Aristophanes Symposium

Love is a good topic to talk about. Today, if people were to sit down and talk about it, it would most likely consist of talking about how to treat the other person you love, whether it is romantically or loving your friends and family. However, in the case of the Symposium, the men in this conversation took the topic more in depth than I could have imagined. I believe that Aristophanes had a very interesting opinion on love. I feel like although his argument is quite odd, it does bring up a good point that does connect to an expression that people use today. Aristophanes states that there is a third gender aside from male and female saying, “there was also a...combination of these two… ‘androgynous’ was a distinct gender as well as name”
Aristophanes points out that when the people were cut into two, “they threw their arms round each other...so they died from hunger and from general inactivity...Zeus took pity on them and...moved their genitals round to the front” (Plato, Symposium, 191b-191c). Aristophanes also points out that the main reason for Zeus’ decision was so that the human race could be reproduced, but brought up that if two males were to find each other, that they would “have the satisfaction of sexual intercourse” (Plato, Symposium, 191c). These words from Aristophanes shows his view on love, and that it is through the sexual intercourse two people would have with each other. I would say that that thought coming from a man, it is not surprising that he would say that. Most of the time, love is conceived in two different ways, depending on the person’s gender: if they are a man, they would most likely correlate love with sex, while if they were a woman, they would most likely see love as something like getting each other gifts, or other ways to show someone affection besides sexual