Eros

In the Greek Mythology, Eros (in Greek old Ἔρως / Érōs ) is the god of the Love.

Mythology: literary sources

  • In the Théogonie of Hésiode VIIIe front century J. - C., Eros constitutes, with Chaos and Gaïa, one of the three paramount divinities. It is the only one of the three which does not generate, but which allows Chaos and Gaïa to do it. It is beautiful, immortal, overcomes the intelligence and wisdom . Jean-Pierre Vernant presents it like the principle which " returns proclamation the duality, the multiplicity included in the unité". Eros (Love) and Himéros (Desire) accompany Aphrodite since her birth.

  • In the théogonie of the Rhapsodies , which is orphic theology usual, Eros is at the origin of creation. It was born from cosmic egg resulting from the union of Ether and Chaos. At the same time male and female, it has many heads of animals. It had two children: Nyx (the Night) and the monster Echidna. It is named Phanès, but also Protogonos, Èrikèpaios and Métis. In the orphism, Phanès is compared to Dionysos-Zagreus and Zeus devours it and becomes thus sovereign God.

  • In the Birds of Aristophane 450-385 av. J. - C., Eros is also born from egg, resulting from the Night to the black wings. It has two gold wings and generates, with winged and dark Chaos, the race of the Men, before even that of the Immortal ones.

  • In the Banquet of Plato 427 av. J. - C./348 av. J. - C, Eros is presented differently according to the characters of the dialog:

- Phèdre takes again the speech of Hésiode: Eros is a paramount divinity, and speaks in praise of it: that which makes the most good with the men , it inspires by the audacity , is oldest, most majestic, and able to make the man virtuous and happy during his life and after its death.
- Pausanias makes the distinction between two loves. As there are two Aphrodite, Aphrodite celestial, older, born from the male alone (Ouranos), and Aphrodite born of the male and the female (Zeus and Dioné), more young person and called commonplace or popular Aphrodite, there are two Eros:
- popular Eros, " it is the love which reigns among the common people. They like without choice, not less the women that young people, rather the body that the âme" , they aspire only to the pleasure; provided that they there arrive, little imports them by which means ,
- Eros faithful, which seeks only young people, who likes only the male sex, naturally more extremely and more intelligent . Follows a praise of the love virtuous, faithful, not attached to the body.
- Éryximaque approves the disctinction of the two Eros made by Pausanias and supplements it: the Eros does not lie only in the heart but also in the beauty, in the bodies of all the animals, in the productions of the ground, in a word, in all the beings . The legitimate and celestial Eros is that of the MUSE Uranie. But for that of Polymnie, which is the vulgar Eros, one should support it only with one great reserve, so that the approval which it gets cannot never carry to the disordered state .
- Aristophane speaks about the power of the Eros and the myth of the androgyne (the three sexes original: masculine, produced by the sun, the female one by the ground and that which is composed of both others by the moon). Eros is the force which pushes the halves the ones towards the others after their separations by the Gods. That which is linked with a half woman becomes woman, that which is linked with a half man and the race dies out. the men who come from the separation of the primitive men seek the male sex , so that sympathy, the friendship and the love seize them one the other, and in order to not form but one being with him more, happiness which arrives today only at very-little of people.
- Agathon presents it like most beautiful and young person of the Gods, with due respect to Hésiode and Parménide. It is delicate God who walk and rests on the most tender things and moves away from the hard cores . It is made of a subtle gasoline, it is the grace which distinguishes it, cannot receive any offense, is greater temperance. It is strongest of the Gods, more extremely than Arès even. It is very skilful because it returns poëte that which is inspired by him.
- For Socrate, Eros is love of something: it is the love of the beauty. Like all the demons, it is an intermediary between the men and the Gods, between the condition of mortal and that the immortal one. It brings to the sky the prayers and the sacrifices of the men and brings back to the men the orders gods and the remuneration of the sacrifices that they offered to them.
It is resulting from the union of Poros (Abundance), wire of Mongrel (Prudence) and Pénia (Poverty), at the time of the feast of the birth of Aphrodite, i.e. its design coincides with the birth of the goddess. Like wire of Pénia, it is always poor, and, far from being beautiful and delicate, as it is generally thought, it is thin, swine, without shoes, residence, other reads that the ground, without cover, sleeping with open air near the doors and in the streets . Like wire of Poros, it is always with the track of what is beautiful and good; it is male, bold, persevering, hunter skilful, always machinant some artifice, eager to know and learning with facility, philosophizing unceasingly, enchanter, magician, sophist … Eros is a lover of wisdom.

