Quote:
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Originally Posted by Raziel
Its in an earlier posting:
"Though the phrase soul mate gained steam toward the end of the twentieth century, the idea goes all the way back to Plato’s Symposium, written in 385–380 BCE.
In Symposium, when the two dialogists discuss love, Aristophanes tells Socrates that human beings used to have four arms, four legs, and two faces, and they were happy and complete. But Zeus was jealous and split them in two with his thunderbolt, and now humans spend their lives searching for their other half. This idea of an “other half” has been with us ever since.
But the phrase soul mate itself was first recorded in 1822, when the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in a letter, “To be happy in Married Life . . . you must have a Soul-mate.”
So two halves of a whole, two halves of a union/bond.
You used a term incorrectly - no big deal  |
Well, you always have to consider a cultural context. We've moved on a lot since Plato's time! Nuances are lost in translation sometimes, particularly with classical ancient languages.
But I will concede. Having a soul mate takes two people.
(In part, I've given up on the word "love". It's meaningless to me - too waffly, too non-specific. It hides many lies of people's motivations. The classical view of emotions no longer works for me.)