The Importance Of Unconditional Love

Love is a supernatural force that unites two beings, whether they are the two most unlikely candidates or childhood friends, and it inspires hope in all. Homer’s The Odyssey is the tale of the epic hero Odysseus on his quest back from the Trojan War, and all the hardships he faces as a result of his decisions. Throughout the course of the book, love plays a large role, and is his fuel to return to Ithaka, his home. There are three types of love are presented in the epic; lust, which is purely sexual and lacks a deeper meaning, family love, such as that displayed between Odysseus and his men, colleagues and Telemakhos, and lastly there is true love, which is shown between Odysseus and Penelope, true love holding the most value and power over all other forms of love.

Agathon hosted a gathering for a small group of philosophers to talk about how they perceive love and what their own unique ideas are of beauty, virtue, honor, or anything else that may fall under the category of love. Eros, or Love, is a god that the philosophers have decided to praise with a speech of their own perspective. You get to see each philosophers different style and way of thinking within their speeches. All philosophers have agreed to drink while each other is speaking, but there is no pressure from one another or one’s self to drink excessively. The first to kick off the speeches is Phaedrus, an idealist, who believes that being shamed upon who you love most is of the highest caliber of embarrassment, even compared to relatives

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.

This contrasts both Phaedrus’ and Aristophanes’ descriptions of love. She broadly states that “a lover does not seek the half or whole” unless it is “good” because people will even amputate, or separate, part of their own body if diseased (Sym. 205E). Aristophanes argues “love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness” but Diotima explains this cannot be true if the other half is bad, even if it seems to bring wholeness, such as bodies with a temporary veneer of beauty (Sym. 192E). So, love must be explained by separating it to an upwards trajectory, rising towards the concept of good. Otherwise love is only an impermanent “promise” (Sym. 193D). Therefore, Aristophanes’ lack of separation from the concrete cause love to come from incompleteness and a fallen condition (Dutton Lecture). Likewise, Phaedrus’ speech lacks a removal from the present and therefore fails to explain love’s effects, as seen in his Achilles and Patroclus example. To Phaedrus, Achilles still dying after Patroclus passes is love, for “no one will die for you but a lover” (Sym. 179B). But, Diotima claims this love is unhealthy as it fails to represent the abstract notion of beauty. Since beauty is something to be indirectly experienced, it is unmeasurable and instead “preserves”

Love is an essential part of life. Every individual wants to be loved, and needs someone to love. It is an element that is fundamental to the well-being of all human kind; it is that magic that can heal wounds. However love also has the capacity to traumatize a person if it is extracted from their life. While we all wish to experience love, many of us tend to find the often inevitable detachment to be quite painful. In the novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby's longing for Daisy Buchanan leads him to his own downfall. Similarly in the novel Hamlet, Hamlet's extreme love for his father and his hatred towards his mother play a major role in his tragedy. In these works, there are a number of motivating factors that contribute to the downfall

Plato is often criticized for preaching the gospel of me first. The claim is that his understanding of love is essentially egoistic, and this is seen as troublesome for the obvious ethical reasons. But there may be an even more troubling issue with Plato's understanding of love. In this paper I will attempt to argue that for Plato, love is in a sense impossible; that it can only ever be a desire for something out of one's grasp. The stakes are high but perhaps there is a way to understand this problem in a way that seems a little less damning. To do this I will analyze arguments from the Lysis and the Symposium, first questioning even the possibility of love and then attempt to show that love is in fact possible, all though in weaker

Love throughout history has been considered an enigma with an emphasis on emotions such as compassion and appreciation; nevertheless as with most beneficial substances it is subject to fundamental flaws. Modern society is abundant in gossip, scandal, and misconception, all factors that ruin a legitimate relationship. William Shakespeare’s, Othello is a typical and most perfect tragedy that depicts a prevailing relationship midst blood, violence and revenge. The protagonist, Othello undergoes a transformation from a happy man to a disturbed beast as suspicion of his wife’s faithfulness to lieutenant Cassio intensifies. False rumors intentionally sprouted by good, trusty friend Iago bring about catastrophe as Othello jumps to conclusion and

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

“It is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value the most.” –Unknown. Countless authors have tried to display love as human nature, but no author does this better than the famous playwright, William Shakespeare. In both Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare exhibits how love can control a person. To understand how love controls a person, one must understand that human nature is the sum of qualities and traits shared by all humans. All humans have exhibit love in one way or another, which explains how human nature relates to the controlling aspect of love. In Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, conflicts between loyalty to family and friends, lack of trustworthiness towards others,

In calling love “a serious mental disease,” Plato inspired centuries of authors, doctors, and philosophers. Unlike romantic comedy movies and the Top 40 pop songs chart, which idolize love, literature frequently portrays it as a sickness. Both love and mental illness affect brain chemistry, mood, and behavior. In pieces such as Euripides’ Medea, symptoms of love range from mental illness-like ailments to physical manifestations such as a vanishing appetite, concentration, and apparent sanity. In Longus’ work, love is described as having similar traits. Throughout the story of Daphnis and Chloe’s pastoral romance, love drives both of them mad with longing. Love amplifies their innocent feelings for each other, resulting in a disorienting combination of depression and mania. The affliction goes deeper; their total devotion to each other and pastoral

with some very different views of love as brought to us by Agathon, Phaedrus and

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

Sophocles first displays the failure of love through the war and deaths of Polyneices and Eteocles. Polyneices, the brother of Antigone and Eteocles, has broken familial ties and gone against his own people, as he is a commander in the Argive army that attacked his home city of Thebes. With this background, Sophocles is able to reveal how anger can be a stronger emotion than even love as the two brothers met “face to face in a matchless rage” (195). Here it is emphasized that love can be overshadowed by rage and greed as both brothers neglected their shared blood and history and instead were motivated by a place of hate as they fought for power. Rage not only overtook filial love between Polyneices and Eteocles on the battlefield, but before this. Eteocles and Polyneices were unable to share the crown after their father Oedipus’ death. The fight for power ultimately led to Polyneices being exiled from Thebes. This fight for the crown functions as a smaller internal war between the two brothers. Both the internal and external wars allow for love to be exposed as fickle. Love is fickle as it can easily be transformed into hate and this is shown when to loving brothers are torn apart by a single quarrel. With love comes strong emotions and when these emotions are transformed to hate, such hate is unconquerable just as “love (is) unconquerable” (224).

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.

The concepts of love and sacrifice are closely related and feature consistently throughout literature. To study the relationship between these ideas in more depth I have selected a range of texts over an extensive time period, these include Romeo and Juliet by Sir William Shakespeare, Titanic by James Cameron, Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw and Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. The different eras that these texts explore will be instrumental in establishing the type of connection the two concepts hold in literature. The type of love and sacrifice varies however the underlying message is the same right through the texts, that humans in the right context will make sacrifices for love. How this is portrayed in the texts also differs yet