Symposium And The Art Of Love

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.

Love is a powerful emotion that every human being has experience at least once in their life. There are numerous connotations that refer to this emotion, but there is only one kind of love that can make a person change completely in unexpected ways. It is the kind of love that consumes the soul and everything within. Mixed with excitement, adventure, heartbreak, happiness and joy; it is a big ball of feelings, all concentrated in one simple, yet extremely complicated necessity to have, protect, please and give all of oneself to that one person. In certain occasions, love can grow very intense and, consequently,

One of the most complicated experiences in life, love cannot be precisely defined, but some basic indications help to characterize the feeling. Love is a very deep, passionate affection one person has for another or a relationship of the same nature that implies a unique intensity of emotion. It requires an especially strong connection and compatibility between two people, usually identified by a total understanding and respect for each other and a fundamental similarity in ideology. Love can also be seen in the way it alters people’s normal behavior; when someone is in love, the object of their affection seems like the most important thing in the world, and they do extreme things for that feeling to be requited. Love cannot easily be

One of the overarching themes that spanned over the many books we read over the semester, was the nature of love and the search for meaning. Love is an inherent aspect of humanity, and while it is an often inexplicable and complex sentiment, it is intrinsically connected with mankind's search for meaning in life. Love often leads a person in directions that they do not expect, and this is obvious in the very different applications of love in different books. However, one common idea about the relationship between love, suffering, and wisdom, can be argued for based off the ancient texts that we read. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Antigone, and The Tale of Genji, love is used as a vehicle for wisdom through suffering and loss.

“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (Miriam-Webster 253). This quote has been used for centuries as both persuasion in favor of loving and also as comfort in times of heartbreak and loss. However, is this statement completely true, or does it offer false hope to anguishing lovers? In fact, are the rules and costs of loving and being loved so great that in fact it is actually better to never have loved at all? When pondering these questions, one must first consider the rules of loving and being loved to determine the physical, emotional, and psychological costs they entail. In order to do so, one could use Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love as a guideline for the rules of love.

Humans are designed to continuously change, constantly adapting to whatever obstacles may appear. This endless cycle of evolution can be influenced by a great many things such as stress, anxiety, or terror, however, there is one ‘thing’ in particular that causes changes: love. The power of love brings powerful men to their knees, give strength to the helpless, melt the iciest of hearts, and drive a sane person to the brink of insanity. Despite all these possible scenarios, humans choose to love. In the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by William Shakespeare, the short story ‘Duty’ by Pamela Rafael Berkman, and the essay ‘Love’s Vocabulary’ by Diane Ackerman, the authors show human development greatly influenced by love.

The Uncommon Idea of Love In “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love” by Stephanie Coontz, a college professor, author, and historian on the subject of marriage, the history of marriage and the idea of love was discussed. Coontz covered marriage from many times periods and many countries, such as Greece, France, and Chinese. She also touched on the idea of love and marrying because of it. Her main idea was, “But only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married” (4).

Dominick Benedetto Ms. West Final essay 12/3/14 What is Love? Love is by far the one emotion that has changed the life of everyone on the planet for better or worse. Whether it’s the love for a life long dream, the lack of love in ones personal life, or love for another human being, everyone has experienced this immensely powerful emotion in some way, shape, or form.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu Human history has been shaped by the two most powerful forces of nature: love and hate. There are plenty of real or fictional stories written about them. But love has had the most remarkable and positive impact on our history, because love represents kindness and compassion towards others. When we analyze the following quote: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage,” it tells us that love fuels determination, selflessness, bravery, and perseverance.

In Plato’s work Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausania, Eryximachus, Aristophane and Agathon, each of them presents a speech to either praise or definite Love. Phaedrus first points out that Love is the primordial god; Pausanias brings the theme of “virtue” into the discussion and categorizes Love into “good” one or “bad” one; Eryximachus introduces the thought of “moderation’ and thinks that Love governs such fields as medicine and music; Aristophanes draws attention to the origin and purposes

The following three authors Kate Chopin, Wislawa Szymborska, and William Shakespeare have written stories about love. All three love stories are very different from one another, yet all have the same theme. Everyone has heard the term love will make you do stupid things but does it really? For some people love is ridiculous and for others live to give and receive love. Love is beautiful thought in the following stories the authors express how some people settle for love, others do not believe in love, and some people will kill for love.

Plato’s “The Symposium” is the oldest source on love available in Kevin Reilly’s “Worlds of History: To 1500”; it paints a picture of different interpretations of love in ancient Greece and hints at how women were treated in this society. This story has been dated to 385 B.C.E. In it, Plato recounted an exchange between his teacher, Socrates, and several other men, who each shared their own interpretation of love. Pausanias, the second to speak, differentiated between Common Love and Heavenly Love. Common love, he said, was between a man and a woman, and was “of the body rather than of the soul.” He stated that only “foolish beings are the object of this (common) love…” Heavenly love only existed between a man and a young man and was more

The art of courtly love is difficult to pinpoint because there are many facets that extend into different areas. In the Pre-Raphaelite and Medieval periods, love was more formulated with rules, moral standards, and codes. Courtly love is often seen as the "love" practiced by kings, queens, and other nobility because of the mystique that surrounds legendary stories like Lancelot and Guinevere. Courtly love encompasses spiritual awakening, lust, passion, adultery, and religion; therefore, the art of courtly love intrigues as well as interests its readers.

Upon reading Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, I gained a better understanding of what love really is. Fromm’s book puts love into perspective. He begins with several facts with regards to the attitude in which people treat love. They are the problems of how to be loved, the object to love as well as the confusion between the initial experience of falling in love and the permanent state of being in love, which had a great impact on me, as far as thinking about what love is.

Love immediately evokes mental images of lovers pledging their undying love to one another, or a mother cradling their child. These images are indeed loved, however when people attach the word “unconditional” to love, it becomes a prevalent falsehood in both literature and man’s history. Oedipus by Sophocles, where a man’s incest and murder filled origins lead to his demise, and Medea, whose title character decimates all who have wronged her, by Euripides are prime examples of how there are some conditions, caused by ego, selfishness, and competition, that love just cannot survive. Although some would argue that people can love without stipulations, it is clear that no one is capable of unconditional love because to love someone is an action and people’s actions are dictated by self-service.