Plato's Symposium: Why Intensity Without Responsibility Is Not Love

The Bucket List Book Adventure Book #23

Plato's Symposium: Why Intensity Without 

Responsibility Is Not Love

By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

A Rite of Fancy Bucket List Book Adventure

Book Number 23 of the Bucket List Book Adventure is complete. Let me tell you about Plato's Symposium.

Once upon a time, I would have told you that Lolita was the worst piece of literature ever written. I have since read much worse, and now I would argue that Symposium is among the most morally disturbing texts I’ve encountered, not because it is poorly written, but because of its influence.

The dialogue recounts a drunken dinner party celebrating the tragedian Agathon’s victory at the City Dionysia. As the wine flows, the guests take turns offering speeches in praise of Eros, love understood as a divine or semi-divine force.

This is where the trouble begins.

In ancient Greece, Eros was most often discussed in the context of relationships between older men and adolescent boys, relationships that are, today, rightly illegal and universally recognized as exploitative. Reading Symposium with modern eyes is jarring, not because it shocks us with explicit acts, but because it fails to protect the vulnerable at the level of ideas. The dialogue treats desire as formative while never seriously asking whether the beloved is free, safe, or able to refuse.

That silence matters.

And yet, Symposium is worth reading precisely because it helps us see what Eros actually is.

Eros, as Plato defines it, is love as hunger. It is the love of possession, of taking, of intensity without obligation. Its virtue is that it chooses, but its fatal flaw is that it does not stay. Once the fire moves on, the one who was adored is left exposed, while Eros seeks its next object. It is an obsession mistaken for transcendence, and it is not difficult to see how such a framework can slide into exploitation.

By contrast, the Judeo-Christian understanding of love, ahavah or agape, answers a different question entirely. It is not the love of possession, but of responsibility. To love someone is to bind oneself to their good. It is the love of showing up, of providing, of daily fidelity. It is not spectacular. It is sustaining. And while it lacks the intoxicating intensity of Eros, it compensates with meaning.

For generations, Western marriage assumed the Judeo-Christian ideal that love meant responsibility. Yet, today, we often define love by how intensely we feel rather than how well we protect one another. It is no mystery why marriages are collapsing: many people no longer know what love is supposed to do. A love that cannot sustain daily life cannot sustain a marriage.

This agape-centered understanding shaped marriage throughout much of the Western world, including early America. Love was expected to make life more stable, not more chaotic. Feelings mattered, but they were not trusted to govern the entire structure. Desire without responsibility was not romantic; it was disqualifying.

This moral clarity is visible in the novels of Jane Austen, where romantic feeling is never enough. A man’s ability to govern himself, provide stability, and safeguard a woman’s future is not incidental; it is the test. Austen exposes Eros through figures like Wickham, who is charming, intense, and utterly unfit for marriage. Passion alone is not evidence of love; it is often evidence of danger.

Modern romance, by contrast, frequently reverses this logic. Intensity is treated as proof of love, even when it leaves women unprotected, abandoned, or bearing the cost alone. From wartime romances that confuse urgency with devotion, to paranormal and “dark romance” narratives that eroticize control and possession, Eros has reasserted itself, now marketed as destiny.

That is not progress. It is a regression.

Reading Symposium is worthwhile in the same way reading Naked Lunch is worthwhile. It is not nourishing, but it is instructive. It teaches you to recognize a kind of love that burns hot and leaves wreckage in its wake.

And that knowledge may one day matter.

Because Eros still walks the world.

And it is best recognized before it is mistaken for love.

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller based in Tontitown, Arkansas.

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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