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2picklesan
I'd recommend C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, as a interesting commentary on the nature of love. Lewis explores love from 4 different perspectives on love from the Greeks.
1. Agápe (αγάπη agápē) means "love" in modern day Greek, such as in the term s'agapo (Σ'αγαπώ), which means "I love you". In Ancient Greek, it often refers to a general affection or deeper sense of "true love" rather than the attraction suggested by "eros". Agape is used in the biblical passage known as the "love chapter", 1 Corinthians 13, and is described there and throughout the New Testament as sacrificial love. Agape is also used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a good meal, one's children, and the feelings for a spouse. It can be described as the feeling of being content or holding one in high regard.
2. Éros (έρως érōs) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "intimate love;" however, eros does not have to be sexual in nature. Eros can be interpreted as a love for someone whom you love more than the philia, love of friendship. It can also apply to dating relationships as well as marriage. Plato refined his own definition: Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. It should be noted Plato does not talk of physical attraction as a necessary part of love, hence the use of the word platonic to mean, "without physical attraction." Plato also said eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. The most famous ancient work on the subject of eros is Plato's Symposium, which is a discussion among the students of Socrates on the nature of eros.
3. Philia (φιλία philía) means friendship in modern Greek. It is a dispassionate virtuous love, a concept developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. In ancient texts, philos denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers.
4.Storge (στοργή storgē) means "affection" in ancient and modern Greek. It is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring. Rarely used in ancient works, and then almost exclusively as a descriptor of relationships within the family. It is also known to express mere acceptance or putting up with situations, as in "loving" the tyrant.
1. Agápe (αγάπη agápē) means "love" in modern day Greek, such as in the term s'agapo (Σ'αγαπώ), which means "I love you". In Ancient Greek, it often refers to a general affection or deeper sense of "true love" rather than the attraction suggested by "eros". Agape is used in the biblical passage known as the "love chapter", 1 Corinthians 13, and is described there and throughout the New Testament as sacrificial love. Agape is also used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a good meal, one's children, and the feelings for a spouse. It can be described as the feeling of being content or holding one in high regard.
2. Éros (έρως érōs) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "intimate love;" however, eros does not have to be sexual in nature. Eros can be interpreted as a love for someone whom you love more than the philia, love of friendship. It can also apply to dating relationships as well as marriage. Plato refined his own definition: Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. It should be noted Plato does not talk of physical attraction as a necessary part of love, hence the use of the word platonic to mean, "without physical attraction." Plato also said eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros. The most famous ancient work on the subject of eros is Plato's Symposium, which is a discussion among the students of Socrates on the nature of eros.
3. Philia (φιλία philía) means friendship in modern Greek. It is a dispassionate virtuous love, a concept developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. In ancient texts, philos denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers.
4.Storge (στοργή storgē) means "affection" in ancient and modern Greek. It is natural affection, like that felt by parents for offspring. Rarely used in ancient works, and then almost exclusively as a descriptor of relationships within the family. It is also known to express mere acceptance or putting up with situations, as in "loving" the tyrant.
3Jesse_wiedinmyer
I thought love was the shit that people talked about when they wanted to fuck you.
4richardbsmith
Only Jesse could be so elegant. :)
5WholeHouseLibrary
I saw no elegance in Jesse's statement.
Love is hope without doubt.
Love is hope without doubt.
6reading_fox
I think that Hope implies doubt. If you're hoping something will happen, then you have doubt that it won't.
Love is - the mingling of hormones to promote a relationship stable enough for a child to survive to it's own begetting age.
Love is absolute trust.
Love is - the mingling of hormones to promote a relationship stable enough for a child to survive to it's own begetting age.
Love is absolute trust.
7Stevia
I think that although we might be able to say what love means in many different contexts, I don't think that it is possible to give a definition of 'love' which will adequately describe the phenomenon in its many forms. We know what we mean when we say the word, but that does not necessarily equal a definition. The usefulness of a concept is not dependent upon how accurately we can define it, but how well we USE it. See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part 1, sections 65-77.
8AtticWindow
Stevia, in this case couldn't love be used as a category, within which resides the many different forms of love you mention cataloged by type? For instance, 'love of pets' 'love of parents' 'love of friends' 'love of siblings' 'love of spouses'. It looks like if you provide a brief taxonomy such as this, then you can in fact give a necessary and sufficient definition of each type of love. Then love could just be a broad term for the category that these subclasses inhabit. It doesn't seem so far off from how we actually use it.
9AsYouKnow_Bob
Sorry to derail the conversation, but we can't contemplate the question without referring to this:
What is Love?
