By Leo Stan

MA in Philisophy at Brock University, Canada

PhD in Religious Studies, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada

Research Fellow at Hong Kierkegaard Library - St. Olaf College,

Northfield, MN, USA.

Prelude to An Enigma: Aristophanes’ Account of Eros in Plato’s Symposium

Abstract

This paper focuses on Aristophanes’ myth from Plato’s Symposium and starts from a critical evaluation of two different interpretations of this text. The first hermeneutic attempt I address belongs to Leo Strauss and emphasizes the political entailments of the Aristophanic account by linking, on the one hand, Eros with mutiny and identifying, on the other, the pederasts with the best fit individuals for the government of body politic. The second interpretation, proposed by Arlene Saxonhouse, is part and parcel of a feminist exegesis and starts from a literal reading of the Aristophanic speech in order to argue that the inevitable bodily separation of the post-split condition of humans can be overcome only through a trans-corporeal union of souls. Whereas Strauss draws the political implications of Eros, Saxonhouse views erotic love as both going beyond the boundaries of polis and simultaneously undermining politics understood as the realm of masculine power. My contention is twofold: firstly, that by explicitly linking eros with an essential fragmentariness and stating that love always implies an ineffable non-corporeal aspect, Aristophanes may be taken as a prelude to Socrates’ speech from the same Platonic work; secondly, I hold that the Aristophanic quasi-hierarchical political tenets are limited to a certain paradigm of political theory without exhausting the entire meaning of politics. In my exegetic effort, I also suggest that Aristophanic love is a protean figure with multiple and sometimes obscure potentialities; at the same time, I hold that by starting from a mythological standpoint, through which the present human condition is tied with an unattainable origin that is perpetually sought, Aristophanes’ speech is mainly concerned with the human relation to the divine.

When it comes to the works of ancients, the variety of interpretations can be overwhelming and sometimes confusing. This paper will concentrate on a peculiar myth which had a long career in the Western history of love and deeply penetrated the common understanding of erotic behavior: Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium. A controversial figure, a cynical comedian whose indictment contributed to Socrates’ death, if we are to believe his Apology, Aristophanes appears as a colorful, almost enigmatic, and certainly living character in Plato’s portrayal. In this paper, I shall analyze two different interpretations of Aristophanes’ speech: the Straussian approach which emphasizes the political dimensions of the myth, and Saxonhouse’s feminist account which puts forth a view that supposedly transcends politics, but still remains fundamentally tied to it, due to the basic orientation of her gender analysis. After the indication of their inner contradictions and problematic aspects, I shall sketch a different perspective based on ignored, or too easily dismissed elements in the aforementioned analyses. My interpretation will concentrate more on the “dark” spots of the speech, suggesting that the Aristophanic mythical erotology can be understood in two ways which are complementary rather than mutually exclusive: both as an interesting propedeutic to Socrates’ own speech and/or as an indication of a trace of the “sacred” in Aristophanes’ ideas. Therefore, my hermeneutic attempt will gradually and asymptotically ascend toward the mythological and traditionally religious elements, which seem to play an equivocal role in the entire economy of the Aristophanic speech. The fact that Aristophanes was a comedian and quite a burlesque personality makes it difficult to detect in his encomium some decisive meanings of human love. Paradoxically enough, he draws, in my view, a painting in perspective, filled with symbols and innuendoes, depicting eros in its fundamental nature: a genuine mystery that saves and condemns, pointing to our inner side under which there might lurk an abyss…

I. Aristophanes & the Straussian Political Eros

Concerning Leo Strauss’s portrait of the Aristophanic eros, one might say that it is fairly ambiguous. The fundamental assumption is that in Aristophanes’ speech the erotic is essentially inscrutable and contradictory.  “The nature of eros”, Strauss writes, “will remain obscure in spite of everything Aristophanes says”[1], and even if erotic desire might point to a deeper unutterable truth, its constitutive self-contradiction will always persist.[2] However, in spite of this inherent unintelligibility, Strauss holds some bold, explicit tenets which are at least questionable. In the following I shall try to briefly address them and simultaneously point out their problematic aspects.

