Plato's Symposium - Aristophanes's speech

What is the nature of love? What purpose does love have?

In trying to find an answer to this inquiry, Plato writes his philosophical Symposium, a book comprising "a story within a story, within a story" that deals with the topics of knowledge and love. According to the play, a group of sophisticated and enlightened people are invited to a meeting in order to debate on these two matters.

Among these guests is our master comedian Aristophanes, who tries to explain why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love partner.

These are more or less the ideas on love that Plato puts in his mouth:

Plato's Symposium - Aristophanes's speech - On Love

In primal times people were globular spheres who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels. There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous," who was half man, half woman. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods. Zeus thought about just blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half.

After chopping the people in half, Zeus turned half their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the belly button. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature.