Book Club: Plato's Symposium -The Origin Of 'Your Other Half'

Hello Steemians!

I thought it would be interesting to start a form of 'Book Club'.
The first book I want to talk about is Plato's Symposium

This philosophical text is one of my all time favourites as it has one of the best descriptions of the nature of love that I have every read and it was written 385-370 BC! For such an incredibly long time ago, there is so much insight that can only be shown by great minds such as Plato.

Now, the title says 'The Origin Of Your Other Half', and this is an incredible part of the book in my opinion.

I believe that this story or the myths that are based around it are perhaps the first instance of the 'find your other half' scenario. It is an extremely common saying today (Albeit a little cringey at times), however I am not sure many people really know where this comes from.

In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes suggests that humans once had 4 arms, 4 legs and 2 faces and were extremely powerful. One day, humans started to tower to the heavens, and the Gods, being extremely scared of the power of humans, tore them in half to make humans as we know today. Two halves of one thing that was once whole, humans were destined to search the earth from that point looking for their other half. When humans find their other half, they cling to it and don't let go and this is what is called love.

This book has many ideas other than this but I don't want to spoil it!

Below is a spark notes link to read a summary if you are unable to get the book as well as a wiki article that can give you more information. Happy Reading!

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/plato/section4.rhtml
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_(Plato)

If you have any comments or corrections, I would be happy to receive them.

If you have any other books etc that you would like me to post about, I would be happy to consider them too! Let me know what you think. I have a couple other really amazing books that I would like to share with you guys.