The Purpose of Love Essay

Eros, desire, and love. These three terms can be easily confused with one another. However, they contain various characteristics that sets each one apart from the other. In the Symposium, by Plato, the men create speeches in praise of “Eros”. In these speeches they explore Eros, love, desire, what is desirable, what is worthy of love and even the concept of romantic love that we are familiar with today.

How does one define the word “love”, and what exactly is it? Is it merely a fleeting feeling, or is it something more spiritual in nature? Perhaps it has several different meanings, depending on one’s own personal perception and experiences. My own perception is that “love” in itself is an essence that almost all life on Earth harbors, and it is also something that all life has the capability of expressing. Although, the above statement may be too much of an optimistic statement, for the reason that there are individuals in this world who seem completely devoid of love, empathy, and compassion. Completely devoid of what makes a human – human. Despite this very fact, and despite the many harsh cruelties of humanity and society; goodness, love, and light will always prevail and cast out any darkness, violence, and hate. This leads me to believe that love is a pivotal element for the good in humanity, and that “love” in itself is more than meets the eye.

In Plato’s Symposium, he constructed a dialogue between peers at a drinking party regarding the art of love. After hearing speeches of others in attendance, Socrates presented the thoughts of his former teacher, Diotima, by recounting the speech she had delivered years ago. Diotima first dissected two manifestations of the phenomenon: acquisitive desire, which is a longing to acquire something of beauty, and procreative desire, which is the longing to reproduce in the presence of beauty, either in body or in soul. She then described the ascent of eros, discussing forms of love in terms of their nobility. This spectrum of eros’ nobility brought forth by Diotima is reflected in and expanded on notions brought up in previous speeches, particularly those by Phaedrus and Pausanias, resulting in a much more complex understanding of love, its results, and what it stems from.

Love is such a complicated word, it is so simple to see it as a simple math problem with a one or two letter response but in all actuality, love is much much more complicated. It is this thought that what we have interpreted here on this earth is one type of love and God has another type of love designed for us. In the book “The General Theory of Love” it discusses this idea of love through attachment and how the baby monkey if given a choice can choose whether it gets comfort and safety from one surrogate mother or food and nourishment from another. The result each time is the same, the baby monkey will select the surrogate mother of comfort and safety over nourishment and this result then creates this question of “what is love really?” (Lewis, Amini, Landon, 72).

Much has been said about love, but if you search the horizon, you will discover that most of the things written about love are either pithy or cynical.

The love story is one of the oldest and most cherished traditions in any world culture. The prevalence of romantic works throughout history, whether Greek myths, Jane Austen’s dramatic narratives, or today’s dime-a-dozen romantic novels, ultimately encourages us to believe in the power of true love. We identify with the archetypal star-crossed lovers, who combat established convention in order to assert their romance, because we too yearn for our own “happily-ever-afters.” When used in conjunction with reason, love is the highest form of compassion – without it, we could not possibly interact productively with one another or develop as individuals. But when we take a new perspective and examine love as an independent,

Plato’s Symposium discusses the ever-present, complicated, and enigmatic idea of love. Throughout the book, each speech gives diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas on the nature of love, its benefits, its origin, and the different types of love. Each speech builds on ideas that will lead to the conclusion made in Diotima’s speech.

Love is defined as “a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person”. Love is something that everyone has felt at one time or another in life. But nowadays people tend to use the word love so frivolously. Love is something people spend their whole lives searching for, while others fall in and out of love on a daily basis. Love is rarely defined because everyone experiences love in their own way. But in order to understand what love is, you must first understand some of the different types of love like fraternal, platonic, and romantic. These are a few types of love that help to define such a special and complicated emotion that we all need to live a complete and fulfilling life.

In the Greek Era, many philosophers tried to define love, especially one that was timeless. Throughout literature, there have various perspectives on love. In The Iliad, which was during the Greek era, there was greater importance on honor than love. In The Confessions, which was written during the early Christian age, there was a great importance for love of God. In Gilead, which is a modern novel, there is great importance for love in general, especially that for family. Out of all the Socratic definitions of love in The Symposium, Diotima had the most universal definition of love, which was “the desire to possess the good forever” (206A). To possess the good forever, one must reproduce with their body or reproduce with their soul. Diotima’s idea of the desire to possess the good forever through reproduction of the body and of the soul is present in all three sections of literature including The Iliad, Confessions and Gilead.

Love has many different meanings to different people. For a child, love is what he or she feels for his mommy and daddy. To teenage boy, love is what he should feel for his girlfriend of the moment, only because she says she loves him. But as we get older and "wiser," love becomes more and more confusing. Along with poets and philosophers, people have been trying to answer that age-old question for centuries: What is love?

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.

One can love a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins and friends, strangers, pets, the sunlight on a warm evening, reflecting through a prism, held by fishing line stuck to a little suction cup to a dusty window. You can love food from cake to roast beef, even those tiny individual candy bars that are never enough but just give you a taste of chocolate before you pop in the second one. One is able to love the feeling of carpet between toes or the tension in a hammocks string when you lay in that 'u' position swinging delightfully with each motion of your body. We can declare love for sounds coming from a stereo, love for that particular sound wave in coordination with other

What is love? The type of love I’m describing is the one that gives you butterflies when a certain person comes to mind. Just seeing that particular person can be enough to make one smile and make your day and all the worries go away. Right now that person comes to mind. It’s neither a crush nor infatuation and many are willing to do anything for this thing that is called love. Love can hurt in the long run, and people can also be blinded by it.

Love is difficult to define, difficult to measure, and difficult to understand. Love is what great writers write about, great singers sing about, and great philosophers ponder. Love is a powerful emotion, for which there is no wrong definition, for it suits each and every person differently. Whether love is between family, friends, or lovers, it is an overwhelming emotion that can be experienced in many different ways.

Love is a powerful feeling; it makes you do crazy thing. Many people spend years trying to find it, others give up thinking they’ll never find it. Love has been defined as an intensive feeling of a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. Of course, Love doesn 't have to romantic and/or sexual. People who are ace, as in asexual, aromantic and agender, can still be in relationships that are satisfying for them without the needs of a romantic relationship. Familial love is also non-romantic-sexual. However, in this paper, we will be talking about romantic-sexual love, what it is, and why I believe it’s so important to understand and experience.