What Does Pragma Mean

Many eons ago, back in Ancient Greece on Mount Olympus, it was naturally that time of year, in which all the gods and goddesses would find their one true love. Of course, there was a goddess of love and beauty, whose talent was much needed at this time of year. This goddess was named Aphrodite. Aphrodite helped people fall in love all the time, yet she could never find love for herself. One day, Aphrodite saw a happy couple holding hands and laughing. She started to feel bitter. She was upset since she could not seem to find the happiness of love for herself.

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.

Dating back to the early 1900’s and all the way through to the present, romantic relationships have been viewed differently. From strict unwritten dating regulations to not having regulations at all, recent generations have become more liberated in making their own decisions. The progressing times have made us become a more accepting society and have caused a decrease in the strong practice of religion and class. Even though differences such as religion and class in relationships were more than an issue they were not always a complete deterrence.

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

For the Canadian (Western European) case study, the concept of love or at least its modern interpretation began during the 11th century CE, with the troubadours of Provence, France. Before that, there was no true concept of romantic love only arranged marriages or marriages that would cement alliances. Now people marry strictly for romantic reasons were two people get together and eventually fall in love with each other. Most people want a commitment from someone to stay together. When it comes to the concept of marriage Western marriages are monogamous, that stipulates a union between two people. However, though, the concept of divorce is becoming more prevalent as time progresses and the idea of remarrying

Back in the eighteenth century, marriage was seen as a business contract without considering love as the main reason for any relationship. According to Ingrid H. Tague, an assistant

When he discovers that Roxane fancies his friend Christian, he does not steer her away from him; instead, he supports her. This itself is an act of Pragma. Pragma is the type of love that revolves around adoration and sometimes selflessness. The Greeks described pragma as making compromises and displaying tolerance. Cyrano chose Roxane’s happiness over his own, because he was certain that he could never truly fulfill Roxane’s needs.

“‘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.

The ancient greeks language had many different words for love categorizing the different types. With the theme love makes people do crazy things, they specifically point out the love between man and women. In ancient greece, it was frowned upon to let you relationships with others to dictate your decisions and actions for the greater good. Family was very important, but not as important as the rules, laws, and the gods. In Ode 4, the chorus says “Love!-you wrench the minds of the righteous in outrage,

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

In some cultures, people didn’t marry for love and those who did were looked down upon; whereas in modern times, it’s the opposite in many parts of the world. Coontz tells of a culture where,“A Taita man normally marries a love wife only after he has accumulated a few more practical wives” (255). This shows the different perceptions of marriage between the Taita peoples, who let men remarry several times in loveless marriages, and those of certain religions that forbade divorce, as well as today’s society where people often marry for love the first time around. The perceptions differed in that some societies believed in remarrying and marrying without love, while others didn’t. Coontz explains some very different marriage traditions than what Bennett says is normal and right-A man and a woman who fit traditional gender roles- as shown in his essay, “Complementary nature of men and women-and how they refine, support, encourage, and complete one another” (272).

However, this does not mean that married couples were not supposed to care for each other. Their love, unlike most modern relationships, usually developed because of the marriage instead of the love causing the marriage (54). While affection before a couple’s union could be beneficial, it was not considered necessary as the couple would learn to love each other as time went on. The amount of affection given to a spouse had to be kept in check as it was considered wrong to show both too much and too little. When someone appeared to care too much for their partner, Puritans assumed that they had placed that person above God (48).

The stark divide between love and marriage shown right the way through cannot be comprehended fully by the twenty-first century reader: in today’s society marriage and love are mutually exclusive - you very rarely get one

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

“Pragma” is a Greek word meaning act or deed, named in order to emphasize the fact that words derive their meanings from acts of some sort (stumpf 399). “Through thought, we try to fix our beliefs so that we shall have a guide for our action,” Peirce said.