Let Plato Help You on Finding Your Soulmate
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” ― Plato, The Symposium
”In the beginning, people were androgynous, " says Aristophanes, in Plato's fantastical account of the origins of love in “The Symposium.” According to Aristophanes, the first humans not only had two sexual organs, but were equipped with two faces, four hands and four legs. These ”monsters" were so fast that they moved in somersaults, and were so powerful that even the gods were worried about the sovereignty of humans.
Zeus, the King of the Greek Gods, who wanted to alleviate the powers of these people, decided to cut them off in two and ordered his son Apollo, “His face (...) turn it towards the wound, so that each person will see that he is divided into two and will get into a better order." But not only that, Zeus also has promised to divide them again if they continue to make threats, “(...) and they will have to live by jumping on one leg!”
”The people who were slaughtered were a miserable lot," says Aristophanes. “(Each of them) missed their other half, so they were putting their arms around each other, wanting to grow up together.”
Such is Aristophanes' contribution to the “Feast”, where all Plato's characters have conversations about love, with a lot of drinking stuffed in between the dialogues. It is not a mistake that Plato gives the strangest speeches to Aristophanes. He himself is the author of sensational books such as “Lysistrata”, in which Greek women “went on strike” because of the war and refused to have sexual intercourse with their husbands until they stopped fighting. He was the most famous (and, to me, the funniest) comedy playwright of Athens in his time.
What does Aristophanes' speech have to do with love?
Aristophanes states in his speech that, "Love is born into every human being; it brings our two halves together; it creates one from two and heal the wound of human nature. Therefore, each of us is the “matching half” of a human whole (...) and each of us is always looking for our other half.” This "diagnosis" is kind of a recipe for love that has been instilled in everyone through the Romantic Comedies that inspired Hollywood producers, I know it sounds familiar to everyone, no matter who they are. "Love is the discovery of one's soulmate,” says the Jerry Maguire, character brought to life by Tom Cruise in the movie “A New Beginning”, is to find your other half, that is, the person who completes you.
Aristophanes, on the one hand, refers to a very real phenomenon. We can see love, as he describes it, as the cure for the “wound of human nature”. However, for philosophers, the “wound of human nature” means much more than this definition.
Why do we look for love?
As we all know by now, the Greek philosophers agreed that humans are innately injured, at least he concluded that we are prone to deadly habits that are ingrained in our nature. This inference is correct, people have insisted for centuries on seeking satisfaction in things that cannot provide permanent satisfaction. Aristotle, on the other hand, stated that these false temptations also include goals such as property, property, power and fame. “A life dedicated to any of these goals becomes quite miserable and empty.”
Christian philosophers under the leadership of Augustine also accepted this diagnosis and added a theological interpretation to it. The pursuit of material beings is evidence of the ultimate “Fall” and is a symptom of our sinful nature. Therefore, in this world, in the words of Medieval man, “we are pilgrims on the way to a supernatural destination”. Augustine has stated that people try to satisfy their desires with earthly things, but they are doomed to it because they carry a part of eternity inside them. Accordingly, nothing that has an end can satisfy humanity. ”We are created in the image of God, and our eternal desires can only be satisfied by the eternal nature of God," he says.
17. the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who lived in the century, offered an explanation that is relatively more compatible with secular sensibilities on the subject. He himself claimed that the source of sins and bad habits is the inability of a person to sit still and be alone with himself and think about the unknown. ”We resort to distressing pursuits such as war, drunkenness or gambling in order to keep our minds busy and prevent distressing thoughts seeping into us," he says. According to Pascal, the wound of our nature is an existential situation, thanks to the absolute uncertainty of our situation, which no science can answer or solve, we are constantly teetering on the verge of anxiety or despair.
Is love a solution to life's problems?
Plato expressed through Aristophanes: How many people see love as an answer to the problems in their lives? How many people are hoping or expecting that love will heal the “wound” in our nature and add meaning to our lives? Although our culture and the norm that is being tried to be imposed on humanity through the media order this in practice, I am pretty sure that only few rational people think like that.
According to Hollywood, your soulmate can appear in a surprising and unexpected way! It may seem like your opposite, but you are still inexplicably attracted to each other. Or alternatively, your lover may seem rude or cold at first, but you secretly find him attractive (you are forced to find him). These films typically end when the protagonists find their soulmates and they give no insight into having children and post-marital happiness, which is the true test of love.
Aristophanes, on the other hand, has placed quite excessive demands and expectations on love: “When a person finds his own half,” he exclaims, “something wonderful happens: they are both struck by love, a feeling of belonging to each other and desire, and they do not want to leave each other even for a moment. These are people who have completed their lives together and yet cannot fully express what they want from each other.”
This statement sounds quite miraculous, and Plato, naturally, did not believe in it, so he placed this statement in Aristophanes' satirical story. In short, all these statements are all quite legendary.
Is there true love?
The concept of a ”soulmate" implies that there is only one person in the universe who is your partner, who completes you and whom you will get to know with a flash of lightning. What if when you are looking for true love, you are waiting in vain for a lightning to strike? What if the perfect partner you've been waiting for doesn't exist?
Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari, in his book “Modern Romance”, described him attending a wedding that may probably have been staged by Aristophanes: “The vows were very strong. They were saying the most extraordinary things that could be said about each other. ”You are a prism that takes the light of life and turns it into a rainbow," things like that." Ansari says that the vows were so enthusiastic and so sublime that “four different couples broke up because they supposedly felt that they did not have the love expressed in these vows.”
So does love that can resist time and circumstances become ordinary?
Love, as anyone who has fallen in love at least once can testify, is not the solution to life's problems. Romance is often the beginning of a headache and heartache. It is not fair to put such a burden on another person in the name of healing an existential wound, or to hope for help from them. This is a responsibility too great for any mortal to overcome. That is why I accept this opposite criticism that Plato offers through Aristophanes, true love is already much more ordinary and worldly. But I should also point out that true love is earthly in its origins, if not in its result. It can not be discovered at first sight. On the contrary, it is the product of great work, constant attention and sacrifice.
We have said that love is not the solution to problems, but it is true that it makes the whole process more enjoyable and makes them more bearable. If there are soulmates, they are shaped by a lifelong union, a lifetime spent with common tasks, enduring pain and, of course, discovering joy together.
i enjoyed reading this and learned a new thing today 🫶🏾 Thanks !! 💕