Greek Typology Analysis

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Classical Greek typology categorizes love into three types: Philia, Eros, and Agape. Philia includes the love of family and friends, and is often referred to as brotherly love. Eros deals with intimate love, and is named after the Greek god of love. Although extremely pleasurable, Eros is depicted as dangerous in Greek typology. Agape is described as unconditional love and is divided into two sub-categories: The love for god (Divine love) and the love for all human kind (Altruism). While Greek typology understood how to identify different types of love, Alan Soble comes up with a different approach to explain the types of love. In Varieties of love, philosopher Alan Soble distinguishes himself from classical Greek typology, by separating …show more content…
Unlike Greek typology, Soble doesn’t recognize Philia as its own classification, and instead categorizes it as part of Eros-style love. He believed since we have unconditional love (a-type), and conditional love (e-type) everything else falls into that category. In Soble’s perspective, an e-type of love deals with desires and needs moreso than unpredictable romantic intimacy described by the Greeks. Love is contingent on the merits of the object, therefore it isn’t necessary for Philia to exist as its own category. For instance, you don’t love friends you have never met at first sight, but rather through a gradual progressions of conversations and exchanges. It isn’t till you have recognized the value in the friend, love begins to develop.

A point of resemblance between Greek typology and Soble is that agape (a-type) is viewed as a form of unconditional love, from god towards us. An agape-type of love is viewed as one requiring no merits. Opposite of an e-type of love, an agape-type of love doesn’t have to recognize the value in the person before enlisting love. Love comes first, than the recognition of one’s value. Where classical Greek typology and Alan Soble ideas come into conflict would be how we reciprocate the unconditional love. According to Soble’s perspective on love, our affection to our deity would resemble an