(edited to swap in a better version)
What is Love?
(edited to swap in a better version)
10AtticWindow
AsYouKnow, I think this video really captures the essence of what we're investigating here, especially Haddaway's superhuman dance moves at 2:15.
11cjbanning
While Heinlein defined it as putting another person's happiness ahead of one's own, I tend to define it as the holistic appreciation of another rational self.
13cjbanning
>12 paradoxosalpha:
No, I think that's being "in love"--something I've admittedly never understood as a model for romantic (i.e. companionate + sexual) love.
No, I think that's being "in love"--something I've admittedly never understood as a model for romantic (i.e. companionate + sexual) love.
14brianjungwi
I saw Bell Hooks speak once (she was fantastic) and she wrote a very nice book All About Love: New Visions
16royallthefourth
Heinlein sounds like he's making excuses for codependency.
As for the rational self of another person, why stop with the rational? It's the irrational parts of others working with and against their rationality that makes them interesting. I may as well love a computer if I want something only rational.
As for the rational self of another person, why stop with the rational? It's the irrational parts of others working with and against their rationality that makes them interesting. I may as well love a computer if I want something only rational.
17cjbanning
I didn't mean to say one lives only a person's rational side, but rather that one has to recognize someone else as rational, as a person, in order to love them. You cannot love a tree in the relevant sense, at least not without anthropomorphizing it.
18picklesan
Is love rational or irrational? Is there a difference between let's say, an ancient Greek/ Roman / Stoic understanding of love and Christian understanding of love?
19wirkman
Ortega y Gasset, essaying "On Love" (must reading), considers Stendahl's theory of romantic 'crystalization': "It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects non-existent perfections onto another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies. This is worse than declaring, as of yesteryear, that love is blind. For Stendhal it is less than blind: it is imaginary. Not only does it not see what is real, but it supplants the real."
For what it's worth, I think Stendahl is more nearly correct than Ortega. Most people, most of the time, love in fantasy, not reality.
This may apply, also, to many forms of parental love. Love has an evolutionary function, and that function may wag the dog. (Maybe.)
I enjoyed Lewis's book when I was young, by the way. It is a good inoculation against the ideology of romantic love, which, like the Santa Claus myth, somehow dominates society even as most folks realize its limitations in reality. But Lewis himself expressed a yearning for beauty, a kind of love, that he elaborated on in "Pilgrim's Regress" and "Surprised by Joy," and there he saw the yearning for the mythopoeic as some sort of natural sign of the reality of transcendent supernaturalism, an argument that I first saw as welcome (in that it bolstered my sagging faith), and then as pathetically lame (in that it bolstered my reasonably sagging faith).
In his "Allegory of Love" he states that romantic love had not been experienced before the Courtly Love tradition and chivalry and all that - romantic love being invented, as he said (memory I hope serving me well after 35 years) by poets and the spirit of that long-gone age.
That theory I hold to have less plausibility than Julian Jaynes's astounding thesis that humanity did not have a contemporary sense of consciousness until after a Mediterranean cataclysm some time after the period narrated by The Iliad and Gilgamesh - two artifacts of a previous age when the left and right parts of the brain spoke to each other directly, as if gods themselves were speaking.
For what it's worth, I think Stendahl is more nearly correct than Ortega. Most people, most of the time, love in fantasy, not reality.
This may apply, also, to many forms of parental love. Love has an evolutionary function, and that function may wag the dog. (Maybe.)
I enjoyed Lewis's book when I was young, by the way. It is a good inoculation against the ideology of romantic love, which, like the Santa Claus myth, somehow dominates society even as most folks realize its limitations in reality. But Lewis himself expressed a yearning for beauty, a kind of love, that he elaborated on in "Pilgrim's Regress" and "Surprised by Joy," and there he saw the yearning for the mythopoeic as some sort of natural sign of the reality of transcendent supernaturalism, an argument that I first saw as welcome (in that it bolstered my sagging faith), and then as pathetically lame (in that it bolstered my reasonably sagging faith).
In his "Allegory of Love" he states that romantic love had not been experienced before the Courtly Love tradition and chivalry and all that - romantic love being invented, as he said (memory I hope serving me well after 35 years) by poets and the spirit of that long-gone age.
That theory I hold to have less plausibility than Julian Jaynes's astounding thesis that humanity did not have a contemporary sense of consciousness until after a Mediterranean cataclysm some time after the period narrated by The Iliad and Gilgamesh - two artifacts of a previous age when the left and right parts of the brain spoke to each other directly, as if gods themselves were speaking.
20TheHumanMeasure
Love is an illusion. There is only the Self!
We shouldn't be here....
