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Aristophanes Explaination Of Human Love In Aristophane's Symposium

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Aristophanes Explaination Of Human Love In Aristophane's Symposium
Aristophanes’ speech in Symposium tries to explain what love is and why humans love. Starting out, Aristophanes explains that humans were not as they are now. Humans were complete circles with 4 arms. 4 legs, 2 faces, and 2 sets of sex organs. Offspring of the sun were male, the earth female, and the moon androgynous. Humans wanted to ascend to heaven to kill the gods. The gods could not kill the humans because then there would be no one to praise them, so Zeus split them in half to reduce their strength. As a result, humans would do nothing but hold each other because they did not want to be apart. To be apart would result in them no longer feeling whole. The need to be complete was so strong that humans would die of starvation, because they

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