Ancient Greek Goddess Of Love

In Plato’s Symposium, sequential speeches praise the god of Love, but they stray from truth until Diotima’s speech provides a permanent form in which love “neither waxes nor wanes” (Sym. 211A). Through the speeches, love shifts from identifying with the concrete to the abstract, but still ultimately advances goals of present: Phaedrus sees love as helping “men gain virtue,” Aristophanes as only a “promise” to restore humans to their “original nature” and Pausanias and Eryximachus have to use two changing notions of love (Sym. 180B, 193D). In contrast, Diotima relates love as the closest humans can come to immorality, a future goal motivating us to seek completeness and an uninhibited timelessness. She uses this shift to explain love’s

Erotic love presents itself in two different ways—the traditional pursuit of a soul mate and a more abstract way—according to Nussbaum’s interpretation of Plato’s Symposium it has “two kinds of value [and] two kinds of knowledge” (Nussbaum 312). The first kind of knowledge and value is described by Aristophanes and Alcibiades, which defines love as the pursuit of wholeness. It constructs the idea that life is about finding the other half, Aristophanes explains a tale of traditional Greek mythology which reveals the concept of humans once being whole, but as punishment were separated into two beings, as a result life became the desire to become one again. Furthermore, Alcibiades contributes to Aristophanes description of love by telling his own life story of being unable to find his other half and describing himself as enslaved to love. Considering both accounts, Aristophanes and Alcibiades both share the common thesis that erotic love is defined by “[human] desire to be complete” (Plato 21). Despite Alcibiades contradiction of the theory through his fear of rejection, frustration, and loss; it is still prevalent because lessons can be learned from his hardship. Only through experience can this form of erotic love be understood. On a completely different page of understanding Socrates and Diotima argue the pursuit of being ‘whole’ is merely just a step towards the pursuit of erotic love. Socrates discloses erotic love as a ladder, starting with loving one person and progressing to loving the soul, eventually loving the form of beauty itself. Furthermore, Socrates argues loving the form of beauty exceeds the risk of frustration and rejection—the Forms are a constant that will never fail to please an individual. He believes the pursuit of knowledge through love’s desire for wisdom is the purpose of erotic love. However, his perspective is found to be abstract and complicated, his view is “removed from affection for concrete human beings” (Nussbaum 281). Particularly, it is difficult to understand his idea that human life could exist without jealousy, fear, affection and the emotions mixed with love. Ultimately, humans are drawn to relationships and connections with others; to introduce the notion that erotic love

Among the multitudinous biblical references to love, the most comprehensive and decisive assessment of true love comes in St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. He begins by stating that despite all of his faith and gifts from God, "if I have no love, I am nothing." (I Cor. 13:2) Clearly, Paul recognizes the importance of love. He goes on to define love in very explicit terms, telling both what love is and what it is not. Paul begins, "Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs." (I Cor. 13:4-5) The Apostle continues with the declaration that "love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth." (I Cor. 13:6) Recall here the biblical prohibition of cross-dressing (Deut. 22:5) and lying (Deut. 5:20) Disguise and deceit are far from the truth that makes love happy. The exhortation continues:

It’s not a emotional love that seize people strongly, like Francesca’s word: ‘Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving, / seized me so strongly with his charm that, / as you see, it has not left me yet.’ (V, 103-105) Instead, it’s a plan and action to arouse goodness of people. About God’s love, Dr. Eleonore Stump shared similar idea with me. He think ‘to love a person is to will that person good’ (p191)’, ‘For God to love a human being, then, involves his doing what it is open to him to do to ensure the most good for that person’ (p192) The arrangement of hell also proved this opinion.

Love is one of the main themes considered in classical Greek Literature. However, different scholars have demonstrated that love has diverse meanings depending on how it has been used. Love seems to have different interpretations by different people. Plato’s Symposium has presented different approaches about people and their understanding of love. In Symposium different people who include Pausanias, Phaedrus, Eryximachus, Agathon and Aristophanes present different speeches on definite and praise of love. All the scholars have rejected any form of romantizing sexual love and provided wisdom and passion to beauty as major explanations of love. The speech of Diotima’s outlook on love, and Aristophanes seem to be in conflict with

Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty. In Roman mythology, she is known as Venus. Many goddesses envied Aphrodite because she was so beautiful and irresistible. She could seduce any man or god. Aphrodite had an affair on her husband Hephaestus,

From Night came the Ether and Day, while the Earth bore Heaven and from Heaven the Ocean and divine beings of assorted shapes and sizes, some of who were hated and hidden by their father Heaven. Not liking this, Earth made a sickle her son Cronos used to cut off the genitals of Uranus which were thrown into the sea and gave birth to Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love. Now Aphrodite is not a women that we can really relate to real life women because so beautiful and so irresistible that men can’t stop wanting her. Aphrodite loved and was loved by many gods and mortals. Some are not moved by the powers of Aphrodite. Her love and desire sway even Zeus.

