R: Don't Settle

Thursday, February 14th, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. in the Berkeley Mendenhall Room

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste. Lovers. 1875. Oil on canvas. 176 x 130 cm. National Gallery Prague, Prague.

In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes tells of a time when mankind was much different. Human beings each had one soul but twice the body, rendering them very powerful. To squash the threat of rebellion and punish them for their pride, the gods split them in two parts, leaving each being incomplete and miserable. "This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature." Relationships can soothe loneliness, he says, but most wonderful of all is the meeting of the two halves of one soul. So, ought we search forever for our soulmate? Perhaps the concept of a soulmate is not very romantic at all, since the bond requires no effort to exist.