What is Love — in Philosophy, Platonism, and Sufism
Recently I came across an Instagram reel on Valentine’s Day where someone was asking random people: “What does love mean to you?”
The answers were all over the place. Some said family, some said romantic partners, some said friendship, some said parents. And that got me thinking: what exactly is love from a philosophical point of view?
Not just in the everyday emotional sense, but in a deeper, more essential sense.
From a philosophical perspective, what is love really? Is it attachment, admiration, desire, self-transcendence, recognition of beauty, or something else entirely?
I’m also especially curious about love from a Sufi perspective.
In Urdu, I once heard this distinction:
“Apni anaa ko kisi ek bande ke saamne paamaal kar dena ishq-e-majazi hai,
aur apni anaa ko har bande ke saamne paamaal kar dene ka naam ishq-e-haqiqi hai.”
(Loosely: To crush your ego before one person is metaphorical/worldly love, but to dissolve your ego before all beings is divine/true love.)
For a long time, I thought maybe this was the answer — that love is ultimately the annihilation or surrender of the ego.
But then I think about Plato too.
In Plato’s idea of the ascent of love (moving from love of one beautiful body, to all beautiful bodies, to beautiful souls, to knowledge, and ultimately to Beauty itself), the final stage seems to suggest that all love points beyond the particular.
But what does that actually mean?
When Plato or later philosophers reduce love to something universal or transcendent, what exactly is being loved at that point?
So I guess my broader question is:
What is love, philosophically? And how do traditions like Platonism and Sufism understand it differently (or similarly)?