Agape
Selfless, unconditional love — the highest form of love in Greek philosophical and theological thought.
The Meaning of Agape
The Greeks distinguished multiple forms of love: eros (passionate desire), philia (friendship), storge (familial affection), and agape (selfless love). Agape was relatively rare in classical Greek, but early Christians adopted it as the supreme form of love — God's love for humanity and the love Christians owed one another. Paul's famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13 ("love is patient, love is kind") uses agape throughout. The concept became central to Christian ethics and distinguished it from Greco-Roman virtue systems.
Symbols
Fun Fact
The "love feast" or agape meal of early Christians gave the word its lasting association with communal, selfless love — some churches still practice agape meals today.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Symposium
💭 conceptPlato's dialogue on the nature of love
Plato's Symposium was a philosophical dialogue set at a drinking party where guests give speeches about Eros — including Aristophanes' myth that humans were once doubled beings split in two.
Erotic
💭 conceptDesire, sensuality, romantic passion
Relating to sexual love or desire, from Eros, the god of love and attraction.
Philia
💭 conceptThe bond of deep friendship and mutual affection
The broad Greek concept of love between friends, family, and fellow citizens — the affection that holds communities together.
Neoplatonism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A late antique philosophical system teaching that all reality emanates from a transcendent, ineffable One
Narcissism
💭 conceptSelf-obsession, vanity, psychology
Excessive self-love or self-absorption, from the hunter Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection.
Nous
💭 conceptPhilosophy and Mind
The Greek concept of pure intellect or mind, the highest faculty of the soul and the organizing principle of the cosmos.
Apatheia
💭 conceptStoic Philosophy
The Stoic ideal of freedom from destructive passions, achieved through rational discipline.
Philosophy
💭 conceptLanguage and thought
An English word for the study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, and ethics, derived from the Greek philosophia meaning love of wisdom
Eudaimonia
💭 concepthappiness, flourishing
The Greek concept of human flourishing — the highest good achievable in a mortal life.
Kalokagathia
💭 conceptEthics and Aesthetics
The Greek ideal that beauty and moral goodness are inseparable — to be beautiful is to be good and to be good is to be beautiful.
Athanasia
💭 conceptImmortality
Athanasia was the concept of deathlessness — the fundamental divide between gods (athanatoi, the deathless) and mortals (thnetoi, the dying), which defined Greek cosmology.
Epicureanism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A Hellenistic school teaching that pleasure through modesty, knowledge, and friendship is the highest good