Philosophy of love - Wikipedia Philosophy of love From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Part of a series on Love Types of love Affection Bonding Broken heart Compassionate love Conjugal love Courtly love courtship troubadours Falling in love Friendship cross-sex romantic zone Interpersonal relationship Intimacy Limerence Love addiction Love at first sight Love triangle Lovesickness Lovestruck Obsessive love Passion Platonic love Puppy love Relationship Romance Self-love Amour de soi Unconditional love Unrequited love Social views Anarchist Free love Chinese Ren Yuanfen French Amour-propre Greek words for love Agape Eros Ludus Mania Philautia Philia Philos Pragma Storge Xenia Indian Kama Bhakti Maitrī Islamic Ishq Jewish Chesed Latin Amore Charity Portuguese Saudade Yaghan Mamihlapinatapai Concepts Color wheel theory of love Biological basis Love letter Love magic Valentine's Day Philosophy Religious views love deities Mere-exposure effect Similarity Physical attractiveness Triangular theory of love v t e Philosophy of love is the field of social philosophy and ethics that attempts to explain the nature of love.[1] Contents 1 Current theories 2 Western traditions 2.1 Classical roots 2.2 Petrarchism 2.3 Gallic scepticism 2.4 Western philosophers of love 3 Eastern traditions 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links Current theories[edit] This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) There are many different theories that attempt to explain what love is, and what function it serves. It would be very difficult to explain love to a hypothetical person who had not himself or herself experienced love or being loved. In fact, to such a person love would appear to be quite strange if not outright irrational behavior. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of love there are: psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider love to be very healthy behavior; there are evolutionary theories that hold that love is part of the process of natural selection; there are spiritual theories that may, for instance consider love to be a gift from God; there are also theories that consider love to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience. Western traditions[edit] Classical roots[edit] Setting aside Empedocles's view of Eros as the force binding the world together,[2] the roots of the classical philosophy of love go back to Plato's Symposium.[3] Plato's Symposium digs deeper into the idea of love and bringing different interpretations and points of view in order to define love.[4] From its riches, we may perhaps single out three main threads that would continue to reverberate through the centuries that followed. The idea of two loves, one heavenly, one earthly. As Uncle Toby was informed, over two millennia later, "of these loves, according to Ficinus's comment on Valesius, the one is rational - the other is natural - the first...excites to the desire of philosophy and truth - the second, excites to desire, simply".[5] Aristophanes's conception of mankind as the product of the splitting in two of an original whole: Freud would later draw on this myth - "everything about these primaeval men was double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces"[6] - to support his theory of the repetition compulsion. Plato's sublimation theory of love - "mounting upwards...from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty".[7] Aristotle by contrast placed more emphasis on philia (friendship, affection) than on eros (love);[8] and the dialectic of friendship and love would continue to be played out into and through the Renaissance,[9] with Cicero for the Latins pointing out that "it is love (amor) from which the word 'friendship' (amicitia) is derived"[10] Meanwhile, Lucretius, building on the work of Epicurus, had both praised the role of Venus as "the guiding power of the universe", and criticised those who become "love-sick...life's best years squandered in sloth and debauchery".[11] Petrarchism[edit] Among his love-sick targets, Catullus, along with others like Héloïse, would find himself summoned in the 12C to a Love's Assize.[12] From the ranks of such figures, and perhaps also under Islamic influences, would emerge the concept of courtly love;[13] and from that Petrarchism would form the rhetorical/philosophical foundations of romantic love for the early modern world.[14] Gallic scepticism[edit] Alongside the passion for merging that marked Romantic love,[15] a more sceptical French tradition can be traced from Stendhal onwards. Stendhal's theory of crystallization implied an imaginative readiness for love, which only needed a single trigger for the object to be imbued with every phantasised perfection.[16] Proust went further, singling out absence, inaccessibility or jealousy as the necessary precipitants of love.[17] Lacan would almost parody the tradition with his saying that "love is giving something you haven't got to someone who doesn't exist".[18] A post-Lacanian like Luce Irigaray would then struggle to find room for love in a world that will "reduce the other to the same...emphasizing eroticism to the detriment of love, under the cover of sexual liberation".