Reincarnation in the Speech of Aristophanes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v19i2p60-75Keywords:
Symposium, reincarnationAbstract
This article examines Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, focusing on its myth of humanity’s division and the search for wholeness. Traditional interpretations view the myth either as a folktale (Dover) or as a tragic denial of true fulfillment (Hyland). However, these readings leave unresolved the puzzle of why present-day humans, not literally split by Zeus, nonetheless search for lost halves. The paper proposes that the speech presupposes reincarnation: we are not mere descendants of the primordial spherical beings but reincarnations of them, carrying forward both their division and their longing for completion. Two textual features support this reading. First, Aristophanes’ cosmology—describing proto-humans as spherical, like heavenly bodies—evokes Pythagorean doctrines of a spherical, rotating earth, often linked in Plato’s myths to reincarnation and the cycle of rebirth. Second, the comparison of proto-human reproduction to cicadas suggests symbolic resonance with metamorphosis and rebirth, as cicadas were culturally associated with immortality and reincarnation. By situating Aristophanes’ speech within the broader context of Platonic cosmological myths, the article argues that reincarnation resolves the apparent contradiction of the myth and provides an implicit eschatology: through love, one may rediscover one’s other half and potentially escape the cycle of rebirth.
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