How did eros come into being according to the Straussian reading of Aristophanes? Being faithful to his religious revolutionary character,[3] Aristophanes conceives of eros as simultaneously an outcome of a transgression and a divine gift. Due to their need of human worship and to the intention to prevent any mutinous behavior which would threaten their ontological position, the Olympic gods split the original men – who resembled the cosmic gods through their roundness – into two, yet giving them the momentary possibility to re-attain this primordial condition through the consummation of erotic desire in a more or less immediate union. As a matter of fact, from the speech itself it is not at all clear how the first humans themselves came into being and why were they similar to both cosmic and Olympian gods (with these latter sharing the attribute of sexuality).

However odd it may seem, the actual condition of mankind is due to a punishment for the lofty thought of assaulting the heavens by virtue of the incredible power possessed by the originary human beings.[4] “Civilization”, Strauss comments, “is the acquisition of justice and orderliness, accompanied by the loss of lofty thoughts.” (LS, p.126) In other words, the complete human nature was radically changed by nomos,[5] and therefore “as desire for the restitution of the cosmic, globular shape, eros…is a movement of nature, of impaired nature, against law.” (LS, p.131) One can say together with Strauss that humanity became similar to kosmos itself through the civilizing effect of the Olympian gods. (LS, p.144)[6]

Even if they resembled the Olympians as sexed, the original humans had seditious inclinations. This can be considered the first cause of a destructive attempt, which necessitated the punitive intervention of higher beings.[7] The ineluctable effect was that, through nomos, men acquired the shape of Olympian gods. At the same time, the possibility of union – entailed by eros and ultimately delusive – continually gives humans the opportunity to oppose their civilized side. After the split or after humanization, Strauss holds, human nature became dual, fundamentally caught and torn apart between law and sexual desire, between apparent rebellion and the task of piety.[8] Precisely this constitutes the latent tragedy of eros.[9]

The interesting connection that Strauss wants to make explicit has undeniable political and ethical connotations.[10] “Since it is of man’s essence”, he writes, “to be limited by divine law, eros cannot be understood except in relation to the gods, or law.” (LS, pp.133-134) Differently put, because the single possibility to counteract insurgence is the introduction of nomos by means of erotic life – which is a compromise between the loss of originary self-sufficiency and the sheer eradication of human race - love will indirectly refer to the legitimate punishing attitude of Zeus. Hence the duty of piety.[11]

However, for Strauss, eros points to the introduction of law in a negative fashion. He argues that “the direction of eros is inverse to the direction of the action of the Olympian gods….eros [being] radically impious.” (LS, p.131)[12] Moreover, the erotic love has a great power not properly acknowledged by humans[13] and therefore, it cannot be reduced to mere lust because of its incentive towards perennial unity.[14] Free from any external influences,[15] eros represents an unintelligible yearning for what’s been lost forever and can be obtained only fleetingly and deceitfully.

Strauss mentions other features of eros, namely its non-contingency, its tautological character, and its affinity with the ineffable. Commenting on Symposium 193c8-d5, he holds that Aristophanic love is always of one’s own because the split humans will always look for their alter-ego, so to speak. At this peculiar point, Strauss is very keen on revealing the political implications of such a viewpoint,[16] even if he explicitly stated that Aristophanes’ interest in political issues is nonexistent.[17] A strange corollary of this mythical depiction of eros would be its apparent necessity, the lover being impelled to search only for his or her unique half and refuse any other adventitious partner – which is, Strauss says, sheer illusion.[18] Eros is thus the great originator of contradictory desires that stay for an ineffable, more profound reality. Strauss writes that “the self-contradiction [of erotic drives] points to a deeper truth which the soul divines without being able to state it clearly.” (LS, p.138) Eros cannot be reduced to mere lust and represents something that transcends the actual “impaired” (even if civilized) nature of man.[19]

Besides the delusions it gives rise to, this type of eros ultimately fails by proposing unattainable goals. The primordial unity cannot ever be re-achieved, and procreation, despite its alleviating function, remains fundamentally unsatisfactory.[20] Piety, for Strauss, does not solve the essential problem – the inaccessibility of origins – and that is why eros appears more or less as striving for the impossible.[21] As a matter of fact, Strauss writes that “Eros, as Aristophanes understands it, is longing for a fantastic oneness, for an unnatural oneness” (LS, p.148), which is the main source of unhappiness.[22]

