Ball people

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The globe people are mythical beings of antiquity . They only appear in a myth that Plato has told by the famous comedy poet Aristophanes in his fictional, literary Dialog Symposium . The myth invented by Plato is supposed to explain the power of the god of love Eros by revealing the reason for the emergence of erotic desire.

Content of the myth

In the symposium , the course of a banquet is described, at which six participants give speeches about eros and eroticism . Each of the speeches illuminates the topic from a special point of view. The fourth speaker is Aristophanes. He honors Eros as the most philanthropic among the gods, but whose power is not perceived by men; otherwise they would erect the greatest shrines and altars for him and offer the greatest sacrifices. Aristophanes wants to counteract the lack of appreciation for the god of love with his story of the spherical man myth. He expresses the hope that the audience will spread his teaching.

According to the myth, human nature was originally very different from what listeners were familiar with. The people had spherical torsos and four hands and feet and two faces, each with two ears on a head supported by a circular neck. The faces looked in opposite directions. With their eight limbs, the spherical people could move quickly, not only upright, but also like a gymnast turning a wheel. There were not just two genders, but three: some spherical people were purely male, others purely female, and still others - the andrógynoi - had a male and a female half. The purely male originally descended from the sun, the purely female from the earth, the androgynous (bisexual) from the moon.

The spherical men had tremendous strength and great daring. In their arrogance they wanted to find a way to heaven and attack the gods. The sky ruler Zeus consulted with the other gods how to proceed. The gods did not want to destroy the human race because they valued the honor and sacrifice of the people. Hence, Zeus decided to weaken the spherical people by cutting each of them in half. These halves are today's two-legged people. From the point of view of Zeus, an additional advantage of this measure was that the number of people and thus also the sacrifices for the gods doubled. In the event that those punished continued to do iniquity and did not keep quiet, he planned to divide them again; then they would have to hop on one leg in future. The god Apollo was commissioned to turn the faces towards the cut surface - today's belly side - and to close the wounds by pulling the skin over the bellies and tying it at the navel. He left wrinkles on the navel as a reminder of the division. The genitals remained on the other side, which was previously turned outwards, the current back side.

The now two-legged people suffered severely from being separated from their other halves. They embraced one another in the hope that they would grow together and thus regain their unity. Since they did nothing else, they began to starve. To prevent their extinction, Zeus moved the genital organs forward. In this way, he enabled them to temporarily satisfy their need for unity through sexual encounter and thus temporarily satisfy their longing. At the same time they gained the ability to reproduce in the way practiced today. So they were fit for life again. But they continue to suffer from their incompleteness; everyone seeks the lost other half. The longing for the lost wholeness manifests itself in the form of erotic desire aimed at union.

The nature of the striving for unification of the two-legged friends depends on which of the three sexes they once belonged to: the purely male spherical people, the purely female or those with a male and a female half. Depending on this original condition of a spherical person, its separate halves now show a heterosexual or homosexual disposition. With this, Plato's Aristophanes explains the differences in sexual orientation. Only the people who emerged from the bisexual spherical people, the androgynoi , are heterosexual.

Interpretation in the symposium

After Plato has told Aristophanes about the myth, the remainder of his speech deals with the interpretation and the consequences that arise from his point of view. He expresses his appreciation for the homoerotics who have emerged from purely male spherical men; They are by nature the manliest men and, as lovers of what is similar to them, devoted to their own sex. One of their characteristics is a willingness to devote themselves to state affairs. They are wrongly accused of shamelessness; in reality her love is manliness. On the other hand, Aristophanes remarks disparagingly about the androgynoi facing the opposite sex that most of the adulterers are to be found among them. He assumes that they have a tendency to sexually addictive behavior and a related lack of loyalty.

Aristophanes pays special attention to erotic relationships, which are characterized by extraordinary intensity. He attributes the extreme strength of such bonds to the fact that in these cases the two halves of a spherical person would have found each other and now sought a return to the original state by merging with the dearly loved other half. Such encounters are currently still rare. But if people make friends with the gods through piety, there is hope of regaining the original holistic nature of the spherical people. With Eros' help this goal can be achieved. If everyone could find the other half that belonged to them, humanity would be healed and blissful.