[19] Western philosophers of love[edit] Hesiod Empedocles Plato (Symposium, Neoplatonism) St Augustine Thomas Aquinas Leon Hebreo Baruch Spinoza Nicolas Malebranche Jean-Pierre Rousselot Antonio Caso Andrade Sigmund Freud Søren Kierkegaard - Works of Love Carl Jung Anders Nygren Martin D'Arcy Irving Singer - Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up Arthur Schopenhauer - Metaphysics of Love Thomas Jay Oord Friedrich Nietzsche Max Scheler "The Nature of Sympathy" Erich Fromm, author of The Art of Loving C.S. Lewis, "The Four Loves" Michel Onfray, author of Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire (2000) Karl Popper Jean-Luc Marion, "The Erotic Phenomenon" Luce Irigaray, "The Way of Love" Bell Hooks - "All About Love: New Visions" Rita Rosson, "The Kamasutra" Roger Scruton - Notes from Underground Skye Cleary, "Existentialism and Romantic Love" Eastern traditions[edit] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2012) Given what Max Weber called the intimate relationship between religion and sexuality,[20] the role of the lingam and yoni in India, or of yin and yang in China, as a structuring form of cosmic polarity based on the male and female principles,[21] is perhaps more comprehensible. By way of maithuna or sacred intercourse,[22] Tantra developed a whole tradition of sacred sexuality,[23] which led in its merger with Buddhism to a view of sexual love as a path to enlightenment: as Saraha put it, "That blissful delight that consists between lotus and vajra...removes all defilements".[24] More soberly, the Hindu tradition of friendship as the basis for love in marriage can be traced back to the early times of the Vedas.[25] Confucius is sometimes seen as articulating a philosophy (as opposed to religion) of love.[26] See also[edit] Attachment theory Agape Diotima of Mantinea Eroticism Free love Intimate relationship Love Is... Roman de la Rose Sexual relationship References[edit] ^ Irving Singer (31 March 2009). Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-19574-4. Retrieved 14 September 2012. ^ Erotic, in Richard Gregory, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) p. 228 ^ Linnell Secomb (1 June 2007). Philosophy and Love: From Plato to Popular Culture. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2368-6. Retrieved 14 September 2012. ^ "Plato's theory of love: Rationality as Passion" (PDF). ^ Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1976) p. 560-1 ^ S. Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 331 ^ B. Jowett trans, The Essential Plato (1999) p. 746 ^ Aristotle, Ethics (1976) p. 377-9 ^ William C. Carroll ed., The Two Gentlemen of Verona (2004) p. 3-23 ^ Quoted in Carroll, p. 11 ^ Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe (1961) p. 27 and p. 163-5 ^ Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (1968) p. 20 and p. 26 ^ K. Clark, Civilisation (1969) p. 64-5 ^ Carroll, p. 31 ^ Irving Singer, The Philosophy of Love (2009) p. 40M ^ Irving Singer, The Nature of Love (2009) p. 360-1 ^ G. Brereton, A Short History of French Literature (1954) p. 243 ^ Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 39 ^ Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World (2008) p. 49 and p. 36 ^ Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (1971) p.236 ^ Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols (1978) p. 81 and p. 357 ^ Sophy Hoare, Yoga (1980) p. 19 ^ Margo Anand, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (1990) p. 38-47 ^ Quoted in E. Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (1973) p. 178 ^ Hindu Philosophy of Marriage[permanent dead link] ^ F. Yang/J. Taamney, Confucianism (2011) p. 289 Further reading[edit] Thomas Jay Oord, Defining Love (2010) C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936) Theodor Reik, Psychology of Sex Relations (1961) Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1992) Glen Pettigrove, Forgiveness and Love (Oxford University Press, 2012). Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love (2010) External links[edit] Love and Reasons (Special issue of Essays in Philosophy) "Philosophy of Love" article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Singer & Santayana On Love Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on love v t e Philosophy Branches Traditional Metaphysics Epistemology Logic Ethics Aesthetics Philosophy of... 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Related articles Jurisprudence Philosophy and economics Philosophy of education Philosophy of history Philosophy of love Philosophy of sex Philosophy of social science Political ethics Social epistemology Category Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philosophy_of_love&oldid=992312265" Categories: Philosophy of love Social philosophy Ethics Love Hidden categories: All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from May 2020 Articles with permanently dead external links Articles needing additional references from October 2012 All articles needing additional references Articles to be expanded from October 2012 All articles to be expanded Articles using small message boxes Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Languages العربية فارسی Français 한국어 Português ไทย Українська 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 4 December 2020, at 16:50 (UTC). 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