Philia

Love should be born and live in fields, just like wild flowers. Love needs to be nurtured by water, with no concern about where and when the next rainfall will take place. Love needs to allow nature to take its course and trust in the sustenance that its surrounding provides. However, love refuses to take the easy path. Instead, love decides to live in kitchens alongside irritated cooks, dirty walls and screaming infants with impatient mothers. Clearly, love would be better off without concerns, growing in a field like an iris, patiently waiting for the next rainfall. However, love chooses to exist in chaotic environments filled with discontent and discord.

There is a certain confounding bias or misconception in relationships as they, with closer analysis, usually lead to the idea that even honest characters act disingenuously towards their partners. But before one delves deep into philosophical thought on such vast topics of love and genuineness, it must first be defined. Genuine is defined from a simpld dictionary search as “truly what something is said to be; authentic” or “sincere” in emotions, while love is defined as a person’s “feel [for] a deep romantic or sexual attachment.” Additionally, from a religious standpoint, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not

If love longs to possess the good there are two possibilities, either man can come to possess the good or it can not. Now the good itself, the form of the good stands outside of the realm of human existence, it is not possible for men to see the form of the good. This can be derived from the worst

Love can be whatever one makes it out to be. From basic science to a complex philosophical or mystical idea. A person’s own unique experiences with love make it a concept that is so widely perceived and interpreted. Throughout her piece, Selections from Love 2.0 Barbara Fredrickson tries to broaden her audience’s understanding to a new idea of love. Overall, she claims that love is a biological need. The claim that longevity and quality of life might have lots to do with not only ‘clean air and nutritious food’ but also ‘your supply of love’ are accurate to a certain extent. A constant supply of love is needed for a better quality of life but it is not necessarily needed to live a long life. If the claim is taken to be true, then a weak supply of love would result in a person just existing and not living life to their fullest or connecting to other human beings; therefore, they would be incomplete without it.

Love is either a fickle crime or an ever-changing satisfaction of desire. For some, it can ruin even the brightest minds, while for others, there is never doubt that it is worth living for. Children grow up with fairy tales and anecdotes of wild love stories, enthusiastic over the prospect of love. Yet has anyone considered the negatives of those dreams?

The ability to love is possibly one of the most recurring aspects of humanity. Everyday people fall in and out of love with each other 's personalities, opinions and lifestyle choices. In his novel 1984, George Orwell depicts a dystopian, loveless society. The technology, newspeak, and doublethink force conformity on Oceania, the setting of the book. The lack of diversity in people creates a world, where there isn’t any reason to love anyone else. Family relationships that were formerly built with love, support, and loyalty are ripped away and replaced with distrust, anxiety and hostility. Sexual relationships no longer have love or pleasure, which makes them mean virtually nothing, except the hope of

Sharon Olds in "True Love" wonders about a true meaning of love in her uniquely written poem about a married couple. She hints that true love is about belonging to one another. That belonging or self-possession is reflected via ties of marriage. She further says that children, which are a product of marriage, only tighten marital bonds even more. The speaker starts her poem by describing two people having sex and looking at each other in a “complete friendship”. However, as much as the poem at first seems to have a positive meaning, the message appears to be quite opposite. In fact, “after making love, we look at each other in complete friendship" (2-3) sounds odd if used when describing the love between friends with benefits or a married couple. Friends with benefits contribute to unhealthy relationships that they are in, which is built on lust and only physical desire. Her poem, perhaps is an ironic portrayal of true love. A true love, if it even exists, is very difficult to preserve and can take a different turn especially within the marriage.

“Love is complex: considered simply in itself, it is neither honorable nor a disgrace-its character depends entirely on the behavior it gives rise to,” (Plato 183d). There are two different types of love that Pausanius refers to, which are the common and heavenly love. The common love is based on your love for someone for their body, sex or beauty making it physical love and desire for a person. Heavenly love is love for the mind such as your intelligence and strength, someone you can benefit from making one more wise. Any love that is encountered has a purpose whether is it the love between a mother and daughter or the love between a husband and wife. In the end, all love leads and is directed to virtue and improves the loved ones.

Philia is thought by most, to be the most prominent love. Philia is one of the four types of loves categorized by the ancient Greeks. Philia refers to friendship or non- erotic affection. Friend is a term that is thrown around loosely, but how do you identify a friend? A friend should be someone that is loyal, understanding, accepts you for who you really are, and someone that who shares the same work ethic as you. There are some people who would be around you all the time but are not composed of any of the characteristics listed. Why should you call them a friend? Time spent together does not make someone your friend. The title friend should not be an easy title to receive. Buscaglia expresses that in order to have any successful relationship you must be able to display honesty, understanding, forgiveness, and let go of jealousy. One would think that jealousy is only prevalent in romantic relationships, but jealousy exists in all human relationships.

life. It offers him a solace that contracts sharply with what he finds everywhere else, so he returns to it more and more, until he needs

We only call a certain category of those in love, lovers (Symposium 7) and in contrast with what Aristophanes had said about lovers being in search of their other half, Diotima argues that lovers love what is good. After all, the aim of loving beautiful and good things, of course, is to possess them, because the possession of beautiful and good things is wisdom and with wisdom comes happiness and happiness is deep-down what everyone is ultimately in pursuit of.

Philia, eros, and agape are three different Greek terms for the word. These three terms explain the different types of love a human being can acquire. Philia is a love of friendship, which is grounded in commonality. However, eros is a kind of love that seeks something from the other person or thing. Lastly, agape is the love that wills the good of the other and is completely self-giving. The meanings of these Greek terminologies, philia, eros, and agape, allow us to better understand and discuss our relationship with God and human fulfillment.

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.

For many of us who are in a relationship either by marriage or simply as mates can relate to the feelings they are exhibited within and around one when they are with or simply thinking about our mates. This feeling of security and belonging tends to increase our love towards each other, especially during times of pain and death. We begin to see the world of insecurity and being alone, a world of being abandoned and feeling useless. There are those who don’t posses a “soul mate';, and nonetheless they too feel an increase of love; the love of having a mate of being wanted and loved, and the feeling of not being alone.

Again, philia is another level of love and King describes it as “an intimate affection between personal friends, it is types of reciprocal love. On this level you love because you are loved. It is friendship” (King, 400). In another word, Philia doesn’t require the physical attraction and passion that is standard in eros rather depend on standard friendship. Philia love is deeper than eros, but usually non-sexual intimacy between close friends and family members or as a deep bond establishes by soldiers as they fight alongside each other in the battlefield. In fact, philia works on the idea that an individual loves because that individual is loved by someone else. Perhaps, the feeling of love that experiences between soldiers in battle