led love. It was because of the wickedness of mankind that God had dispersed us.Aristophanes eventually adopted a sober tone in his speech and asks to be taken seriously.He applied his anecdote to include men and women everywhere, and proposed that ifmankinds love were perfectly accomplished, and each being found his original true love,that our race would be happy. If this were to be the most favorable, the next best thingwould be the nearest approach to such a union; the attainment of a congenial love.Aristophanes speech finds itself in contrast with that of Socrates. While Aristophanesused a vivid and elaborate story to illustrate his point, Socrates dismisses rhetoric andclaimed to be indifferent to the formal expression of the truth as its discovery is moreimportant. Socrates questions Agathons definition of Love, asking whether or not Love isa desire for something we lack. He adds that a person could not desire the things healready possesses, but could only desire to preserve them. He defines Love as existingonly in relation to an object, an object it lacks, and that since Loves object is beauty,Love thus cannot be beautiful. After much deduction, he comes to the conclusion thatLove is the consciousness of a need for a good not yet acquired or possessed. This hasalready been exposed by Aristophanes speech, but it is more rationally explained here.Love, as Socrates demonstrated it through his dialogue with Diotima, is one of the linksbetween the sensible and the eternal world. Meaning that Love finds itself between manand the Gods. Love is the search for spiritual procreation. Aristophanes had describedLove as the manner in which mankind coped with the separation from the Gods. ToDiotima physical procreation was the lowest form Eros could take, she definesd threetypes of lovers: the purely sensual (physical), the lovers of honor and the lovers ofwisdom. Socrates was himself the ideal lover of wisdom, never allowing himself todivert ...
