Lesson · 4 min Stretch
Reasons for Love
In one line Do we love people for their qualities, or do we come to value them because we love them? Plato and Frankfurt differ.
In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates recounts what the priestess Diotima taught him. Love begins with one beautiful body, rises to beauty in all bodies, then to beautiful souls, laws and knowledge, and finally to Beauty itself. On one influential reading of this ladder, we love people for qualities they share with others.
That raises a puzzle. If I love you for your kindness and wit, should I trade you for someone kinder and wittier? Most people find that absurd. Harry Frankfurt argued that love works the other way: we do not love people because they are valuable; they become valuable to us because we love them. Love is a kind of caring that creates reasons.
Iris Murdoch added that love is attention: seeing another person justly, as real and separate from ourselves.
Go deeper
Philosophers distinguish kinds of love: eros, desire; philia, the love explored in Friendship; and agape, the self-giving love of Christian thought. J. David Velleman argues that love responds to the value of a person simply as a person, which explains why we do not trade up. Others stress the shared history that makes one person irreplaceable.
The perfect copy
In a story, a man’s wife is replaced overnight by an exact copy with all her memories and traits. Everyone else is fooled.
When he learns the truth, he grieves, though the copy is kind, clever and loving. If he loved his wife only for her qualities, the copy should satisfy him. His grief suggests love is tied to this particular person and the history they share.
Try this today Think of someone you love. Ask whether you would love a perfect copy of them just as much, and why not.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Reasons for Love.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/reasons-for-love. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Love” — Covers love as union, as robust concern (where Frankfurt’s caring view sits) and as appraisal or bestowal of value, including Velleman.
- Wikipedia, “Symposium (Plato)” — Summarizes the dialogue and Diotima’s ladder of love.
- Plato, Symposium, 210a–212a (Jowett translation) — Diotima’s account of the ascent from one beautiful body to Beauty itself.
- Harry Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love (2004) — Argues that what we love becomes valuable to us because we love it.
- Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good” (1959) — Love as the difficult recognition that something other than oneself is real.