In contradistinction to Eryximachus’ speech from Plato’s Symposium, which did not put forward a hierarchical structure of eros, Aristophanes, according to Strauss, reinstates a kind of natural human hierarchy that plays a decisive role in his version of the erotic. This is the ground of conceiving the different lovers in harmony with the given natural order of human beings.[23] Consequently, given his explicit defense of pederasty,[24] Aristophanes posits, in Strauss’s hermeneutic attemp, a sexually oriented order with heterosexual love at the bottom, the lesbian one in between, followed by the pederasts who enjoy the highest position.[25]

It seems that for Strauss, the Platonic Aristophanes succeeds in proving the supremacy of pederasty due to its link with shamelessness. In the myth, impudicity is symbolized by the sun itself, to which the primordial males were “ontologically” related as direct descendants. On the other hand, Strauss detects a certain inconsistency in Aristophanes’ tenet that “on becoming complete [perfect] only men of this sort [pederasts] go into politics.”[26] This happens because the erotic hierarchy must be naturally conceived, and not formulated in political terms, which are somewhat extraneous to eros.

As a principle, Strauss finds that “only those who are by nature males can be full devotees of eros, the fulfillment of eros, the regained unity.” (LS, p.136) And given that Aristophanes interprets the polis in terms of belligerent courage – the manly virtue par excellence – politics becomes the privileged realm of those who are, according to the reinstated natural hierarchy, the most apt and superior individuals of human race.[27] Pederastic relations seem so highly ranked that even when speaking about heterosexuality Aristophanes still uses terms appropriate for a male/male relationship.[28]

In a rather cursory fashion, Strauss makes the following odd comment concerning Aristophanes’ admonition of pious behavior in erotic relations. On the one hand, polis is conceived only in purely patriarchal fashion. On the other hand, Aristophanes seems to allude to the impious character of Pausanias’ relation with Agathon, about whom Strauss writes that “perhaps, they are by nature males… [but] by convention they appear to be females” (LS, p.146; emphasis added). Being already famous for their soft and “womanish” behavior (id.), the two consequently introduce us to an unsurpassable problem: if the actual Pausanias and Agathon have a “quasi-lesbian” relation, then the abstract sharp distinction male/female becomes radically blurred. The contradictory consequence of Strauss’s reading is that pederasts cannot claim exclusivity in political matters as long as it is possible (for a few of them at least) to behave in a non-agonistic manner. Furthermore, if sexual orientations belong to the realm of nature,[29] nomos – which is, we remember, the way Olympian gods civilized and punished at the same time a rebellious race – becomes unnatural, almost like convention, about which Strauss speaks in feminine terms. Of course, one might argue that politics is different from convention, but we have just been told that after the split, the individual human being is the locus of a recalcitrant duality,[30] and this is the very aspect which accounts for the tragedy of eros.

Shortly put, my critique runs as follows: if sexual differences are naturally given, if politics came into being as unnatural, and if pederasts are the most fitful for the government of the polis (and some of them are not even entirely male in erotic relations), then homosexuality stands for a weirdly unnatural and ambiguous reality. Moreover, the natural hierarchy itself gets distorted, because one cannot see any reason why Aristophanes places lesbians as superior to those embracing heterosexuality.[31] What is it in a female being that makes it higher than the heterosexual inclinations? On this matter, Strauss is totally silent.[32] As we shall see, this aspect will be frontally approached by Saxonhouse’s feminist interpretation.

It is obvious now that Strauss has a close interest in the political entailments of Aristophanes speech. Firstly, by the internal link between eros and any disobedient or rioting attitude, and secondly, through the explicit defense of pederasty with its (unnatural) corollary that only pure males can fulfill political functions. On the fundamentally antinomian character of the erotic Strauss states:

 “Eros is a desire for the ancient nature, for the state in which man had the loftiest thoughts, in which he thought of conquering heaven, or rather Olympus. Eros is rebellion against nomos. Through eros men cease to be cowed and acquire again the loftiest thoughts. If this is the essence of eros, the community of those which are most manly by nature is most highly erotic to the deepest degree in regard to what eros is ultimately after – the state of completeness in which men could challenge the gods.” (LS, p.137)[33]

 Pederasty is explicitly linked with mutiny. Moreover, eros represents “the leader of an army of males which strives for original unity, for the recovery of lofty thoughts, which implies the thought of rebellion against the gods.” (LS, p.142) We can conclude then that Aristophanes seems, in the Straussian portrayal, impervious to any feminist arguments: “only those who are by nature males can be full devotees of eros, the fulfillment of eros, the regained unity; this goes together with lofty thoughts, which as such are directed toward dethroning the gods, and this is particularly a male affair.” (LS, p.146)

Even though it is explicitly eulogized[34] and consists in a means of contemplating the original unity,[35] piety is for Strauss rather an illusory device motivated by fear of gods but fundamentally unsatisfactory.[36] Skipping few other unclear aspects of the Straussian take,[37] I intend to turn now to a quite different hermeneutic attempt, that of a moderate feminist.

