Symposium Aristophanes Speech Analysis

In the Symposium, there are many people who make speeches about their belief in the definition of love is. There are many philosophers at the party, such as: Phaedrus, Pausanias, Aristophanes, Agathon, and of course, Socrates. All of whom are very wise and make very good points about love. Aristophanes speaks about how he believes that long ago humans used to be one being, and that we were separated from our other half. Now we all are searching for the other half, to make us whole again. Although, Aristophanes speech made a lot of sense and made me think, Socrates speech is the one that truly spoke to me. He talked about how love desires beauty, and the love is good. There is more meaning to love than just beauty.
In the Symposium, Aristophanes makes an interesting speech about his view on love. He focuses on the mythical aspect of how love is among humans. He starts by explaining that many, many years
He follows up Agathon’s speech by praising him, as well as the other speakers. But he states that none of them actually praised love. He then begins to speak, in his own way, about what the definition of love. He states that love desires what it does not have. What he means by that is that an ugly person would not desire another ugly person, but they would desire a beautiful person (201a). Socrates believes that “love is the love of something” and that he loves what he needs. He goes on to remind Agathon of his claim of that there is only love of beautiful things, not ugly things. Therefore, love desires beautiful things, and since he only loves what he does not have, love needs beauty and does not have it (201c). Agathon then surrenders, saying he cannot argue against Socrates. Socrates goes on to say that one can desire beauty, and be beautiful themselves. His wisdom of love is very inspiring and truthful. Socrates speech, in my opinion was the best speech out of all of them, and was the