(1Cor 13:8 NKJV) states “…love will never fail.” and I believe it’s not just because it’s just a powerful emotion, but I believe it’s because it literally doesn’t have the capability to fail. If God is love then that means that without Him it would have been completely impossible to ever experience the expression of love or have a ability to understand what it is. Without God there is no such thing as love. He’s the source and inventor of it. When I talk about love in its purest form I’m actually talking about God, and when I’m talking about God I’m also talking about love. They go hand in hand there’s no separation between the two. Pure love doesn’t have the option to fail because it’s the embodiment of the person of Jesus Christ. In (John 13:35 NKJV) “ By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus shows us that the identifying maker on each one of our lives that shows the world were His disciples or that we know Him is because we will love one another. In (Gen 1:26-27 NKJV) ‘So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” God created man in His image, and if we take the lens John gave us about God being love we see we were made in the image of a love. We were made for love because we were made for Him and He is

Aphrodite the Greek goddess of sexuality, beauty and fertility is seemed as one of the most desirable woman in literature. According to Hesoid “she sprang from the foam of the sea after Crosnus cuts off the genitals of her father Uranus and threw them into the sea. So even at the early date her bring was touched with elements of mortality and erotiscm”. [Bell 54]

Today, we use a powerful word “love” to invoke some of the most passionate and emotional feelings to some of the simplest pleasures. But has the word love always been so broadly used? Today, love according to Merriam Webster Dictionary is “a feeling of strong or consent of affection”, but far back in time, there were many word used for love like, agape, phileo, and eros. To understand the full picture of the word love one needs to fathom dissect its past.

Love, published by Merriam-webster.com, can be defined as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; attraction based on sexual desire; or affection based on admiration, benevolence or common interests. The Bible says, “God is love.” (John 4:8,16). The Bible also states that love is one of the primary characteristics of God, explaining how God has provided us with the capability to love, since we are created in his image. To most of society, love is viewed to be special or even sacred. Love plays a countless number of roles for a countless number of people. Contemporary ideas about love, similar to the one’s previously defined, are more in alignment with the philosophies of Aristotle, and not of Plato. Aristotle

Aristophanes gives us his view on love by telling a mythical account on how human nature came to be. There were once three types of beings, male-male, female-female and male-female, which the later would be known as androgynous. They were each round with four arms, four legs, and two faces on opposite sides of their being and each pair had associated genitals. They could do anything they chose, walking or rolling. The gods thought that they were a bit too powerful but didn’t want to kill them because then the gods wouldn’t get their dutiful sacrifices. So Zeus said

Aphrodite overflowed with love and beauty. How could she not? She was the goddess of Love and Beauty after all.

Aristophanes views erotic love as a punishment originating from God (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 18). A punishment due to the fact that erotic love involves searching for our soulmate and until we find our missing half, we are incomplete (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 18-19). Comparatively, Alcibiades views on erotic love is shown in how he longs for his love interest, Socrates. Unfortunately, Alcibiades pursuit of Socrates fails and he experiences being rejected by Socrates (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 30-31). Thus, representing how erotic love can be cruel and is a risk that can result in feeling pain and suffering. Initially, Socrates view of erotic love started with the idea that we desire love because we lack an object of beauty or goodness (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 22). Through Diotima, Socrates comes to understand that his search for knowledge is inspired by love and as a result, he finds wisdom beautiful (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 23-24). According to Diotima, she views erotic love as existing somewhere “between ignorance and wisdom” (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 23). Diotima explains to Socrates that the truth about love is the desire for an enduring possession of the good (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, p. 24). According to Diotima, immortality can be accomplished through procreation or creating new ideas to educate the next generation (Solomon & Higgins, 1991, pp. 24-25).

Love comes in various types and forms. The same love someone might feel for a friend isn’t the same as the love a person might feel for a partner or a tv show or a family member. There are various terms for different types of love, Agape, Eros, Storge, Mania, Pragma, Ludus and Philia are the six main types of love that people experience. Agape is allegedly the highest form of love, it’s unconditional love that people will love the other person no matter what, it surpasses physical love and enters into spiritual love. Love for God or for one another. Eros is love that is of love and erotic or intimate love, in which it focuses primarily on beauty or physical attraction sexually. Storge, is a slow growing love for family, friends and commitment and similar interests rather than passion. Mania is the love of wanting to be loved and being extremely possessive and obsessively jealous, seeing themselves as special. Pragma relies on logic and background, the love type wants everything in their relationship to work out and everything desired to be filled. Ludus love is love that requires an aspect of entertainment from each other, and as long as the partners are interesting they will stay with them. Finally, Philia, is the love for ‘brothers’ or being in a team or group, working together and loving who they work with. The question is: What type of Love had the most impact for Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston? Tea Cake 's love had the most influence