See also: the Banquet (Plato)

In more recent traditions (as from sixth century BC), it passes for the son born without father of the goddess of the Births Ilithyie, or according to the majority of the authors for that of Aphrodite by Arès, even, but more rarely, of Aphrodite by Zeus, Hermes, Héphaïstos or even still by Ouranos. As wire of Aphrodite and Ares, it has as a twin brother or junior Antéros, god of the mutual love, and for sister Harmonie.

Worship

It is honoured in ancient Greece especially like the god with the Pédérastie. The Spartans and the Crétois sacrifice to him before a battle, the crowned battalion of Thèbes is devoted to him, and Athens honors it like the god liberator with the city in the honor with Harmodius and Aristogiton, the tyrannoctones. Its principal sanctuary is located at Thespies.

Its Roman Misadventure , Cupid, is often represented under the features of a mischievous young child, chubby-checked fellow, with two small wings in the back and carrying an arc, which is used to him to strip arrows of love.

Artistic representations

In the beginning, Eros is represented like a being Androgyne. The figure of the winged young man appears at the end of sixth century BC on vases attics with red figures. It whereas is not seldom associated with Aphrodite and often appears under multiple authorities; sometimes, one of the Loves is named Himéros or Pothos (desire).

Its representation par excellence becomes very popular starting from 490 av. J. - C. One then sees it on the vases, the quadrant or with a hare - gift pederastic - with the hand, or continuing a boy. Thereafter, it is more frequently associated with Aphrodite and the world of the women, in particular on the bridal vases like the lébétès gamikoi, the loutrophores or the lékanis. To the remainder, one resorts to the white to represent it, just as for the body of the women. The arc and the quiver are usual attributes as from fourth century BC the most famous example is undoubtedly the statue of Eros bandaging its arc , type allotted to the sculptor Lysippe.

Starting from the hellenistic time, the type of the Eros-child appears jointly with that of the Eros-beautiful young man. As of this time, Eros loses its religious significance to become decorative. Starting from the Rebirth, its representation is comparable with that of the Ange S to arrive at the type of the putto . One can see a statue the representative on the place Piccadilly Circus with London.

Eros and Agapè

The Eros is a notion of the Hellenic love of origin. It is complementary or is opposed (it is according to) to the Reunion of Christian origin. The comparison of the two mobiles, one Greek, the other Christian, makes it possible to better determine the notion of the Eros. This table allows a didactic sight but does not correspond to the various historical evolutions which the concepts of Eros and Reunion underwent.

Metamorphoses of Eros

  • Platonic Eros

The Eros existed already quite front Plato (427 av. J. - C./348 av. J. - C.) . One found it in the orphism and the worships with mysteries where the rise of the heart was done according to three successive degrees: the purification , the illumination and the union with divine the . Plato takes again these concepts and gives to the Eros a personal form and emphasizes some the direction. It uses the mythical form of the Eros to transform it into dialectical form: the goal of philosophy is to reproduce the purification . It thus operates the opposition between the Logos and the myth in the design of the Eros. But its existential philosophy always rests on a religious bottom, the meeting of the heart at its divine origin being always the way of the redemption, unlike modern philosophy. It is indeed largely dependant on the orphism, and remains despite everything a Sotériologie. This is perhaps the reason for which Plato forsakes the dialectical one and the discursive thought to join the extatic experiment when he speaks about the " madness divine" , moment when the heart is linked with divine, characterizing the third degree of the rise of the heart.

Plato distinguishes two types of Eros: vulgar Eros, wire of the vulgar Aphrodite , which pushes the men with lightness and libertinage , and celestial Eros, born from the celestial Aphrodite , which is the way allowing the passage of sensitive to the suprasensible one, of the world lower than the higher world, of the material world in the world of the Ideas.