According to the portrayal of Aristophanes, the two lovers, who once emerged from the same spherical person and found each other, remain connected their entire lives, although they “don't even know what to say about each other”. Sexual enjoyment offers no explanation for the passion with which they are attached to one another. Rather, both souls strive for something that they cannot name but only suspect; it's a mystery. If Hephaestus , the god of fire and forge, came up to them with his tools and asked them what they actually wanted from each other and suggested that they melt them together so that they would not have to part in the underworld in death and after death , they would like to accept his suggestion and recognize their real goal in it.

Modern reception

Classical Studies

Modern research emphasizes that the globe-man myth points to a core component of the Platonic theory of love : the explanation of eros as a deficiency phenomenon. Aristophanes interprets the erotic desire as a desire to remedy a deficiency and to achieve wholeness or perfection. The path he praised, the ultimate goal of which is the definitive reunification of the two halves of the spherical man, does not correspond to Plato's ideal of love. While Aristophanes knows no higher goal than the enjoyment of unity with the beloved individual, Plato calls for love to be oriented towards the super-individual. His alternative to Aristophanes' concept is an eros-driven but philosophical quest for knowledge. The path of knowledge leads away from the ephemeral sense objects, the striving of the lover should be directed towards the unchangeable beauty in itself - the source of all beauty. This path is described by Plato in the last of the six speeches at the Symposium of Socrates .

Unplatonic in Plato's Aristophanes' speech is also his unfavorable portrayal of the gods who, according to his myth, are eager to receive worship and sacrifice from people and only for this reason allow humanity to survive. From Plato's point of view, this is blasphemy. But the greed of the gods is a theme of the historical comedy poet Aristophanes.

The androgynous spherical people receive special attention in the research literature. It should be noted that Plato invented these beings himself, but used old mythical motifs. Some aspects of the globular myth can be identified with references to folklore . According to the teaching of the pre-Socratic Empedocles , beings "with double faces and double breasts" arise in the world cycle. Plato knew and used the representation of Empedocles well. The idea of ​​an original androgyny, a later separate initial unity of the sexes, also occurs in non-European myths.

The spherical shape of the mythical prehistoric man results from their descent from the spherical celestial bodies sun, moon and earth, to which they are similar, as well as from the fact that the sphere was considered a perfect body of the highest beauty, as Plato emphasizes in another context.

philosophy

In her book Intuitions pré-chrétiennes , published in 1951, the philosopher Simone Weil deals with the myth of the spherical people. She thinks that the misfortune of humanity lies “in the state of duality”, the separation of subject and object, and interprets the division of spherical people as “a visible image for this duality state, which is our essential defect”. Unity is to be striven for as “the state in which subject and object are one and the same, the state of the one who knows himself and loves himself”. This goal can be achieved through “adjustment to God”.

psychology

Sigmund Freud , in his treatise Beyond the Pleasure Principle , published in 1920, cites the globular myth as evidence that his theory of the conservative nature of instincts had a forerunner in antiquity. The representation of Aristophanes is indeed a "hypothesis" of a "fantastic kind", but agrees in the basic idea with the assumption of the regressive character of the instincts: "Namely, it derives an instinct from the need to restore an earlier state."

musical

In the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch , which premiered in New York in 1998 and was filmed in 2001 , the song The Origin of Love offers an alienated version of Aristophanes' interpretation of Eros in the symposium .

Text editions and translations

  • Gunther Eigler (Ed.): Plato: Phaidon. The feast. Kratylos (= Plato: Works in Eight Volumes , Vol. 3). 5th, unchanged edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-19095-5 , pp. 266–283 (critical edition; edited by Dietrich Kurz, Greek text by Léon Robin and Louis Méridier, German translation by Friedrich Schleiermacher )
  • Rudolf Rufener (translator): Plato: Symposion . Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf and Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-7608-1730-0 , pp. 54–65 (with uncritical edition of the Greek text)
  • Barbara Zehnpfennig (Ed.): Plato: Symposion . Meiner, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-7873-1445-8 , pp. 44–57 (Greek text based on the edition by John Burnet without the critical apparatus, German translation by Barbara Zehnpfennig)

