Aristodemus stumbled across Socrates who was on his way to Agathon’s symposium. Socrates urges Aristodemus to join him and others for food and drinks at Agathon’s. The men then compete amongst each other with speeches on the topic of love to praise love whom is Eros, god of love. The two most interesting speeches were from Aristophanes and Agathon. First, Aristophanes spoke of the contrast between common desire and a divine form of love. To support his statement, he presents an origin story to the guests. He told a story of Zeus who cuts oddly-shaped humans in half who had dishonored the Greek Gods. The humans were androgynous which is a person who is both male and female. As a half, they were expected to find their other half to be whole. I find the myth to be endearing and smart because Zeus punished someone so they had to find the love of their life to feel complete again. Therefore, love in Aristophanes’ words is a quest to find your perfect half. Next, Agathon’s speech was of youth and beauty. He depicts Eros as the most beautifulest of the gods. However, Socrates questions Agathon's speech, proposing that Agathon was only focusing on the object of love, rather than love itself. Agathon chose to focus on the good qualities of love while completely ignoring the bad qualities. To compare, both speeches made Love to appear as the most valuable gift in life with Aristophanes depicting you cannot live in peace without your love and Agathon concluding that to stay young and beautiful, you need love. Both speeches also had a bit of silliness with Aristophanes’ odd story and Agathon’s hyperbolic praise of Love. However, I particularly enjoyed Agathon’s speech more because according to him, Love should never be harsh or cruel.
There is a fine difference between love and romantic love. Regular love can be meant for anyone as it is as innocent as living a close friend or a family pet. However, romantic love is beyond a whole different level. Aristophanes’ speech very well informs us that when we find our other half, we will suddenly become overwhelmed with devotion, concern, and endearment for that person, and that is exactly how romantic love should be defined as. To add, I could not help but think of the the triangular theory of love from psychologist Robert Sternberg after analyzing the speeches from Plato’s Symposium to support how I define romantic love. There are three components of love: an intimacy component, a passion component, and a commitment component. Romantic love in regards to an intimacy component can just be a sexual desire. You base this kind of love from physical attraction and lust for one another. This stage you only feel love for the person when having physical contact which is similar to Agathon’s speech when he only spoke of the beauty in love than anything else. The next corner of the triangle is the passion component. Finally feeling passionate in the relationship, in my opinion, is when love starts to actually become real. Passionate love really entails genuine feelings and emotions; couples become more open at this stage. This kind of love you feel a sensual electricity between each other and an overall connection that does not just involve physical sex. This sense of feeling is probably how the people cut in half in the comedian poet’s story felt when they finally connected. Third, the most important part of romantic love is the commitment component. In Aristophanes’ speech, he concluded that when they found their other half, they would embrace and stay together, not wanting anything else. This is exactly what commitment is. Commitment is making the relationship work nobody what. This stage you create promises and work on the future together, side by side. This component shows true to your truths and goals, no matter how much dust is kicked up on the road ahead. To follow, romantic love should be natural and cannot be created by culture at all. Referring back to Aristophanes’ myth, those who have been slashed in half were forced to find their other half to feel whole again. In a sense, because of the situation, they were somewhat forced to have to find a person so in a way, finding their love in this story did not seem natural at all. Say the person was never cut, would they still have needed a lover? You should know exactly when you are in love. However, there is a huge difference with being in love and actually loving the person. People today often loosely claim that they are in love. Loving someone sometimes does not go beyond the physical presence while on the other hand, being in love with the person goes beyond. Being in love means you can picture them in your future and you will never have to second guess what the next step in the relationship will be. Unfortunately, love these days in the twenty first century revolves around technology. Social media, without a doubt, has transformed romantic love. Agathon’s speech focused only on the positive sides of love which is similar with many couples plastering their happy love life all over the internet to prove their love, disregarding the bad side of their relationship. They forget to actually have the real life relationship. Romance now is swiping over courting. In some ways, technology has made meeting new people more easy through one click but also, with so many people on social media accounts, finding new people while in a current relationship is more tempting. I do believe that because of technology, people are more likely prone to cheat and destroy their own relationships due to the exposure of easy internet communication and access to other people online. Additionally, Aristophanes’ incredible myth was a very spontaneous journey for those in search of their other half so romantic love should be a whirlwind, spontaneous adventure as well. What fun is there in love if it were all to be planned? If love is planned then it is not real love as love should be an unplanned adventure. When it happens it happens because love should not be controlled. It won't wait until the 'right' moment to happen and sometimes people fall in love with the least expected ones.
Reading Plato’s Symposium, I felt connected to the context, and it genuinely got me thinking about my complicated experience with romantic love. As previously stated, being in love and loving someone are two different things. I currently am in a relationship and while I do love the person I will admit that I am not in love with him. We met a little over a year ago at Texas A&M, but I have not pictured a future with him yet. What I look for most in a husband is someone who has patience and humor. He undoubtedly has both but, it really is too soon to tell. With all his good qualities, he also is not perfect. I adored Agathon’s speech but in reality, we should not focus only on the good days. Love is when you can go through any day, the bad and the good days. However, there is nothing wrong with not having fallen in love yet. Romantic love should be picky and it takes a lot of time, because you do no want to fall in love with just anyone. In Aristophanes’ speech, it captures the experience of being in love which I have yet to experience but in some parts of his story I can relate. His speech captures the sense of incompleteness and desire that we feel when we are separated from our loved ones which is similar to my experience because I had somewhat a long distance relationship because I was a year younger and he was in his first year of college. I felt incomplete inside so whenever we met up, I suddenly feel whole again, just like the characters in Aristophanes’ myth. I really enjoyed Agathon’s speech because he compares love as youthful, beautiful, and wise which is exactly what love should be like. You want to be in love with the person who makes you feel young again. You want to be with someone who defines you as the most beautiful person they have ever laid eyes on and you want someone who is wise enough to show understanding and intelligence when speaking to you.
To sum up, the analysis of the speeches and what I defined romantic love as is followed up with my own experience of being in love. Romantic love is when you find someone you see as the source of all human virtues, according to Agathon, when you find your soulmate as Aristophanes’ story did, and most importantly, when loving someone turns into falling in love.