"A pantheistic force animating the world; a schizophrenic deity both plebeian and patrician; a guide who leads us only to ourselves: Eros, clearly, is no simple god. He is, Socrates contends, no god at all. Drawing together the strands of these various reflections, Socrates maintains that Eros is, rather, a 'great spirit' who is 'midway between what is divine and what is human,' his ambiguous nature owing to the strange circumstances of his conception.
Sired at the birthday party of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, Eros is the child of Poverty, who came to the festivities uninvited as a beggar, and the god Plenty, a welcome guest who passed out there drunk. He produces a son who is neither 'mortal nor immortal.' Now fully grown, Eros takes after his mother. Constantly in need, he is 'hard, unkempt, barefoot, homeless.' But, like his father, he is 'brave, enterprising, and determined.' Having inherited 'an eye for beauty and the good,' Eros continually searches for these two qualities through love, as befits one conceived in the presence of Aphrodite.
"Straddling the human and the divine, Eros is an emissary, conducting 'all association and communication, waking or sleeping,' between the gods and men. His twofold nature explains his defining characteristic - desire itself. For what is desire but the human acknowledgment that one is in need, that one is lacking? As Socrates explains, 'the man who desires something desires what is not available to him, and what he doesn't already have in his possession.' "
Author: Darrin M. McMahon
Title: Happiness: A History
Author: Darrin M. McMahon
Title: Happiness: A History
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Date: Copyright 2006 by Darrin M. McMahon
Pages: 32-34
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