “of starvation and general apathy,” leading Zeus to introduce intercourse so that at least they would have sexual satisfaction for male-male and female-female pairings and “procreation and offspring” for male-female pairings (27). Meeting one’s “other half” is “an overwhelming experience” that leads humans to “form lifelong relationships,” though they might not understand why (28). Love, Aristophanes concludes, is “the desire for and pursuit of wholeness” (29). Happiness can only be achieved by finding “perfect love” (30).
Aristophanes asserts that moderation is necessary “to prevent mortals from being further divided” (30). Everyone should be encouraged “to behave at all times with due reverence towards the gods” to invoke “good rather than bad” outcomes” (30). Aristophanes then declares his speech over and asks Eryximachus not “to find any humour in it” (30). Socrates and Agathon banter until Phaedrus reminds them to focus first on giving their speeches.
Aristophanes, the comic playwright, draws on a story that may have origins in a folktale that humans are half of a whole who spend their lives seeking their missing other half. The poignant, tragic tone of the story contrasts with Aristophanes’s profession. This represents another potential duality expressed across the Symposium: the tragic and the comic as manifestations of a larger whole. In his plays, Aristophanes renders the tragic (e.g., corrupt public figures) into comedy, which can only be done if the two share a common nature.
Aristophanes’s characterization of Love as the “pursuit of wholeness” echoes in Diotima’s conversation with Socrates later in the dialogue. Aristophanes’s speech has pathos, focusing not on the nature of Love in abstract or grandiose terms as in the previous speeches, but on how humans feel and experience Love. As in other speeches, sex plays a role in human happiness, but it is shallow compensation for the higher form of Love that humans seek. Though Aristophanes does not directly address sex in the context of the education of young men, his acknowledgment that sex is not the highest goal of Love agrees with the place other speakers assign to it. In addition, his notion of humans searching for their missing half resonates with the Eleusinian Mysteries, the secret initiations into the cult of Demeter and Persephone.
By Plato