 II. A Trans-political (Feminine) Eros?

Despite the irreconcilable differences between a gender approach and the Straussian analysis, they both share an explicit or implicit concern with the political nuances or outcomes of Aristophanes’ speech. However, with their (sometimes charming) hermeneutics of suspicion, feminists will try in different manners and with various results to bring forth the negative male attitude of repression and silencing of women within the specific life of the polis. And that is due, of course, to the simple and banal fact that females are usually assigned only domestic roles within the life of the community.

In the gender scholarship, Plato is sometimes considered a true liberating pioneer who tried (and failed, according to some scholars[38]) to undermine the traditional patriarchal view by making an explicit appeal to female values equated with wisdom or genuine philosophy and deemed as essentially heterogeneous in relation to (the intrinsically male) politics. However, we cannot ignore that feminists start on principle from a bellicose picture of male/female interactions, detecting almost everywhere – beginning with daily existence and ending with philosophical arguments – more or less hidden ways of suppressing the female voice or importance from a social perspective. Only rarely will they admit of harmonious reconciliation of the two sexes, and even in these cases it is carefully added that the conciliatory attitude explicitly or implicitly distorts the genuine and full meaning of the feminine in general.[39]

As a leading feminist scholar in Platonic exegesis – within the framework of political philosophy – Arlene Saxonhouse starts her interpretation of the Symposium from the fact that women in Greek political thought cannot be conceived without understanding the essential role of eros taken as a drive for the creative unity of opposites.[40] Through a blunt and deliberate dismissal of the hermaphroditic side of all humans, most of the speakers in the aforementioned dialogue fail to realize that “the female fills out the human form…introduces music and, through eros, the desire for what we lack…[and] offers to the sterile male pregnancy and creativity.” (AS, p.23) The female principle that Saxonhouse refers to is tightly related to a symbolism of abundance and procreation.[41] Plato himself uses the feminine to allow for that creativity which pure males lack, and that is why Socrates can be considered a hermaphroditic figure.[42]

Notwithstanding the obvious misogynous aspects of Greek culture,[43] women were sometimes related to vitality.[44] In describing Socrates as an androgynous figure, Saxonhouse writes that “it is precisely the mother Poverty who makes Socrates the man we admire.” (AS, p.21)[45] In the same vein, Diotima’s bodily particularity is considered paradigmatic: “it is her body with its capacity for reproduction that we must simulate in our progress up the ladder of love.” (AS, p.21) Even if one gets the feeling that this is a very literal (not necessarily misconstrued) reading of the text, the puzzlement grows when from another point of view the natural is radically inverted: the female Diotima is the one that impregnates the sterile males with a perpetual search of the beautiful: “she presents the male as transformed into the female – as capable of becoming pregnant.” (id.)

After these principial assertions let us turn to Saxonhouse’s interpretation of Aristophanes’ speech and see what peculiar role the feminine plays in the pursuit of creative reconciliation between opposite sexes. Aristophanes is seen as continuing the teleology of universal harmony initiated by Eryximachus’ speech, yet in a totally different manner: not from an ethical or noetic standpoint, but  in terms of corporeal immediacy. “Aristophanes”, Saxonhouse writes, “talks of male bodies, of female bodies, of navels and privy parts, of holes and the filling of holes.” (AS, p.16) If with a few lines before she admitted that the new aspect of this speech consisted in the “fantastical imagery” of the primordial humans, her genuine intention was actually to address the most organic aspects of erotic relations. In other words, the mythology behind the story is just a veil concealing the more concrete dimensions, which Aristophanes – who was very famous for belittling important matters and political or intellectual figures – wants to introduce as necessary for any faithful account of the erotic. Saxonhouse also notices that, although initially Aristophanes does not make any explicit distinction between sexes, later he equates homosexuality with the warlike courage implying thus a politics that excludes alterity.[46]

