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The Concept of Love in Plato's Symposium
The Concept of Love in Plato's Symposium
“The Symposium” is one of the most well-known dialogues by Plato, which gives a
profound analysis of the concept of love. One of the distinctive features of the dialogue is its
complex and seemingly polyphonic structure which resembles that of a drama with its basic
components – introduction, three acts and an epilogue. The arguments and contemplations on the
nature of love are presented through the speeches of multiple narrators among whom are
Socrates, Alcibiades, Agathon, Aristophanes and other Greek eminent personalities. Each
speaker provides his own account of what he believes love, desire and beauty to be, and all their
The first speaker, Phaedrus, refers to love as the most powerful moral force which is
crucial in achieving the highest virtue, or arete, of an individual’s character. He claims that to
see one’s beloved doing something disgraceful would be most painful for the one who is in love
(Plato, p. 9, 178e). This moral power of love results in people’s determination to commit the
most noble acts, such as sacrificing themselves for their beloved, like Alcestis who died for her
husband, or Achilles who died avenging his lover Patroclus. Phaedrus explicitly states that a
lover is akin to god, and that “Love is the oldest of the gods, and he is also the source of our
greatest blessings” (Plato, p. 11, 178c). Thus, love is basically a divine inspiration to nurture
one’s moral character and prove one’s devotion to their lover with heroic deeds that arise from
the virtuousness of soul. The main aim of love, in Phaedrus’s opinion, is acquiring excellence.
The next speaker, Pausanias, suggests his distinction between “Common Love” which
comes from “Common” Aphrodite, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and “Heavenly Love” which
is connected with “Heavenly” Aphrodite, the daughter of Uranus (Plato, p. 12, 180e). Apart from
the source of love, Pausanias differentiates between the objects and aims of two kinds of love.
THE CONCEPT OF LOVE IN PLATO’S “THE SYMPOSIUM” 2
Firstly, “Common Love” is the love of both women and boys experienced by ordinary people
who are more interested in body than in soul and are guided by chance instead of morality (Plato,
p.12, 181b). This love is transient, since it’s object – the beauty of a body – is not constant and
therefore, worthless. “Heavenly Love” deserves praise as opposed to “Common Love” due to it
being the love of boys, which, according to Pausanias, provides more possibilities for people to
acquire excellence. This kind of love which is directed toward a virtuous character is unending
and noble. Pausanias agrees with Phaedrus on that love is crucial in acquiring arete, but he
specifies that only “Heavenly Love” can be beneficial for a person. One who is willing to do
anything for their lover “for the sake of excellence and becoming a better person” (Plato, p.17,
185b) is the most noble. He calls this utter devotion “voluntary slavery” and states that this is a
justified way of expressing love, as far as it concerns gaining excellence with the help of a lover.
Although, gratifying a lover for the sake of money is considered disgraceful and immoral. In
general, similarly to Phaedrus, Pausanias declares that personal development through cultivating
wisdom and other virtues is the ultimate goal of the kind of love which he defines as “Heavenly”.
