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试金石就是承认有所需求，并对治愈的可能投降。阿里斯托芬所赞成的严肃性并非道德上的，不是不断地告诉你，只要你在乎你的伴侣，一切都会好，从而让人安心。这种严肃性来自表现人与人结合的内在需求，这是生命中最重要的事。不幸的是，人永远得不到这样一位伴侣。当阿里斯托芬想象赫菲斯托斯（Ἥφαιστος）——神中的工匠，来问为什么一对伴侣如此看重彼此的拥抱，他们回答不出。每个灵魂都无法回答它需要的是什么，但它以令人困惑的方式依靠直觉判断它是什么。赫菲斯托斯把原因昭示出来，他把两个人熔接在一起，这样他们就不能分开，将生死与共。阿里斯托芬看到灵魂的本质在于它的推断力，它能够在结合中看到眼睛所见之外的东西，而眼睛只看到动物般身体的结合。严肃的爱欲结合是对真正自然的怀念，通往别处寻觅不到的自然，从而给“爱欲”以特权地位。但问题是，这样一对伴侣是否愿意毫无保留地被熔在一起，尤其因为他们必须不仅一同生活，还要一起死亡。阿里斯托芬讲述的缺点之一是，他有些忽视，甚至忘记了死亡以及它对爱欲之情意味着什么。这些彼此紧紧拥抱的伴侣，希望永远保持这种姿势，他们在自我逃避，因为他们比任何其他人都更清楚自然的真相。他们既难过又滑稽。

在阿里斯托芬的理解中，“爱欲”是奥利匹亚诸神送给顺从地生活在他们统治之下的人所享用的一份礼物。“爱欲”本身不是自然秩序的一部分，而是对自然秩序丧失的一种补偿。“爱欲”不是一种勇敢的方式，反而是另一种怯懦的方式。阿里斯托芬承认，真正的人的世界与自然相对，具有很强的νομός因素。他试图兼容两者，既热爱自然，又尊重νομοί。他的谐剧从νομός的视角嘲笑自然，又从自然的视角嘲笑νομός。问题是，这样是否还给他留下丝毫立足之地，尽管他可以自我夸耀，能够毫无危险地识破所有习俗。在人及其爱人身上找到的美无法在原初的自然中找到，但却依赖于古老自然和人的新自然的结合，前者是纯粹的自然，后者由奥林匹亚诸神的力量合成。

苏格拉底出于对阿里斯托芬的报复，会说阿里斯托芬自己缺乏反抗诸神和在自然中找到“爱欲”的勇气。阿里斯托芬非常合理地注意到自然哲学缺乏爱欲的特性，并试图构筑一个与自然相隔离的真正的人的世界。苏格拉底则力图改变对自然的理解，并在自然中找到“爱欲”。因此，他将更加背叛奥林匹亚诸神和他们的νομός。p.178

当然，阿里斯托芬的故事的巨大吸引力在于它诉诸我们的自爱，或者用古话来说，我们对于自身的爱。这样的爱似乎无须解释；它简单地就直接成为我们的，并且就这样令人尊敬。亲情就以这种方式出自本能。但苏格拉底后来同意曼提尼亚的弟俄提玛（Διοτίμα）的说法，即我们愿意为了善割掉我们的四肢。还存在着另外一种爱，爱善好，它通常与爱自己相冲突，并且在很多方面相冲突。