It is also remarked that the primordial split introduced the principle of death into the new form of interpersonal relations, and this is why Zeus offered the possibility of reproduction through eros. Fundamentally the latter is a momentary satisfaction of one’s “libidinal” desires and drives. The truest characteristic of erotic life remains the fulfillment of bodily impulses, procreation being just a “by-product” that grounds the survival of the city.[47]

In Saxonhouse’s view, Socrates and Aristophanes are similar through their notion that eros or erotic satisfaction leads to self-sufficiency, but differ concerning the outcome. For the former, love implies an immortal dimension, whereas the latter, by bringing in the infernal figure of Hephaestus, links eros with death.[48] Paradoxically enough, it is also held that both of them share the view according to which “love is not a god who leads us to happy complacency; he is a god who drives us on in an endless pursuit of what we lack.” (AS, p.18)[49]

As we have seen, Saxonhouse’s Aristophanes is granted mundane, concrete and corporeal intentions.[50] Now, because of the essential link between eros and death, Saxonhouse considers that we deal with a genuine detachment from the body:

“Since the gods have destroyed the true unity of our bodies, we must escape our bodies; we must escape that which affirms our separation from others and become bodiless souls capable of enjoying a final and complete unity.” (AS, p.18)

We can clearly see how, by reading the mythological part of Aristophanes’ speech in an exclusively literal fashion,[51] Saxonhouse arrives at a point where a duality must be introduced, a duality by means of which one eventually achieves what’s been lost through the primordial division. The bodily separation will be cured[52] through a union of souls which, of course, presupposes the necessary eradication of the corporeal.

Restating the essential relation between male values and ethical virtues (like bravery), Saxonhouse concludes that in Aristophanes “the political realm…subdues what is different” (AS, p.17) and this resistant alterity is embodied precisely and exclusively by the female. However, at this point it becomes unclear how Aristophanes can both continue the reconciliation project initiated by Eryximachus and posit politics as intrinsically discriminating and repressive.[53]

Surprisingly enough, despite all these contradictory assertions, eros is depicted as essentially apolitical:

“The completion that both Aristophanes and Socrates envision takes their lovers away from the city, as ones who cannot be brought back down or up to it. Both Aristophanes and Socrates teach that completion makes the city irrelevant. The city arises to satisfy our incompletion, our failure to reach our eidos, our form, on our own. Eros helps us to transcend our inadequacies. For Aristophanes this inadequacy can only be overcome by the unity of those who are similar, while Socrates the androgyne elaborates the importance of difference and the creative unity that does not lead to Aristophanic death. ” (AS, p.19)[54]

 The single clear aspect that I am able to thematize in Saxonhouse’s puzzling analysis is her notion of an eros detached from politics. However, this detachment cannot be totally neutral as long as it is meant to undermine the male sterile and repressive attitude. If Strauss showed that the (still erotic) political life was essentially masculine, the role of female being almost completely ignored or dismissed, our feminist interpreter finds eros as radically feminine[55] and reveals through it a way to threaten a frozen and sterile patriarchal politics. Saxonhouse’s love thus becomes an anti-political weapon that takes refuge in an ambiguous spiritual unity, leaving aside important aspects of Aristophanic encomium such as: the problem of a natural hierarchy, the insurgent potentialities of eros, the consequences of the absence of nous from the erotic life, and the political implications of the originary punishment. In the hands of Saxonhouse, Aristophanes’ eros equivocally and aimlessly oscillates between a feminine revolutionary and a final trans-corporeal reconciler, which finally cures the “fall” of humans. 

III. Eros as Perpetual Heterogeneity

I shall start my own analysis from the simple comment that Plato’s portrayal of Aristophanes is in itself intricate, paradoxical to the brink of obscurity, and contains subtle allusions to Socrates’ own speech. Let us remember that Aristophanes figured among the accusers of Socrates in the famous trial,[56] being also a comedian that did not draw a flattering portrait of the latter. Regardless of these historical or literary truths, Plato does not treat Aristophanes in a wholly negative manner; on the contrary, he offers him the fluid central place of the entire dialogue.[57] However, the Aristophanic speech lacks not an acrid irony,[58] a few immoral remarks, and some barely hidden contradictions that do not make him the most appealing figure of the Symposium.