We shouldn't be here....
22LesMiserables
Love is an abstract noun.
23Gail.C.Bull
>22 LesMiserables:
I couldn't help smiling when I read your response. That's probably the best answer we've had yet.
If we're talking about love from a primal point-of-view, I'd say that love is psychological state that brings stability to social structures of all social species. The only species that "mate for life" are species that have complex social structures and travel in large groups (either family groups, packs, or herds), which suggests that long-term emotional bonding is essential to the success of a species that needs community to survive.
If we're talking about love from a meta-physical point-of-view, I'd say that love is the recognition of "self" in the "other". When I look at my past relationships, both romantic and family, I can see how the people I felt the most drawn to were the people who I could recognize parts of my own personality in. Sometimes it was a noble trait in our characters that we shared, and we brought out the best in each other. I liked myself and even felt proud of myself when I was with those people. Sometimes it was a less positive trait that we shared and we brought out the worst in each in other. I often felt ashamed of myself and my behaviour when I was with those people, and those relationships never lasted because they eventually spiralled into cycles of blame and frustration with each other. But the recognition of "self" in the "other" was the thing that all those relationships shared.
I couldn't help smiling when I read your response. That's probably the best answer we've had yet.
If we're talking about love from a primal point-of-view, I'd say that love is psychological state that brings stability to social structures of all social species. The only species that "mate for life" are species that have complex social structures and travel in large groups (either family groups, packs, or herds), which suggests that long-term emotional bonding is essential to the success of a species that needs community to survive.
If we're talking about love from a meta-physical point-of-view, I'd say that love is the recognition of "self" in the "other". When I look at my past relationships, both romantic and family, I can see how the people I felt the most drawn to were the people who I could recognize parts of my own personality in. Sometimes it was a noble trait in our characters that we shared, and we brought out the best in each other. I liked myself and even felt proud of myself when I was with those people. Sometimes it was a less positive trait that we shared and we brought out the worst in each in other. I often felt ashamed of myself and my behaviour when I was with those people, and those relationships never lasted because they eventually spiralled into cycles of blame and frustration with each other. But the recognition of "self" in the "other" was the thing that all those relationships shared.
24ueeiieeu
Roland Barthes's "Lover's Discourse" is on of the most essential texts about love, and also very recommended
25timspalding
Personally I've grown somewhat weary of the four-loves approach. It's a broken record in Christian apologetics. To the philological question, I think a modern philologist would shift the emphasis; Christians chose agape because it was "free"—a fairly uncommon and fairly blank term they could make their own. St. Paul's hymn to love (1 Cor. 13) does not so much use agape as define it. He made it a term of art. It's subsequent meaning derives from this.
For me, the most powerful description is that of St. Paul. It slices away much of what love is not, but not the way so many Christian apologists do. And he makes it the sine qua non of anything good you might do, especially in the spiritual ream. (I regret I fall short of it time and again, as my righteous anger in Christian groups demonstrates.) A large hunk of it was at the front of my (very secular) school's "chapel," so I stared at if for four years, and my best friend, a classmate, read it at my wedding. I particularly note St. Paul's point that "for now we see through a mirror in a riddle." As he says, what we know if partial. Love is the thing we can hold onto there.
Next to that, many of you will enjoy Martin Luther King's sermon "Loving Your Enemies" delivered in 1957.
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_loving_y...
As for the rest, I'm partial to Ovid's Ars Amatoria. Terrific stuff.
For me, the most powerful description is that of St. Paul. It slices away much of what love is not, but not the way so many Christian apologists do. And he makes it the sine qua non of anything good you might do, especially in the spiritual ream. (I regret I fall short of it time and again, as my righteous anger in Christian groups demonstrates.) A large hunk of it was at the front of my (very secular) school's "chapel," so I stared at if for four years, and my best friend, a classmate, read it at my wedding. I particularly note St. Paul's point that "for now we see through a mirror in a riddle." As he says, what we know if partial. Love is the thing we can hold onto there.
Next to that, many of you will enjoy Martin Luther King's sermon "Loving Your Enemies" delivered in 1957.
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_loving_y...
As for the rest, I'm partial to Ovid's Ars Amatoria. Terrific stuff.
26chg1
There are so many observations of love:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_love.html
but one of my favorites is:
Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
Blaise Pascal
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_love.html
but one of my favorites is:
Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.
Blaise Pascal
27nathanielcampbell
>25 timspalding:: For me, the passage from I Corinthians should be read alongside I John, because the ontological dynamic of God-as-love (which I think Lewis was too quick to dismiss in The Four Loves) informs our understanding of the human practice of it under grace.
