Comparing Love In Symposium, Phaedrus, Agathon And Socrates

In John 13, Jesus teaches his various ways of love. From the start of washing His disciple’s feet, to the end telling His disciples to love one another. His teaching of equality in verse sixteen explains that one person may not be greater than the other regardless of title, proves that love should remain as love. One person cannot love or be blessed more than the other, for that brings envy and superiority and that is where love is lost. Jesus teaches us His way of love through the love of one another so that we show that we are His. We are not envious, rather we are appreciative of what He has given us.

In Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, and Socrates each have a different definition of love from Jesus.

Agathon believes the God of love is forever young and it is delicate. In the sense to Socrates, for the God of love being the youngest, it is resembled to be ancient. For Agathon, love is beauty which is only found in the young where it has time to grow and mature. Love only grows in those who have a soft character, not physically, but internally. True loves only come from those who have good character, because it is a love with meaning of goodness. People who create violence and catastrophe, do not carry true love. Love does not collide with violence, therefore love is found in beauty, not the ugly. Agathon’s explanation of beauty in this sense is not an explanation of physical attractions rather than the differences between good and bad. For Socrates, he believes there is a difference between love, being in love, and lovers. He explains the desires people have which lead them to love. In his definition, love is immortal, because the kind of love we desire is the love of someone or something we want forever. It is neither good or bad, because we all have different definitions of love. Personally, I think this to be true. What my beliefs of love are may not be the same beliefs of others. In my eyes, my love can be a good love, and in others, my love could be an obsessive love that leads to badness. This is why for Socrates, a lover searches for what is good for them, because each person has their own meaning of love; this is called the ladder of love. Love seeks wisdom and one cannot desire wisdom if we find it unnecessary. Like the example provided in Symposium, an ignorant man cannot desire wisdom if he does not know what wisdom is. It is found in the form of the body, to the object, and to the soul. Therefore, there is love everywhere, it is just differentiated by the way we describe