It is my contention that in explicitly linking eros with an actual absence and in stating that love always points to an unutterable non-corporeal aspect, Aristophanes’ mythical rendering is a prelude to Socrates’ speech, wherein eros is pictured as being born from Poverty (Penia) and has the potential to lead one toward the contemplation of universal beauty.[59] For both of them eros reveals (or has the capacity to imply) something other than the mere physical aspects of interpersonal relationships, even if in Aristophanes the nonphysical dimensions are difficult to detect, but not completely missing.

At the beginning of his quasi-eulogy Aristophanes states that the first humans resembled what Strauss called the cosmic gods[60] in their round shape and manner of walking.[61] About the androgynous beings, he takes care to add that despite the actual nonexistence of such entities in the present, the name still bears a pejorative connotation.[62] As we might infer, the other two types did not exist either any longer, but their denominations had no depreciative connotations. This peculiar line gives scholars the incentive to assume that Aristophanes proposes a kind of natural hierarchy,[63] which plays an essential part in the human condition after the split. What is literally said at this point is just that androgynous primordial humans were related to the moon, because the latter shared characteristics of both earth and sun (Symp., 190b). And except the comment about the negative sense of the actual word, one cannot immediately find the (in)direct affirmation of any hierarchical picture.[64]

On the other side, it is true that adulterers of both sexes originate in the androgynous primordial humans, but to read into this an underlying inferiority would mean a total disregard of the obscenity and unethical behavior, with which Aristophanes’ name was unreflectively associated. A mentioning of superiority is indeed made in connection with pederasty, but this has its own well-grounded reasons.

Immediately after the rearrangement of genitals, it is said about those who practice homosexuality that “there might at least be satiety in their being together and they might pause and turn to work and attend to the rest of their livelihood” (Symp., 191c). If after the split a few halves died of starvation and other unobserved vital needs, now once eros entered the scene together with a completely new form of sexuality, all humans have a means to re-achieve a sense of momentary unity after which they can dedicate their time to different indispensable activities. It is a fact that, besides satisfaction, the heterosexual relations contribute to the perpetuation of race, and Aristophanes never affirms that this would be something despicable.

In the special case of the descendants of the purely male humans, boldness and shamelessness are, nonetheless, two decisive and unique features. Leo Strauss has rightly proved that Aristophanes has a belligerent view on politics in the sense that those who after a certain age dedicate their lives to the ruling of the polis are seen as paradigmatic of virtues essential in times of war.[65] Indeed, one has the feeling that for Aristophanes, political life is a battle ground, rather than an art of harmonizing opposite or multiple aspects of community. Consequently, because they are the only immodest and fundamentally courageous individuals, all pederasts “go off to political affairs” (S, 192a-b).[66] Again, if we adopt an image of politics as perpetual war, then there is a sense in which the superiority of exclusively masculine relations is evident. Yet, if we think that political life is not supposed only to win wars, but also to preserve the integrity of polis and prevent any kind of internal conflict which might lead to self-dissolution, then the previous bellicose values become futile or at least secondary. Therefore, I hold that the Aristophanic quasi-hierarchical political thinking should be carefully considered as limited to a certain paradigm, which does not exhaust the entire meaning of politics.

Another contradictory statement says that, in spite of their natural inclinations, pederasts can be compelled by law to marriage and procreation, whereas they would always want to be only with each other.[67] But if at maturity, all sun-descendants without exception end up going into politics, and if politics is, as Strauss pointed out, the realm of law par excellence, then we have to agree that pederasts want to be involved into that realm of life which contradicts, at least partially, their own sexual nature. If (some) political laws can go against natural homosexuality, why would its adepts be the most fitful and inescapably drawn toward politics? 

Now, concerning the female element: if in masculine matters Aristophanes is quite generous, women seem to fade into the background. Generally speaking, I think that there are, in all, three kinds of female types he refers to: a) those engaged into a familial life (marriage and procreation); b) a small number (probably) of adulteresses; c) lesbians, who are the genuine descendants of earth.[68] About the latter we are told that they share an almost complete contempt for the males (be they heterosexual or homosexual). Adultery, on the other hand, is dangerous for the life of the polis only as a threat to the integrity of family. But from a sexual standpoint, an adulteress might be an instantiation of a former androgyne who is continuously looking for the other (unique or not) half. From the text itself one may infer the probable disinterest of Aristophanes in familial matters.[69] And if we are to be rigorous and faithful to what is implied – and this not without a slight trace of maliciousness – we can also disclose a positive outcome of adultery which consists in the increase of population.[70] About the first type of women, one can only say that they faithfully follow their natural vocation (heterosexuality) and respect the political laws (of marriage).