The principal idea is that this passage is always carried out in the same direction: bottom to the top, since the world of the Ideas cannot act on that of the directions. The Platonic Eros is neither purely divine nor only human, it is something of intermediary, a large demon, making it possible to wake up in the heart, as the ember under ash, the attraction of the heart towards the higher world. Or in other words the beauty of this world has as a role to wake up the Eros in the heart so that she arrives at the suprasensible and Celestial Beauty.

For Anders Nygren.

- the Eros is the way which carries out the man towards God, and not the divinity who drops towards the man.
- the Eros is by nature a love egocentric person, only fact that it is desire. The brightest proof is the intimate union of the Eros and the Eudémonisme.

  • Aristote and the pure form

Aristote (384 av. J. - C./322 av J. - C.) widens the concept of Eros to give him a cosmic significance, unlike Plato for whom the Eros is the way leading the heart towards what is beautiful in oneself. For Aristote, this aspiration relates to all the elements of cosmos: nature is taken in a constant movement towards rise: matter towards the form, the possibility towards the existence. The pure form is above this movement, it is motionless but the principle of any movement. It wakes up the Eros in the matter. The Eros is high with the row of universal power. The scale of Plato becomes at Aristote a hierarchy. What is lower tends towards what east supérieur.
Chez Aristote, the religious direction of the Eros passes in the second plan.

  • Plotin : the down line and the ascending way

According to Nygren.
- God is Eros: It is worthy to be liked, it is love … (VI, 8,15).
- the union with God can be made only in the extase, i.e. neither dialectical nor the discursive thought cannot lead to the divine union. Plotin joins again thus with the religion.
- there does not exist a single Eros but a multitude: specific Eros corresponding to the universal heart and Eros to each individual heart.
Remainder, Plotin joined Plato when he explains why the heart begins its ascending walk driven by the Eros. The sensitive world is beautiful but has only the beauty of a reflection. With the difference of the Gnostic ones, it supports that the heart is of divine origin, and for this reason it is good by nature.

  • Origène : éros=agapè

Although being a Father of the Church, the designs of Origène (185-254) are on the line of the Eros. The originality of its work consist in operating a synthesis between the Christian design of the love and that of the Hellenic design. For him the reunion is interpreted as being the same thing as Eros. In the Canticle of the canticles, he considers that the Writing employs the term of Reunion rightly in order not to induce in error the reader who, if the term of Eros had been employed, could have waked up in him the vulgar Eros. In its Commentaire with the Song of Songs he recalls that this text is intended for the " parfaits" , Gnostic Christians. So in the Writing, the term of Eros is not employed is to avoid a misunderstanding with the vulgar Eros. Generally when a gnostic meeting in the Writing the term of reunion, it must hear it, consequently, as if there were Eros, because such is the reality which is dissimulated behind the protective mask of reunion . To support its thesis, it quotes two passages in the bible where the idea of Eros appears: Proverbs 4,6 and Wisdom 8,2: it is question of wisdom there.
in theory, the way of the hello based on the Eros is the good one; but so that the men, in their weakness, do not remain without help and support, it was creates, beside it, the way of the hello based on the reunion
contrary to the philosophers hellenists who considered that the majority of the men was lost.

Following Origène, Gregoire de Nysse (331-394) takes again same theology. It uses an enough rich symbolic system however to indicate the Eros. Some are already known: the celestial scale and wings of the heart . But of others are new concerning the Eros: the rise of the mountain , the flame and the chain of love .

  • Augustin and the Caritas

Holy Augustin (354-430) , one of principal the Fathers of the Latin Church, kept all the value of the way of the Eros, the only one which can lead to the hello. It does not doubt that the Christian love for God is the same one as the Platonic Eros, with this close the man lacks force to remain in top: I pus to keep my glance fixed on you; on the contrary, in my weakness, it was necessary me to divert my sight and to return to the familiar things . The principal defect which it allots to the way of the Eros, although it was always mû by this one, is located in the superbia , i.e. the pride and self-satisfaction which it leaves behind it. The man thus remains always on his level and never reaches the Divine one.

It worked out rich and complex doctrines founded on the '' caritas '' and the grace in which the Eros is included. The caritas which carries the mark of the celestial Eros is always the only way which leads to God. It however remains impracticable as long as the grace, the gratia , did not infuse it in the heart. Thanks to for bases, in Christianity, the incarnation and the humilitas , which is the principal teaching of Christ.

