Love. What Philosophers Say About It

Many thinkers—including Socrates, Plato, Freud, and Fromm—expressed their views on love. They reflected on how this complex feeling affects us. Philosophy helped understand love as a spiritual phenomenon. Socrates believed that love inspires the search for truth, Plato categorized its types, and Christian teaching presented self-sacrifice and mercy as values. Freud reduced love to libido, while Fromm saw it as a social phenomenon. Russian thinkers such as Solovyov and Berdyaev also developed their original concepts of love.