”Hegelian kiss: dialiptical technique in which the kiss incorporates its own antithikiss, forming a synthekiss.

The Philosophy of Kissing.

Apropos, I’ve been reading about Plato’s thoughts on love, and really felt like slapping him, because, as far as I can tell (this is a secondary source, alright), he makes it into a grand philosophical theory, which is basically the opposite of love, which if anything is immediate, not theoretical. But then I read this great quote:

The stories of all the other symposiasts, too, are stories of their particular loves masquerading as stories of love itself, stories about what they find beautiful masquerading as stories about what is beautiful. For Phaedrus and Pausanius, the canonical image of true love — the quintessential love story — features the right sort of older male lover and the right sort of beloved boy. For Eryximachus the image of true love is painted in the languages of his own beloved medicine and of all the other crafts and sciences. For Aristophanes it is painted in the language of comedy. For Agathon, in the loftier tones of tragedy. In ways that these men are unaware of, then, but that Plato knows, their love stories are themselves manifestations of their loves and of the inversions or perversions expressed in them. They think their stories are the truth about love, but they are really love’s delusions — “images,” as Diotima will later call them. As such, however, they are essential parts of that truth.

I like that: in trying to be general, everyone paints a picture of their own love; but of course, love is the aggregate of all these loves.

(via dailymeh)