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Plato, Symposium 189c-d.
  2. ↑ On the spherical shape, which has been disputed by some researchers who assume a cylindrical shape, see Bernd Manuwald: Die Rede des Aristophanes (189a1–193e2) . In: Christoph Horn (Ed.): Platon: Symposion , Berlin 2012, pp. 89–104, here: p. 92 note 11.
  3. ↑ Plato, Symposium 189d-190b. See Bernd Manuwald: The Speech of Aristophanes (189a1–193e2) . In: Christoph Horn (Ed.): Platon: Symposion , Berlin 2012, pp. 89-104, here: 93f.
  4. ↑ Plato, Symposium 190b-191a.
  5. ^ Plato, Symposium 191a – d.
  6. ↑ Plato, Symposium 191d-192b. Cf. Mário Jorge de Carvalho: The Aristophanesrede in Plato's Symposium , Würzburg 2009, pp. 295–297.
  7. ↑ See on this Paul W. Ludwig: Eros and Polis. Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory , Cambridge 2002, pp. 27-35, 48-57.
  8. ↑ Plato, Symposium 191d-192b. See Mário Jorge de Carvalho: The Aristophanesrede in Plato's Symposium , Würzburg 2009, pp. 296-302.
  9. ↑ Plato, Symposium 192b-193d.
  10. ↑ Plato, Symposium 192b-e.
  11. ↑ Mário Jorge de Carvalho: The Aristophanesrede in Platon's Symposium , Würzburg 2009, provides a detailed investigation .
  12. ↑ On the contrast between Aristophanes' and Plato's concept, see Richard Hunter : Plato's Symposium , Oxford 2004, pp. 69–71; Paul W. Ludwig: Eros and Polis. Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory , Cambridge 2002, pp. 37-39; Bernd Manuwald: The speech of Aristophanes (189a1–193e2) . In: Christoph Horn (ed.): Platon: Symposion , Berlin 2012, pp. 89–104, here: 102f.
  13. ^ Paul W. Ludwig: Eros and Polis. Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory , Cambridge 2002, pp. 76-79.
  14. ^ Marie Delcourt , Karl Hoheisel : Hermaphrodit . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 14, Stuttgart 1988, Sp. 649–682, here: 653f., 662.
  15. ↑ Kenneth James Dover: Aristophanes' Speech in Plato's Symposium . In: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 86, 1966, pp. 41–50, here: 42–47.
  16. ↑ Empedocles, fragment DK 31 B 61.
  17. ↑ Denis O'Brien: L'Empédocle de Platon . In: Revue des Études grecques 110, 1997, pp. 381–398, here: 385–390 and Denis O'Brien: The Aristophanes speech in the symposium: the Empedocleic background and its philosophical meaning . In: Markus Janka , Christian Schäfer (Hrsg.): Platon als Mythologe , 2nd, revised edition, Darmstadt 2014, pp. 265–282 (cf. however Bernd Manuwald: Die Rede des Aristophanes (189a1–193e2) . In: Christoph Horn (Ed.): Platon: Symposion , Berlin 2012, pp. 89–104, here: p. 100, note 33); Paul W. Ludwig: Eros and Polis. Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory , Cambridge 2002, pp. 72f .; Mário Jorge de Carvalho: The Aristophanesrede in Plato's Symposium , Würzburg 2009, pp. 523–531 (and extensive bibliographical information on the subject, pp. 72–74, note 41).
  18. ^ Hermann Baumann : The double sex , Berlin 1986 (reprint of the Berlin 1955 edition), pp. 134, 176–182, 360–363; Marie Delcourt, Karl Hoheisel: Hermaphrodit . In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum , Volume 14, Stuttgart 1988, Sp. 649–682, here: 650–652; Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade : Androgynous . In: Lindsay Jones (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Religion , 2nd Edition, Vol. 1, Detroit 2005, pp. 337–342, here: 338.
  19. ↑ Mário Jorge de Carvalho: The Aristophanesrede in Plato's Symposium , Würzburg 2009, p. 61 and note 31.
  20. ↑ Simone Weil: Vorchristliche Schau , Munich 1959, p. 43 (translation of the Intuitions pré-chrétiennes ).
  21. ↑ Sigmund Freud: Beyond the pleasure principle . In: Sigmund Freud: Psychology of the Unconscious (= study edition Volume 3), Frankfurt am Main 1975, pp. 213-272, here: 266. Cf. Gerasimos Santas : Plato and Freud. Two Theories of Love , Oxford 1988, pp. 160-162.
  22. ^ Richard Hunter: Plato's Symposium , Oxford 2004, p. 67.