Erotic Love By Aristophanes And Alcibiades

As discussed in the Symposium, individuals have different interpretations of erotic love. Aristophanes and Alcibiades define erotic love as longing for another being which an individual is drawn to. Both these men yearn for love in the idea of another figure in their life. Alcibiades yearned for the Socrates, whereas Aristophanes yearned to find his “matching half” (Plato, pg. 19). Both want to achieve a sense of completeness in their lives, because of these yearning faults are seen in their idea of love. Both men cause disturbances through the party seen in the hiccups of Aristophanes and the disturbance caused by Alcibiades, this represents the unpredictability of love. Love can be seen as unpredictable because love can enter someone’s life …show more content…
The viewpoint of that coincides with my viewpoint of erotic love would be that of Aristophanes and Alcibiades. Although their stances on love have flaws, they also advance our insight into the pain of love. In Aristophanes speech, he develops the idea of humans getting separated and yearning to find the other. This pain that an individual has to endure creates a sense of dependency. Although dependency may be seen as flawed, it gives humans a sense of purpose in their lives. Love should be a desire to find joy and accomplishment in the other. If a child is given a toy he will play with it for a while, and it gets lost, the child yearns to find this sense of joy and happiness in its life. In the speech of Alcibiades, you can see how Alcibiades is like the child who lost his toy and wants it back. Without this sense of love, people would not be able to have a sense of passion, or remorse. When comparing this kind of love to the erotic love seen by Socrates and Diotima, you can see how an exchange of wisdom is not the same love as passion driven love. Passion is driven by risk in this sense of love, whereas the individual is willing to sacrifice themselves in order to pleasure the other. In a relationship when the lover is harmed, the individual can feel that harm. This gives individuals a sense of sympathy and pain. Although pain can be seen as a negative, in love, it can be beneficial. It gives individuals a sense of devotion and strength. When they are separated the individuals are strong, but when they are together they are stronger. The lovers push each other to achieve more. Even though lovers have more quarrels in a dependant-based relationship, in enhances their knowledge of each other and even the concept of love