Aristophanes and the Origin of Love

LATE/BFI Winter Conference 2015

Romance, Film and English

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?

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?

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

The Symposium by Feuerbach

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.

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.

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.

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 ...’

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.’

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?’’

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?’’

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 forso long, namely to be so joined and fused with his beloved that the two might become one.’

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)

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 ifthis 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.

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.

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?

Beyond Love?

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

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!

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.

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.

Hedvig and the Angry Inch

Hedvig and the Angry Inch

Hedvig and the Angry Inch

Thank You!

• Angie Hobbs

• Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy

• University of Sheffield

• www.angiehobbs.com

• @drangiehobbs