From The Archives 8: Mythology & Philosophy in the Symposium

I couldn't take a classical philosophy class and not mention the mythologies I know and love so well! I found the ideas in the Symposium to be particularly interesting, so if you're thinking about reading something from classical philosophy, I recommend it.

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October 2016

In this paper I am going to discuss the relationship between mythology and philosophy in the Symposium’s speeches about Love. I will explain why it makes sense for the Greeks to use their mythology to help explain and validate their philosophy and how their philosophy was birthed out of their background of mythology.

It is important to note that in Greek mythology it is generally agreed upon that there is Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty (and pleasure and procreation) and Eros, the god of love (and sexual desire and attraction). Both gods also have multiple origin and parentage stories, which brings further complications when trying to decipher what Love is. In the Symposium, the philosophers sometimes use the name of Aphrodite, but they primarily say Love and while the translation I read did not use the name of Eros, others do, so it can be accepted that every time they mention Love, they use it interchangeably with Eros. Different philosophers believe in different versions of Eros, which is what creates some of their most noticeable differences in their philosophy of love.

Phaedrus gives the first speech and claims Love to be one of the oldest Gods, created soon after Chaos and Earth, citing Hesiod’s claims as to the origin story. As one of the oldest gods, he concurs that Love is one of the most powerful. He then determines that if an army of lovers were created, it would be the most powerful type of army, because when in love, people will do anything for their beloved. The immense power one feels when in love, especially when there’s no “true” reason to feel so powerful gives credibility that the source and god of Love most be one of the original most powerful gods. He uses mythology as examples as well to explain the difference between real love and undedicated love. Phaedrus defines love as pure dedication to the beloved, and compares Orpheus to Achilles. Orpheus, when his wife died, tried to cheat her out of death, but failed. Achilles, however, went and died for his lover, and was then able to be with his lover in death.

Pausanias next speaks of Love and determines that Love cannot exist without Aphrodite, but as there is not only one type of Love, there is not only one version of Aphrodite. The first is Aphrodite Pandemus, the younger earthly common type of Love. This version, coming from Homer, was the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and so Pausanias connects her to love with either men or women and focused mainly on beauty and the passions and desires of the body. The other is Aphrodite Uranian, the older heavenly Love. This Aphrodite’s birth was when Uranus’s genitals where thrown into the sea and she came forth from the sea foam. As this origin was completely male, Pausanias determines that this heavenly Love is when men fall in love with each other because of the intelligence of the other. Uranian Love is a virtuous type born of intellect, whereas Pandemus Love is of a base lust. Having these two forms of Love in godly form allows for Love itself to not be inherently bad or good but of the potential to be either, depending on the actions the lover takes, and who they love.

Aristophanes takes a different route and rather than discussing Love the god, recounts the origin of the nature of man and love. As it goes, people had four legs, four eyes, and generally double of what we would expect. There were three genders- men, descended from the Sun, women from the Earth, and hermaphrodites (half men and half women) from the Moon. Unsurprisingly, Apollo is the god of the sun, and Gaia is the ancient goddess of mother Earth. It came to a point where these beings grew arrogant and thought they could overpower the gods. As punishment, Zeus decided to split them all in half. However, they started dyeing out, so he amended them to have their genitals in front and thus continued on their race. The trauma of having been split in half created a longing in each for their other half and bodies of each half together as close as possible both fulfilled that longing, and continued procreation. Love is the overseer of people bringing themselves together and promises that as long as people continue to worship the gods, one day all will be rejoined and healed together. Happiness is finding one’s other half and being able to consummate that love in order to become one being. 

This incredible tale not only explains why people can be attracted to either the same gender or a different gender, but also the very feeling of love and the longing one feels for their beloved. Also, it provides a reason to continue worshiping the gods, though part of that reason is the threat of being split again. Especially with company who don’t necessarily believe completely in the gods, like Socrates, having this origin story of something so fundamental to life like love gives validation to still believing and worshiping the gods. He also mentions how if Hephaestus were to come upon lovers who had once been one being and offered to meld them back together again, they would undoubtedly want that in order to be together forever again, and to be able to die at the same time in order to stay together on their journey after death.

Agathon follows with a philosophy based off of Eros’ other origin story, which is that he is the son of Aphrodite. He maintains that Love is a young and delicate god because love tends to very youthful. Love itself never hurts another because it cannot create violence, and can only bloom in tender souls who are softened by it. Aphrodite, of love, caught Ares, the god of war, showing that Love is the strongest quality.

Socrates quickly starts asking questions of Agathon as to his beliefs and shares a conversation he had with a woman named Diotima who had asked the same questions of him. They had determined that Love desires what it lacks and because all gods must good and beautiful and Love desires those qualities, it means that Love cannot retain those qualities and therefore not be a god. Diotima informs Socrates that Love is a Spirit because he is not good or bad, not immortal or mortal, and not beautiful nor ugly. For Love’s parentage, she tells him that he is the son of Resource (Plenty) and Need (Poverty) conceived at the party for Aphrodite’s birth and thus became Aphrodite’s servant. Because of his parentage he is both needy and resourceful, masterful in seduction and desires, most alive when successful in love, and most mortal when not, and also between wisdom and ignorance, but constantly seeking of wisdom. The strange combination of both Need and Resource creates the great confliction of Love being between different opposing qualities, which are characteristic of the experiences of love in many instances. 

While most of the previous speeches considered Love to be the beloved one who was being sought, Diotima determines him to be the lover, the one seeking all things to love including both wisdom and the beloved. Similar to the myth of the splitting of people, Love is longing, but importantly, it is longing for beauty and good in order to have happiness forever. To love is to create beauty in both the body and the soul. The longing for beauty and the experience of beauty in reality is the longing for immortality. Particularly for one between mortal and immortal, Love must long for immortality, but for humans as well, our lives are so short that we cannot but long for immortality in some way. This brings us back to the body/intellect debate from earlier, because for mortals, procreation is the way to attain a form of immortality, and that can be one of two ways. Bodily procreation is as expected, through intercourse between a man and woman. Spiritual procreation is through creation of the intellect. 

Something like love is difficult to explain, and even potentially impossible to explain, even for philosophers. These Greek philosophers grew up in a world where things were explained by myths of gods and goddesses, and so it is natural that their philosophies are based in the mythologies that they knew and had used before in order to understand life. Having multiple gods with multiple birth stories and also other myths surrounding love gave much room to explore what love meant to them. Significantly, they address the subject mainly towards Love, the god, rather than the general feeling and action of love. Because love is so varied, it allowed for the complexities of Love, which made a subject of a Greek mythological god a debatable philosophy topic of knowledge outside of the flexibility of myth, but also including it.