Eryximachus, the third speaker, adopts the view of Pausanias that there are two kinds of
love: the heavenly Love of the well-ordered people, which comes from the muse Urania and
must be praised, and the common Love which comes from Polymnia and should be treated
cautiously (Plato, p.20, 187e). As well as Pausanias, he distinguishes between the objects of
these kinds of love, since the love in the healthy body is different from the love in the unhealthy
one. Overall, he believes that Love has a ubiquitous nature infusing both bodies and souls, the
human and the divine planes, and that the heavenly, or healthy Love can heal diseases and bring
eudaimonia, fulfilment and togetherness. In this relation, the position of Eryximachus is close to
Socrates. In order to consecutively delineate his main ideas concerning the nature, characteristic
activity and aim of love, he uses the method of storytelling. Socrates introduces the story told to
First of all, Socrates tells about how Diotima persuaded him that Love is a great spirit
who occupies a middle state between beauty and ugliness, wisdom and ignorance, mortality and
communication and interaction through spiritual practices. According to Diotima’s story, this
characteristic of love arises from the circumstances of its origin: Love is a child of a god Poros
(Resource) and Penia (a personification of poverty) conceived during Aphrodite’s feast. He loves
beauty, but is not perfectly beautiful; he is poor, but has courage to seek resources and
Diotima states that those who are wise already, like gods, do not pursue wisdom, as well
as those who are completely ignorant, since they do not realize that they lack it. But the seekers
of wisdom are those who are in between, like Love, “for wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and
Love is love o the beautiful, so Love must be a philosopher” (Plato, p.41, 204b). Furthermore,
love is the desire for beautiful and good things, and once a person has what they desire, they can
reach happiness, or eudaimonia. Diotima gives an explicit definition of love: “Love is the desire
to possess the good always” (Plato, p.43, 206a), and its aim is giving birth in the beautiful. She
explains that everyone is pregnant in body and in soul, and when discovering something
beautiful, they happily give birth. Therefore, the object of love is “procreating and giving birth in
THE CONCEPT OF LOVE IN PLATO’S “THE SYMPOSIUM” 4
the beautiful” (Plato, p.44, 206e), for it provides immortality and timelessness for a mortal. It is
what a person in love desires, apart from an everlasting possession of good, and longing for
immortality is the cause of love. Remarkably, Diotima adds that as a matter of fact,
aforementioned Alcestis and Achilles who died for their lovers were willing to die because of the
future prospect of immortal glory they would have attained because of their selfless acts (Plato,
p.46, 208d).
Like Pausanias and Eryximachus, Diotima distinguishes between two kinds of love. The
first one is connected with the pregnancy of a body, which is expressed through giving birth to
children as a means of ensuring immortality. The second one is that of those who are pregnant in
their souls and who procreate wisdom and other virtues through creating the good ordering of
cities, laws, poetry etc. Socrates then provides Diotima’s elaborate explanation of the multi-stage
In order to reach the utmost divine love, one must proceed through the path to revelation,
the ascent of desire of different object of beauty in hierarchical order. It begins with the attention
and love to beautiful bodies. A young individual on this stage of desire falls in love with a
specific body. After that, they become aware of the fact that the beautiful bodies are all
essentially akin in terms of the very beauty they share. Hence, an individual feels the
insufficiency of his love towards only one body and comes to the realization of his desire to all
the beautiful bodies as a whole. The next step in their development is that they begin to find
more beauty in the soul than in the body. A beautiful soul which is moral and noble, becomes
more valuable for an individual than just a beautiful body, and they feel ever-growing love for a
beautiful personality. Consequently, their love is directed towards the moral beauty comprised in
laws and rules created by people. It leads an individual to the love of knowledge and wisdom
THE CONCEPT OF LOVE IN PLATO’S “THE SYMPOSIUM” 5
which allows them to procreate beautiful ideas and theories. The final stage after experiencing all
gradual levels of love is understanding and adoration of the Beauty itself, in its divine nature and
infiniteness (Plato, p.48-49, 210a-211a). It is the highest and purest form of love.
Thus, according to Socrate’s account of Diotima’s teaching, the ultimate object of love is
the Beauty itself. It is self-contained and immune to change as well as it is absolute in nature,
incomparable to any kind of earthly, mortal love, since it is a pure perception of the divine which
leads an individual to giving birth not to the images of virtues, but to the true virtues (Plato, p.50,
212a). Thus, an individual is given an opportunity to become immortal, and given that Love is
the most powerful medium in this process, it must be cherished and praised.
since it constitutes a comprehensive and structured overview of the concept of love, in which
more and more detailed elaborations on the nature and meaning of love are sequentially based on
the simpler ideas, which results in defining the core essence of love and the role it plays in an
individual’s ascension to the divine. The view of love introduced by Socrates encompasses
apparently encompasses the speculations of previous speakers and, by enhancing and clarifying
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