A comparative Study of Plato and Avicenna's Views on Love

The Comparative Study of Plato and Avicenna’s views on love is important because, we think, the origin of discrepancies on this issue in Western and Islamic philosophical thought has its roots in these two thinkers’ views. Occasionally, in Plato's theory, Love is described as a desire to possess the goodness and, sometimes, beauty. Therefore, Platonic Love is related to beauty and perfections of the beloved; so, it has some human aspect and cannot be considered as a God attribute and does not flow in the universe and cannot be explained but through anthropological issues. In Plato's theory, as love is to attain beauty, it has an instrumental nature. According to aforementioned description, Platonic love is considered as an object to attain the absolute beauty.
On the other hand, according to Avicenna's views, love has its roots in the knowledge of beauty; therefore, he maintains that love is one of the attributes of God which has some ontological aspect.