a panegyric to Love

I will start by describing Love1 as I see the god, and continue on to how I recognise him in the world around me. I have always learned that Love sprung into existence out of the churning mess of Chaos, at the start of the world. Some interpret him to being the son of Aphrodite, some see him as her helper.
To me, Love is a separate deity. Indeed, he is one of the most ancient deities and is even one who completely personifies his domain.2 We usually are able to conclude that only the oldest of gods are the total and unique personification of what they stand for. Therefore, Love is ancient.

His parentage is - according to Plato - quite surprising: Love is the son of Poros (the personification of Contrivance) and Penia (Poverty).

According to Hesiod - the version that I am used to and have so learned to accept - Eros sprung out of Chaos and so doesn’t have a father.

Others declare that Love was the son of Ares and Aphrodite.3

The fact that no one can seem to agree on his parentage only proves to me that it really is not of importance when trying to understand and praise Love.

Love is his own force, and should not be underestimated. He resides in every single creature and person in the world. That is what I believe. He doesn’t always show up, or it is possible that the purest nature of the person simply rejects him, but he is always there.

He can’t be put into a box, he can’t be portrayed as a figure in three dimensions. He is of another dimension, a different time and space. He is everywhere all at once.

His sister is Gaia, also parentless. He fills her to her brim, as she is the most loving god that we know of. His closest sister is Eris - goddess of discord and strife. They are not the complete opposites of each other but clash enough to make for interesting conversation.

So I do believe that Love is forceful and powerful. Once he has taken hold of someone, it is not simple to shrug him off. Sometimes he is unwelcome but arrives anyway. He has a will of his own and cannot be controlled, not even by Aphrodite.

Aphrodite takes credit for many of Love’s characteristics. But to understand whether it is indeed the case that Aphrodite and Love are so similar that they may be interchanged, we need to understand the difference between beauty and love.

Agathon claims that Love is only ever the love of beauty. Socrates goes on to then draw the conclusion that Love consequently lacks beauty.4

I will now draw the conclusion from this already-given logic that beauty is a thing that one can possess or that one can lack.

Some people simply do not have beauty, is what Socrates claims. Agathon sees someone being beautiful as also being good. I, however, do not think that when one is beautiful one is inherently good. Indeed, I do agree with the reversed saying: goodness is beautiful and so every good person possesses a beauty of their own.

So we can conclude that beauty is something that some people lack, and as a result it is a force that does not reside in all living things. Love does reside in all things, and so Love and Beauty are not the same.

So what of Love’s nature?

He is unpredictable. Most often, he remains dormant inside until he rears his head in a frenzy when the object of his desire has been spotted.

What does love desire?

Love desires himself. There is no other plausible explanation for his existence, besides the fact that his only goal is to recreate and spread himself into other people.

You may say this is the case with all ancient deities who personify their domain, but only Love is intertwined with the connotations of desire. Night is the night and she may well have only one purpose, that is being the night. But because her nature (the nature of the night) does not have anything to do with purpose or desire, she cannot - in our minds - desire to be the night. She simply is Night.

Love, however, carries all the purpose of the universe. To desire something or someone is a strong and powerful feeling that he inserts into people. And because he is the cause of and is the desire itself, he is filled with it more than anyone.

So, Love desires love.

And we know he once found a love of his own, that is: Psyche. Nobody at the symposium mentions Eros’ lover.

It is of course the case that over the course of his immortal existence, Eros has taken many lovers.5 However, Psyche was different. With Psyche, Eros was pricked by his own arrow - an arrow reserved for humans or other creatures. Most importantly, not an arrow that he was meant to ever touch.

Because when Love falls in love, we can only expect it to be the greatest love ever known to this Earth.

I would like to delve deeper into Psyche. The universe6 must have chosen her consciously. It’s not every day that the god of love falls in love, so when it does happen it is of uttermost importance.

I do also believe that it is of importance to this panegyric, because with it I would like to make my final point.

Psyche (ψυχη), means ‘soul’, ‘life’, ‘spirit’ or ‘mind’. It is not merely a coincidence that Love fell in love with Soul, for those two are intertwined.

So my conclusion is that, Love resides in every body’s soul. He desires himself, not beauty - which is merely a product of his powers, or of Aphrodite’s. He once did reach the possession of himself (the possession of love). As he cannot desire something he does not lack, he is now in the state of desiring the continuation of that love (following Socrates’ logic). That is why he remains in people’s souls, desiring to continue possessing his love for Psyche.

This is possibly not completely a panegyric, but simply my take on everything discussed at the symposium. I did not plan anything on this page, wanting it to be purely improvised to create the idea of me actually making my own speech.

1 for Love with capitalised L, please feel free to read Eros

2 read my piece on this here

3 all’s fair in love and war

4 his logic being, that Love only ever desires and loves what he is not in possession of yet. or, indeed, if he is in possession of it he then simply desires the continuation of that possession. as a result, saying that love is only ever love of beauty and never of ugliness, you are concluding that Love lacks beauty.

5 he has the unique power of making anyone fall in love with him!, so naturally he did

6 as this is the only thing that can control the lives of gods (the fates may try and succeed but only in the smallest details)