Conclusively, throughout Aristophanes’ speech we cannot identify any decisive meaning of the feminine as undermining the realm of (male) politics.[71] At the most, women could be viewed as either careless of politics or as a threat to moral integrity, a fact that is totally discordant with the agonistic model after which Aristophanes’ polis is shaped. We either give up the warlike picture of political life and identify family as one of the main grounds of the communitarian life, or we embrace the agonistic view and do away with the feminine as a menace.[72]

As a matter of fact, Leo Strauss suggests that Aristophanes might try to legitimate adultery[73] by linking it to the problem of the other half. However, one can always ask: is it really necessary that the partner is and should be unique? (This leads us to an unsolvable philosophical problem within the Aristophanic speech, which cannot be dealt with in the present paper: how do we conceive the ontological condition of the first humans? What kind of unity was there at the beginning and in what exactly did it consist? Was it a merely bodily unity? Did the primordial people possess a psyche of a sort? If yes, was it a shared but single psyche, or two which formed a unity?[74] What is the relation of this psyche with the body (before and after the split)? Is this the sense of wholeness that we’ve lost, and can the unutterable aspect of any love be identified with the “psycheic” other? These questions will most probably remain unanswerable given the penury of information about the originary humans from the beginning of Aristophanes’ “degraded” myth.)

At 192b-c Aristophanes speaks of the true other who is permanently looked for as “that very one who is his [read: anyone’s] own half.”[75] Nonetheless, we are also told that after the actual split many halves perished of hunger and other vital necessities which were neglected for a long time.[76] “Whenever one of the halves did die”, it is stated, “and the other was left, the one that was left tried to seek out another and entangle itself with that, whether it met the half of the whole woman…or of a man” (Symp., 191b). At 191d it is said that eros is a search of one’s own token, not of the other unique bodily half. The possible alternatives to this riddle are that after the split and rearrangement of genitals one looks for either just a mere representative of the original sexual condition or exclusively the other unique half that is never findable.[77]

As a prelude to a possible answer to this thorny question, I want to dwell a little bit on Aristophanes’ remarks on Hephaestus. Firstly, Hephaestus is supposedly able to make explicit what the lovers long for but cannot put into words.[78] Thus we get the picture of Hephaestus as the master of language. Secondly, we are told that he makes his appearance by carrying tools, which are peremptory signs of his ability to use a certain technē in handling various situations.[79] Thirdly, he says he is able to offer a “conjunction and fusion with the beloved [in order] to become one from two” (Symp., 193a), after he explicitly boasted that he is “willing to fuse [the lovers] and make [them] grow together into the same thing, so that – though two – [they] would be one” (Symp.,192e; emphasis mine). This unity that cannot eradicate duality might be taken as an allusion to the original condition when each body had two faces, two pairs of hands, four legs etc. On the other hand, it can surreptitiously symbolize the unattainableness of origins.

In any case, I think we have enough elements to argue that Hephaestus is a mere blunderer, because he is trying to use artificial means in order to remake the primordial unity, and consequently dismisses the natural inner eros of human beings.[80] Accordingly, we can hold that love does not have a peculiar tēchne. At the same time, the union, which is so fervently pursued, remains fantastical or inaccessible. And from this perspective, the question of whether the other is actually or just in principle unique becomes secondary.[81]

Finally, I have to add that Aristophanes depicts eros by means of a complex imagery: a great power with philanthropic and healing potentialities,[82] the new inborn and consequently integrating element of the human “post-split” condition after the rearrangement of genitals,[83] the improbable[84] “bringer together of [lovers’] ancient nature” (Symp., 191d), the search of one’s own token, “our guide and general” (Symp., 193b), the closest reality to (though, not identical with) our best condition,[85] and last but not least the reminder of piety as a human duty toward the gods.

