溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is Love a Lack, or an Overflow?
Is love a longing for what one lacks, or an overflow that gives itself away?
One who desires, desires that which one lacks.
When Diotima explained love as the child of lack, Agathon's praise of love as divine fullness collapsed. This eros of lack flowed into two channels. Augustine read it upward — "my love is my weight" — as a pull toward the eternal; Spinoza countered that true love is not want but the fullness that comes from understanding. Later the Romantic tide revived longing itself as the very heart of love. The question of whether love is lack or overflow has, each time its answer diverged, redrawn what kind of craving creature the human being is.
The more an age delivers what we want at once, the stranger and sharper this question grows: when everything is filled, is there still a place for longing to stand?
Socrates does not claim to know love; he passes on what he learned from Diotima of Mantinea.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Socrates does not claim to know love; he passes on what he learned from Diotima of Mantinea. Love is not a god who possesses beauty but an in-between being who lacks and therefore craves it. We do not love what we already hold. We reach because we lack, and grow because we reach. I feel this question does not lower love into mere want but raises it into motion: a filled love stops, a longing love climbs. I stand here too, asking what I lack that turns me toward another.
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