PLATO ON LOVE: RATION, SPIRIT, AND APPETITE

In his later works, Symposium , Plato begins his exploration of love and friendship. However, two critical questions remain unaddressed: where does the feeling of love originate in one’s soul, and what parts of the soul are prone to receiving, expressing, and partaking in love? This paper seeks to answer these questions by referencing his earlier work, Timaeus , which delves more deeply into the nature of the soul. By integrating insights from Timaeus with the concept of love as presented in the Symposium , the aim is to explain the division of love and its feelings with respect of the tripartite soul model. It concludes that love is distributed across all three parts of the soul: the mind serves as the rational judge of love, the heart embodies the uncontrolled spirit of love, and the body represents the appetitive desires associated with love in its physical manifestations.