EROS
The walk

IX · Plato, Symposium

Lack

Do we desire because something is missing?

The Symposium is a drinking party after Agathon’s victory, remembered later as a contest of speeches about Eros. A drama of speakers. Each voice keeps its own office.

An empty bronze mixing bowl on a pale limestone plinth, most of the frame unused warm stone.
VISUALIZATIONAn empty vessel. The air around it is part of the object.

  1. Phaedrus

    Oldest of the gods, source of virtue in lovers.

  2. Pausanias

    Two Aphrodites, two Eroses: common and heavenly.

  3. Eryximachus

    A medical and cosmic principle of harmony.

  4. Aristophanes

    Comic myth of split humans seeking their other half.

  5. Agathon

    Youngest, most beautiful, poet’s praise.

  6. Socrates / Diotima

    Eros as daimon, lack, generation, ascent.

  7. Alcibiades

    A drunken interruption. Desire for a person who will not be possessed.

Poros

Resource

Diotima says Eros was conceived at a feast of the gods, son of Poros (Resource, Expedient) and Penia (Poverty). He is neither simply god nor mortal. He is a daimon, an intermediary.

Penia

Poverty

Because he lacks, he desires. Because he has a share of resource, he schemes, hunts, and makes. Desire is absence that knows how to reach.

Diotima’s argument is that Eros is of the beautiful and the good, and that mortal nature tries to continue itself in what it loves. Getting what one thought one wanted sometimes reveals the next lack.

Aristophanes’ tale of original double beings, split and searching, is Aristophanes’ speech inside the dialogue.

Desire is absence that knows how to reach.

Notes · 1
  1. Plato, Symposium. Greek via standard editions. Dramatic date often placed around 416 BCE. Source

Eve

Lack

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