Caritas and Cupiditas is the two types of love which the man can test. One is directed towards the divine one, the other towards the world, pointing out the celestial Eros and the vulgar Eros. Saint Augustin allots the same value to them, it has there only the object of love which changes. However, without comdamner firmly the cupiditas , Augustin understands that it is a search for God, but badly directed: she is mistaken in object. The sins and the defects of the man are only the reflection of this state of affairs. It is in theory one object which the man has the right to like: God. By introducing the Frui , the " jouir" (of its object) and the uti , l'" utiliser" (to like a thing for an other thing), Augustin works out a little more his doctrines. The only attitude which is appropriate with regard to the world is to use it, so that is of a help for the man on the way of the caritas . It must tend towards the fruitio Dei , the pleasure of God. Contrary, the cupiditas uses God to enjoy the world.

  • Proclus and the universal force of the Eros

Neo-platonist philosopher, Proclus (412-487) , or Proclos in old Greek, takes again the topics of Plato and of Plotin concerning the Eros and transforms it:
- it modifies the design alexandrine world. For the double movement going down and ascending from this one, it substitutes a ternary diagram: rest, emanation and the return .
- the Eros, which rises of the inferior towards the superior, the Eros thus is also what drops divine plan towards the human one, towards the lower world, it changed the direction of its movement. What differs radically from the platonicism and the neo-platonicism.
Of the world the higher Eros drops, of the sphere of what is Esprit and Reason to the sphere of what is cosmic and it turns all things towards the divine beauty .
- Proclus takes again the notion of the multitude of Eros introduced by Plotin and systematizes it to introduce order there: it is the chain of Eros which connects the sky and the ground and which constitutes the relation of it.
- it completes the theory of the three successive degrees of the rise, the purification, the illumination and the union which will be taken again by the Christian mystic, whose three ways will be during centuries: via purgativa, illuminativa, unitiva .
- the Eros is the power which binds all things in the existence. Not only the rise of the individual heart of Plato, nor only the tendency inherent in very whole existence to rise of Aristote, but a universal force which connects the superior to the inferior, the lower than the superior, and between them for the of the same things level.

  • Denys Aréopagite and the celestial hierarchy

The author of the celestial Hierarchy and the ecclesiastical Hierarchy is not makes of it Denys Aréopagite, first bishop of Athens, burned alive about year 95, but an anonymous author, Pseudo-Denys Aréopagite, whose writings are fixed between 485 and 515. Philosopher neoplatonician, inspired by Plotin and especially Proclus to which it makes broad loans, his thought is largely determined by the Eros. He systematizes the multiplicity of the isolated Eros following a causality which takes its source in the divine gasoline: it is about doctrines of the emanation. All being under the control surface of the Eros, it does not allow that which likes to remain in itself: even God is subjected there and was thorough to create all things and to move towards the aimé.
object Its '' Hiérarchie '' is built around one only goal: the deification which consists in being linked with God. This deification is carried out according to a well established order: the fundamental rule is that the lower order can rise towards the divinity only via that which is immediately higher to him. Each order is connected to a higher order of which it receives, and with a lower order to which it gives. It is the same on the level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Thus, the man rises along the luminescent chain which comes from the sky.

Posterity

The word “Eros”, personification of the love, knew a great fortune. One thus finds it in Psychanalyse, Sigmund Freud naming “Eros” the Life instinct which, according to him, lives each human being. He opposes it to the Death instinct, or destructive instinct. He is current to today name this death instinct “Thanatos”, but it is not a question of a freudien term strictly speaking. These two fundamental impulses can be thought separately only in metapsychology (Freud said they that they were its mythology): in private clinic, they work always together, in a kind of amalgam, and are indissociable.

Sources

  • (v. 190), Théogonie on wikisource (v.116-123).

  • (II, 819; III, 15; IV, 10; V, 1 and 311), (VIII, 266-342).
  • Aristophane, '' the Birds '', (v.676 & suiv).
  • Apulée : " the Metamorphoses or the Ass of or" , new transl., bilingual French-Latin, ED.: Beautiful Letter-pocket, 2007, ISBN 2251799931

Random links:Psammétique II | Archipelago of the Samoa | Saizy | Slope (fence) | Pini Gershon | Lehi_(groupe)