One should not forget that Eros can lead us to what is our own – the other half – only if we are pious to Olympians. Differently put, a successful erotic relation must be preceded by a reconciliation and friendliness with the divine.[86] At this juncture, Aristophanes makes an interesting remark about fear of gods as a means to maintain order:[87] a future mutiny can be prevented only by the introduction of a threat,[88] the latter being doubled by the present awareness of the ancient punishment.[89]

It is my contention that piety is not so much associated with liturgical sacrifices and sacraments – which the Olympian gods depended on – but hypothetically addresses the problem of the (nihilist) assault against the divine. We remember that the initial revolt arose from proud thoughts based on the actual wholeness of the original humans. In effect, piety will be an imperative countermovement that is meant to prevent any seditious behavior.

Therefore, on the one hand, eros itself seems in Aristophanes’ speech a rather pious god. On the other hand, as the “bringer together of [lovers’] ancient nature,” as the favoring instance of our highest good, eros is potentially mutinous, because unity brings completeness and power, which are two disastrous incentives to disobey the gods. Otherwise put, by virtue of its great power eros deserves a proper worship, which humans do not perform at present. However, eros is simultaneously the only divine being who recommends obedience as the most proper attitude toward Olympus. Love becomes thus an protean figure with multiple faces and potentialities. And to propose a different perspective from Strauss and Saxonhouse’s, I dare hold that we can even detect a certain divorce between the political and divine matters in relation to the erotic.

Strauss pictured eros as fundamentally political and Saxonhouse as trans-political, but with the underlying explicit function of undermining politics as the realm of masculine power. Nevertheless, I think that, if Aristophanes starts from a mythological standpoint, in the sense that he ties the present human condition with an unattainable primeval origin, which is perpetually sought, then his obscure, multiform speech is mainly concerned with the relation to the divine.[90] And in support of my thesis I want to shortly reopen the topic of pederasty.

In Aristophanes pederasty is explicitly linked with political engagements, but regardless of the courage and manliness it is inspired by - and which are, by the way, quite far from the admonished piety – it is not deemed at all as threatening the order of gods. Of course, this is contrary to the Straussian tenet, which interpreted the original punishment in exclusively political terms, and inferred that eros is fundamentally anomic. However, this interpretation of Strauss might impel one to ask, why is it that Aristophanes never speaks of piety as the duty of (pederastic) politicians, and links the pious demeanor only with the erotic life of individuals, which sometimes might oppose certain agreed laws of society? Why didn’t he see any danger in the manly intrepidity of pederasts?

A possible answer is that they can share proud thoughts in relation to humans, rather than gods. From this perspective, in the hiatus between politics and divinity we enter the dim and unstable dimension of Aristophanes’ eros,[91] wherein piety can be subversive and satisfaction ever postponed, even if permanently envisioned and desired: eros wants more than politics and less than metaphysical mutiny, although it can lead to both.

Therefore, we can conclude that Aristophanic love is a powerful god, a partly divine, partly deceiving cure that deserves to be appropriately addressed, an inner drive that cannot be reduced to mere intercourse or handled in a “Hephaestian” fashion. In love, Aristophanes seems to suggest, we are confronted with an unsurpassable urge to regain a unity which is so heterogeneous that it seems almost perpetually unreal,[92] with a passionate search for an other who will never be ours - and therefore for no one. Perhaps Eros is powerful (and tragic) because he is the only god that can playfully reveal the supreme solitude of humans…

Bibliography:

1. Leo Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, Seth Benardete (ed.), The Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001

2. Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Symposium, Yale Univ. Press, 1968

3. Plato’s Symposium, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1993

4. Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986

5. Wendy Brown, “<<Supposing Truth Were a Woman…>>: Plato’s Subversion of Masculine Discourse”, in Political Theory, vol.16, issue 4 (Nov., 1988)

6. Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “The Philosopher and the Female in the Political Thought of Plato”, in Political Theory, vol.4, issue 2 (May, 1976)

7. Arlene W. Saxonhouse, “Eros and the Female in Greek Political Thought: An Interpretation of Plato’s Symposium”, in Political Theory, vol.12, issue 1 (Feb., 1984),

8. Mircea Eliade, Encyclopedia of Religions, (ed.), McMillan, New York, 1987, vol.1

9. A. Watts, The Two Hands of God, New York, 1963

10. Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion, tr. Rosemary Sheed, New American Library, 1974

11. Susan Moller Okin, “Philosopher Queens and Private Wives: Plato on Women and the Family”, in Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol.6, issue 4 (Summer, 1977)