Running head: THE CONCEPT OF LOVE IN PLATO’S “THE SYMPOSIUM” 1

The Concept of Love in Plato’s “The 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

viewpoints play significant role in developing of a holistic concept.

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.
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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

harmony to the conflicting elements. He claims Love to be the source of happiness, or

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eudaimonia, fulfilment and togetherness. In this relation, the position of Eryximachus is close to

that of Phaedrus in that he regards Love as a means to achieve excellence.

Nevertheless, the most exhaustive and comprehensive concept of love is introduced by

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

him by a wise and experienced woman, Diotima.

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

immortality. It functions as an intermediary between humans and gods enabling their

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

knowledge (Plato, p.39-40, 203b-203e).

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
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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

process of initiation into the mystery of love.

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
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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,

therefore it surpasses human subjectivity, impermanence and instability. Experiencing it is

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.

In conclusion, one must underline a timeless significance of Plato’s “The Symposium”,

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

them, produces the fullest explanation of the concept of love.

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References

Plato. (2008). The Symposium (M. C. Howatson, Trans.). M. C. Howatson, Frisbee C. C.

Sheffield, Eds. New York: Cambridge University Press.