A Comparative Analysis of the Love Category in the Story of the Symposium of Plato and the King and Slave Girl of Mevlana

Abstract

Abstract The Study of love and its meaning, not as a philosophical, literary or social concept, but as a multidimensional concept, has stretched different aspects of human life, from the adventure of mysterious creation to the mechanical life in today's world, and it has been in the idea of the scholars of the different nations, from Plato and Avicenna to Simon de Beauvoir and Sternberg. For this reason, we recognize love as a motivating category that made created enthusiasm in different layers of human life, and it has been manifesting at the highest level of human mental experience. Among the works in which a specific concept of love is expressed, we can mention The‌ Symposium of Plato and The King and Slave Girl of Mevlana. Each of these two works has showed the metamorphosis of the concept of love and its types. This paper, relying on the relationship between wisdom and philosophy, studies the truth of love, the types of love, and its functions and requirements in these two works. The most important conclusions of this study are that love in the idea of Plato and Mevlana, has an evolutionary path. The base of Plato and Mevlana’s attitude to love is philosophical, and according to this view they have studied the nature and essence of love, and then they classified the categories of love based on its quality. In the wisdom view to the concept of love, there is a significant relationship between the higher and lower of its types. Mevlana is influenced by ancient Greek philosophy in the story of The King and Slave Girl.

Keywords

• love
• plato
• mevlana
• symposium
• the story of the king and slave girl
• comparative literature