Text | Northern Morning Remembers Immortals
The ancient Greek writer Agaton won the prize for his work and invited several friends to his home for a banquet. During the banquet, the host and guest agreed to use the talk to entertain the time, and the theme of the discussion was sung in praise of the god of eros, so everyone began to take turns speaking.
The first speaker was Pei Zhuo. He believes that human nature requires people to pursue a good life, and in this process, good qualities such as dedication and courage will be generated, and the love of God is the direct cause of the formation of good character, and love can derive more good qualities.
The second speaker was Pausenias. He believed that there was a distinction between the mortal and the heavenly: the mortal god of love was attached to the flesh and did not care about the way he pursued love, while the heavenly god of love focused on the lifelong existence of the soul and spirit. Therefore, the union of love should not be for the sake of profit, but for the purpose of improving morality.
The third speaker was doctor Eruk Simako. He uses Eros as a mysterious force that brings contradictions into harmony, and illustrates the importance of temperance by using weather changes and plague disasters as examples.
The fourth speaker was the comedy writer Aristophanes. He believes that once upon a time there were three genders: men, women, and intersex people, who had four hands and four feet, and all their organs were doubled.
Because of their rebellion against the gods, they are split in two, and the two halves that are separated instinctively want to be united, so love is the process by which this half seeks the other half, from dispersion to the whole. As for Eros, in his view, it is only a strong spiritual sustenance in the process of realizing this, and it is not worthy of praise.
The host, Agaton, spoke for the fifth time. Instead of praising the happiness that comes from Eros, he praises the inner virtues of Eros. He praised Eros as the most beautiful and kind of all the gods, the embodiment of justice, prudence, bravery and wisdom.
The sixth speaker was Socrates. First, Socrates refutes the view of his master, Agaton, making him realize that eros is not beautiful and good.
He then relayed to everyone the content of his conversation with a woman named Diotima, who made Socrates realize that Eros was only a spirit between beauty and ugliness, good and evil; that people instinctively pursue what they think is good because they are missing, because they feel happy to do so, so that the pursuit of love comes from the instinctive impulse to pursue happiness; in order to fulfill the desire to possess the good forever, the purpose of love is to reproduce in the beautiful things in order to achieve immortality And this fertility can be physical or spiritual.
Thus, in Socrates' view, people should go from pursuing the form of beauty to pursuing the knowledge of beauty, and finally rising to the pursuit of beauty itself. The help of loving God is irrelevant.
This story comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's book "Drinking", which is also considered to be the origin of "platonic love".
In the Drinking Passage, Plato borrows the mouth of his teacher Socrates to express his views on love, although the rest of the speeches also have some Plato's ideas.
In Plato's view, there are two kinds of love in the world, one is the lower love, the so-called carnal love, and the other is the higher love, the so-called soul love.
The love of the flesh is rooted in man's desires, is an instinctive choice of lust, and is the love of the external form of something beautiful. Carnal love occurs between men and women in order to have fun, to enjoy pleasure, and then to reproduce, to marry and have children.
The love of the soul, on the other hand, has transcended the body, the pursuit of beauty itself, the pursuit of wisdom, the pursuit of goodness, which usually occurs between men. Plato did not completely deny physical sexual desire, but proposed temperance, in which both parties in love were to transform this carnal desire into a common pursuit.
This view of love of Plato is related to the special historical background and social environment of ancient Greece. In the 15th century, however, Plato's view was conceived by Christian theologians as a kind of spiritual love, that is, love only the soul and not the body, pursue spiritual communication, and reject carnal desires, so as to achieve rational spiritual pure love.
In fact, however, apart from the special historical background and social environment of ancient Greece, Plato's conception of love focuses on the equality of both parties and the urgency of seeking the other half.
Plato believed that in the conceptual world, whether alive or dead, people always feel that they are missing something, so they need to find their other half. There is only one person in this world who is perfect to you and perfect only to you. That is to say, any one person has its perfect object, and there is only one. This is also the reason for the "love" between people. And this person is also known as "soul mate" as everyone understands it.
In real life, there are many people who spare no effort to find soul mates, and in some literary works, the stories of those soul mates are also lamentable. Among them, the most moving is Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights.
Unlike the general tone of British 19th-century literature, the novel is full of a strong spirit of struggle against oppression and happiness, with a strong love and violent hatred, and the resulting ruthless revenge, telling a story about love and betrayal.
From the perspective of the maid Nellie, the novel tells the story of a love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine.
Young Heathcliff was brought back to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw when he was about to be starved to death, and was later bullied and abused by Catherine's brother Hindley. During this time, the youngest daughter in Wuthering Heights, Catherine, developed a crush on Heathcliff, and a love affair developed between the two.
Because of Hindley's obstruction, Catherine soon married the young master Linton of the Thrush Farm. Heathcliff also ran away in frustration until he became rich and returned to Wuthering Heights.
Catherine was not happy after marriage, Linton was a very boring and boring person, and at this time, Catherine realized that she had done something wrong, and in her soul, there was always someone who could not be put down, and that person was Heathcliff.
In the novel, Catherine says this to Nellie:
"If the villain in my family hadn't made Heathcliff so lowly, I wouldn't have married Linton." Now, marrying Heathcliff is going to demean me, so he'll never know how much I love him. It wasn't because he was handsome, Nellie, but because he was more like me than I was. No matter what our souls are made of, his soul is exactly the same as mine, and Linton's soul and my soul, like moonlight and lightning, frost and fire, are very different. ”
This is probably the best description of a soul mate, whether it's Catherine or Heathcliff, whose souls are destined to be together, whether they live or die.
When Heathcliff appears in front of Catherine again, Catherine understands that everything is irretrievable, because her soul has guided her to be with him at all costs, and the real life of the family cannot make her give up everything without scruples.
So, late one night, Catherine died in childbirth, and for Heathcliff, where there was Catherine, even hell was heaven; where there was no Catherine, even heaven was hell. He begins to take revenge on everyone in the wasteland, and he wants to take revenge on this world and destroy this world without Catherine.
At the end of the novel, when the madly vengeful Heathcliff sees Catherine's daughter and Hindley's son come together, it is like seeing him and Catherine, so, eighteen years after Catherine's death, Heathcliff finally stops his revenge, and he also comes to the end of his life. Since then, locals have been able to see a pair of wandering spirits often hand in hand in the wilderness near Wuthering Heights.
Love, for them, is the pursuit of their own integrity by two souls, Heathcliff is Catherine, Catherine is Heathcliff, their souls are one, not because of the appearance of moral class wealth, because they are essentially one, this is the mate of the soul.
The 38th book that readers will recommend to you is this classic love masterpiece "Wuthering Heights", I hope this book can bring you some feelings, about love, about growth, about finding a soul mate in life, about how we love the world.
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