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Spiritual Pregnancy in Plato's Symposium

1992; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0009838800042609

1471-6844

Elizabeth Pender,

Ethics in medical practice

Although Plato's notion of spiritual pregnancy has received a great deal of critical attention in recent years, the development of the metaphor in the Symposium has not been fully analysed. Close attention to the details of the image reveals two important points which have so far been overlooked: (1) There are two quite different types of spiritual pregnancy in the Symposium : a ‘male’ type, which is analogous to the build-up to physical ejaculation, and a ‘female’ type, which is analogous to the physical experience of pregnancy as normally understood.