Analysis Of The Poem ' Against Love ' By Laura Kipnis Essay

Love is unique in its striking ability to be a driving force in dictating interpersonal relationships. It patterns behavior and orients individuals towards their distinct, unique attractions. According to Velleman, love penetrates deeper than one’s qualities; it extends to one’s rational will, or the essence of a person. To him, though love appears to have particularity, it is also a moral emotion. Kolodny subscribes to the relationship theory, asserting that an ongoing, interpersonal, and historical relationship with a relative is a part of the reason for love. In Kolodny’s view, the existence of the true self is irrelevant, as is the morality of love. Both Velleman and Kolodny disprove the quality theory; however, their perceptions of love and its morality differ. I believe that Kolodny is correct in his view that morality is irrelevant to love and that there must be factual reasons for love. Although it is enticing to believe that one is attracted to the essence of another, the essence is not motivation enough for love. The relationship theory takes into account the motivation needed to love a particular person from a historical, interpersonal, and ongoing perspective.

The idea of universal love is one that is prevalent in the media. With the news filled with grim stories and horror many people are calling to the idea of loving everyone. Tensions are high concerning race relations, gender discrimination, and sexual orientation. Many in the general public are calling for humanity to embrace humanity. Many in the general public are asking “why we can’t just love one another”? Stephen T. Asma tackles this idea of love in his article published in the New York Times. Asma discusses two different ideas about universal love before offering his own take on the subject. Just as Asma states, universal love is a myth and closer personal relationships should be favored.

Love is an intense feeling of affection, which every individual have had as an experience either in the past or present thereby referring or claiming it as true love. In order words, my question goes like this, does love seem to be true in a literary context, is there any emotional bond that actually proves love to be pure according to psychological criticism of ‘’Texts and Context,’’ book by ‘’Steven Lynn.’’ And can we see love as honest and true, if we answered yes to all these, then how can we relate it to our personal lives and what is our own definition of true love or real love.

In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

Love exists in the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro and in the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. in Munro’s short story the plot is that of a mentally ill wife, Fiona, who falls in love with another patient while her husband still tries to hang on to their old love. Her husband eventually wants to have an affair with the wife of the man his wife is having an affair with. Their love changed because of their circumstances due to ill health. Carver’s story discusses the different definitions of love due to the type and quality of relationships; everyone has a different definition. Love also exists all over the world within different environments and cultures. The concept of love depends upon the environment in which it inhabits. Love is dependent on the life of the people in love and it also depends on their current environment. Nature and nurture are also huge factors into the development and process of love. What nature and nurture mean is whether it is due to how the person lives and acts along with their personality compared to whether it’s all in their genetics beforehand. Love is more on the nurture side instead of the nature side of human experience.

In our society, falling in love is viewed as an important aspect of one’s life. There are many definitions of love, some being deep affection, an intimate relationship where each person is seen as an equal, or a strong positive emotion towards another person. In Wild Seed, Octavia Butler describes love in terms of selfishness, a need to have someone for personal gain. In doing this, she questions whether love can really be felt in a genuine way. Using the concept of love, and defining it as looking out for one's own self-interest, Butler challenges the current definitions of love.

There are many different ways love is shown in today's modern society. Love is a mystical kind of emotion it can be used as a desire or it can be used to comfort. Love can be used in devious ways. Also love can be used to take control over somebody or be played as a game. In the passages “A Joke” by Anton Chekhov and “Never give all the Heart” by William Butler Yeats love is shown and described in different perspectives.

The ideas found in Andreas Capellanus’ A Treatise on Courtly Love have made their mark on the human psyche since its inception. The treatise defines love as: “an inborn suffering proceeding from the sight and immoderate thought upon the beauty of the other sex, for which cause above all other things one wishes to embrace the other and, by common assent, in this embrace to fulfill the commandments of love...” (pg. 1). By framing love as an obsessional and insufferable experience, Capellanus renders those in the midst of worshiping a paramour from afar helpless until their lovesickness is consummated. Because men and women are programmed to enjoy the act of making love, the text attempts to contain and formalize love through a systematic explanation of the private and passionate pursuit of a

The definition of love, along with the development of human culture, has evolved over time, and no one can ever dream of a life without being loved or pursuing one’s beloved. However, in the novel, The Book of Courtly Love, written by Andreas Capellanus, he lists multiple reasons for the negative aspects of love and shows his passive attitude toward pursuing love. It seems invalid because love is an essence of our social life. However, by closely reading his text, one can find that his ideas, which depart from the general understanding of love, surprisingly serve to build a better society. One question emerges: How do opinions reflected by “the rule of love” and “the rejection of love” promote social

In Marilyn Friedman’s essay “Romantic Love and Personal Autonomy” she defines the ideal of love as: “A strong, complex emotion or feeling causing one both to appreciate, delight in, or crave the presence or possession of another and to please or promote the welfare of another” (taken from the Funk and Wagnalls’ Standard Dictionary of the English Language). Romantic love is a special subset of this, which has an additional erotic component. Friedman writes in the context of autonomy and gender roles of heterosexual relationships, but this fails to encompass the complete reality of modern romantic love. I take it that Friedman’s purpose in her essay is not to define love, but with such a narrow conceptualization her arguments on the loss of autonomy in romantic partnerships cannot hold outside of the scope of monogamous, heterosexual relationships. My purpose here is not to defend or refute the arguments of her paper; my purpose is to expand upon the ideal of a romantic love in such a way that it includes all romantic partnerships and does not involve a sacrifice of autonomy from any individual involved.

In M. Scott Peck’s work, The Road Less Traveled, he says “Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words” (81). He also seeks to define love as “The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's personal growth” (81). For Peck, he recognizes that the nature of love is so mysterious that a true satisfactory definition of love has yet to be created and suspects his own definition to be inadequate. He also recognizes that love is categorically vast in that it is divided into eros, philia, agape, and others.

Charu B. "Summary of “Love Is...” by Adrian Henri." World's Largest Collection of Essays! Published by Experts. 2012. Web: 5 Nov

Love within the modern society has taken on a flippant meaning, depending on the phraseology used around the context of the word. Love is used interchangeably with the idea that “I love apple pie” to “I love this new car” to the point in which the term love is devalued within our society. How can one say they love their spouse or children and not devalue the true meaning of this intent, when they claim to love apple pie as well? Within the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a careful evaluation of the love’s within the play will reveal the difference in the types of love one might feel to describe various situations and relationships. Within this evaluation, we can determine there are at least three distinct types of love displayed: forced love, which is no real love at all , romantic love or eros love and parental love or stergein love.

In “Against Love,” Kipnis explores the connection between love and marriage, as well as the involvement of labor in domesticity. She observes that long-term partnerships have failed to preserve romantic and sexual attraction, since it comprises mutuality—which treasures compromise and restrains the freedom of married individuals. Love thus can be only obtained if one gives love—by corresponding to the ideal of one’s spouse.