阿里斯托芬的爱平行地指向对方，他们身上不隐含着向上或者超验。而苏格拉底的爱，正如我们将看到的，是垂直的，指向上方和超越。阿里斯托芬允许我们以最严肃的方式对待我们所爱的人，这是我们似乎希望在爱中得到的。但是对于那些真正探测过爱欲经验的深度的人，会有一种挥之不去的意识：一个人希望某种超越的东西，这些东西会阻碍我们彼此拥抱。阿里斯托芬对此的回答是，我们确实需要我们所爱的人，但他也承认灵魂凭直觉推断并渴望古老的自然。这的确不能令人满意，尤其是因为阿里斯托芬的妥协，他认为恢复古老的自然根本就不可能。苏格拉底反对阿里斯托芬的地方就在这里，即我们的意识告诉我们，我们的爱魅力非凡，但是......这并不是说苏格拉底自己对爱的描述就完全或者在这点上比阿里斯托芬的更令人满意，因为爱我们自己和爱我们的爱，是我们在生活中遇到的最有力的动机之一。阿里斯托芬的言辞是一篇当我们经历爱时，能够令我们得到满足的永恒文本。它比苏格拉底的发言更令人津津乐道。p.179

参阅：Jacques Lacan - Le Séminaire: Encore 1972 - 1973
To change the subject, I will say that what is important in what has been revealed by psychoanalytic discourse—and one is surprised not to see it thread everywhere—is that knowledge, which structures the being who speaks on the basis of a specific cohabitation, is closely related to love. All love is based on a certain relationship between two unconscious knowledges.

If I have enunciated that the subject supposed to know is what motivates transference, that is but a particular, specific application of what we find in our experience. I spoke, ultimately, of recognition, recognition—via signs that are always punctuated enigmatically—of the way in which being affected qua subject of unconscious knowledge.

There’s no such thing as a sexual relationship because one’s jouissance of the other taken as a body is always inadequate—perverse, on the one hand, insofaras the Other is reduced to object a, and crazy and enigmatic, on the other, I would say. Isn’t it on the basis of the confrontation with this impasse, with this impossibility by which a real is defined, that love is put to the test?

Regarding one’s partner, love can only actualize what, in a sort of poetic flight, in order to make myself understood, I called courage—courage with respect to this fatal destiny. But is it courage that at stake or pathways of recognition? That recognition is nothing other than the way in which the relationship said to be sexual—that has now become a subject-to-subject relationship, the subject being but the effect of unconscious knowledge—stops not being written.

"To stop not being written" is not a formulation proffered haphazardly. I associated it with contingency, whereas I delighted in (characterizing) the necessary as that which "doesn’t stop being written", for the necessary is not the real. Let us note in passing that the displacement of this negation raises for us the question of the nature of negation when it takes the place of a non-existence.

I incarnated contingency in the expression "stops not being written". For here there is nothing but encounter, the encounter in the partner of symptoms and affects, of everything that marks in each of us the trace of his exile—not as subject but as speaking—his exile from the sexual relationship.

Isn’t that tantamount to saying that it is owing only to the affect that results from this gap that something is encountered, which can vary infinitely as to level of knowledge, but which momentarily gives the illusion that the sexual relationship stops not being written?—an illusion that something is not only articulated but inscribed, inscribed in each of our destinies, by which, for a while—a time during which things are suspended—what would constitute the sexual relationship finds its trace and its mirage-like path in the being who speaks. The displacement of the negation from the "stops not being written" to the "doesn’t stop being written", in other words, from contingency to necessity—there lies the point of suspension to which all love is attached.

All love, subsisting only on the basis of the "stops not being written", tends to make the negation shift to the "doesn’t stop being written", doesn’t stop, won’t stop.

Such is the substitute that—by the path of existence, not of the sexual relationship, but of the unconscious, which differs therefrom—constitutes the destiny as well as the drama of love.

The subject can’t desire not to know too much about the nature of the eminently contingent encounter with the other. Thus he shifts his focus from the other to the being that is caught up therein.

The relation of being to being is not the relation of harmony that was prepared for us throughout the ages, though we don’t really know why, by a whole tradition in which Aristotle, who saw therein only supreme jouisssance, converges with Christianity, for which it is beatitude. That gets us bogged down in a mirage-like apprehension. For it is love that approaches being as such in the encounter.

Isn’t it in love’s approach to being that something emerges that makes being into what is only sustained by the fact of missing each other?