Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Philosophy of Love

Good Essays
698 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Philosophy of Love
Some people believe that there is no such thing as "true love" they believe that love is nothing but an illusion designed by social expectations. These people believe that love ultimately turns into pain and despair. This idea in some ways is true. Love is not eternal it will come to an end one way or another, but the aspect that separates true love from illusion, is the way love ends. "True Love" is much too powerful to be destroyed by Human imperfection; it may only be destroyed by a force equal to the power of love. Diotima believed that "Love is wanting to posses the good forever" In other words love is the desire to be immortal and the only way that we are able to obtain immortality is through reproduction, and since the act of reproduction is a form of sexual love, then sexual love is in fact a vital part of "True love". Sexual love is not eternal. This lust for pleasure will soon fade, but the part of love that is immortal, is a plutonic love. You can relate this theory to the birth of love that Diotima talks about. She says that love was born by a mortal mother and immortal father. The mother represents the sexual love, the lust for pleasure. The father represents the plutonic love that is immortal. Plutonic love is defined as a true friendship, the purest of all relationships. A true plutonic love will never die; it transcends time, space, and even death.

Platonic love is in my opinion, the most important and vital aspect of love. Without platonic love people are incapable of actually knowing the object of their desire. If no was able to have a platonic love, then the world would full over people how only desired physical pleasure, instead of that "greater good" that Diotima speaks of. This notion would agree with Rusoue theory of "free love." Rusoue believed that there is no such thing as a "greater good" and all love is, is just a need to feel pleasure, instead of a need to be loved. I disagree completely with Rusoue. I refuse to believe that love is driven solely by lust. This idea in my opinion is completely ludicrous.

Love is the most mystifying and complex emotion that we have. What's the difference between Platonic love, and Sexual love? Which love is real? What does it really mean when someone says those three words "I love you?" It's a common misconception that one is separate from the other, when in fact these two concepts go hand in hand. It's not possible for someone to truly be in love with another if they only have a sexually attraction. The only thing a sexual attraction is is a raw physical lust or desire, for a pleasure, that is not attainable by the limited expectations of a platonic love, therefore rendering this notion unworthy of the title, love.
Perhaps there is no such thing as sexual love. Maybe the only real and true love is a plutonic love. But then again how can platonic love be the only true love if the love is restricted by the boundaries that a plutonic love implies. Love is too powerful to be suppressed by social standards. So then again I ask, what is love? Perhaps love could be a means of escaping the emotional isolation that we desperately try to escape. Have you ever noticed how you could be around hundreds of people yet, still feel lonely? We are born into this dark tunnel, ignorant and alone. Sometimes the most popular people are in fact the loneliest of all because they don't have any real companions or better yet, that plutonic love. This love is the light at the end of the tunnel, with this we can see are way out, but we lack the desire, that need to feel alive, the need to feel pleasure, both physically and mentally. Then finally, we can find that person who embodies our desires and passions. Then, and only then, do we find that other soul, that other person in that dark tunnel; your soul mate.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    This discussion focuses on all the different forms of love, which is presented in the classical Greek typology. Using the Greek terms:…

    • 323 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Love could always lead to various outcomes. I feel like Rokujō is the most affectionate woman in the tale. She loves Genji with her truest heart, but Genji is very fickle in love, and his capriciousness makes Rokujō’s love turns into hate involuntarily. Rokujō is supposed to have a splendor life and live without any worries. She is intelligent and brilliant, and she is supposed to be the future Empress. However, everything has been changed after her husband died, and her affair with Genji turns her life into misery and tragedy.…

    • 286 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are three stories that I loved in particular during this quarter. The Things They Carried, A Roman Incident, and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. These three stories carried a lot of emotion and excitement. They all have different plots and backgrounds, but for the most part, there are so much in common between these three stories in a psychological, socio/political, spiritual, queer, and feminist lens. Besides those examples, the one thing that connects these three the most is that the reader can find love in all of the stories.…

    • 1527 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Diotima

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Throughout the course of the speech, Socrates describes love based upon an interaction with a woman named Diotima. After explaining to Socrates that good and bad and beautiful and ugly are more of a grey concept as opposed to a clear cut concept, she tells Socrates that love is a “great spirit” whose purpose is to fill the unknown space between humans and gods. Diotima then tells Socrates of the origin of Love, following Aphrodite’s birth, and how it relates to Love’s parents, the Penia, the embodiment of poverty, and Poros, the cunning and beautiful son of Metis. Additionally, she explains love as a cycle of continuous birth and death. She explains to Socrates that love is neither wise, nor ignorant which further illustrates her claim of love’s equivocalness.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Taxonomy of Love

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages

    That leads to Paris’ death. The battle begins by Paris saying “I do defy thy conjuration/ and apprehend thee for a felon here”./ Romeo then says “Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!”/…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Socrates is known as the lover of wisdom and the lover of beauty. His speech is a response to Agathon who comically states that love is beautiful and young, the opposite of Socrates. Socrates inquires is love considered to be a love of something or of nothing? He compares that to how a father is a father to his children and a brother is a brother to his siblings. Socrates expresses that love’s desire suggests that one does not own what he or she loves. Socrates further explains this by giving the example of a healthy man having the desire to remain healthy. One’s desire for things is for the future. The desire rests in the preservation and not the lack thereof. This statement of love being a love of something shows that there is a connection…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This also suggests in the symposium about to the reader to understand Socrates version of love through the viewpoints of Diotima. He states,” Because he the son of Resource and Poverty, Love’s situation is like this. First of all, he’s always poor; far from being sensitive and beautiful. As it commonly supposed, he tough, with hardened skin, without shoes or home. He always sleeps rough, on the ground, with no bed, lying in doorways and by roads in open air; sharing his mother’s nature, he always lives in a state of need.…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    He introduces love as a broader term; it is what makes a person happy, and therefore one only desires good things. According to Diotima, Love is a spirit that mediates between man and gods and is therefore not a god. He argues that an ascetic life with passion for wisdom and beauty is the true Love. By saying this, Plato is rejecting the act of sexual love. This argument is in harmony with a philosopher's pursuit of truth. The ultimate goal is to live a pure life so that afterlife goes as smoothly as possible. The body is in the way, trying to disturb this process. Therefore, he concludes, the philosopher's search for wisdom is the most valuable of all…

    • 1616 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Remaining Introduction: For section I of my paper, I intend to compare two opposing arguments from Aristophanes and Socrates that transpired in Plato’s The Symposium. Additionally, section II will contain my reflection on love through examining multiple questions as I rationalize this fundamental feeling.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Symposium

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Diotima first probes Socrates on the nature of gods. Socrates agrees that all gods are beautiful and happy, and Eros, the god of love, loves all that is beautiful and happy. Diotima refutes this by dictating that it is of this very reason that Eros cannot be a god. It is justified to Socrates by Diotima, and later to Agaton by Scorates, what it really means to ’love’. It is agreed that love is the love of an object, a love than can also be described as a desire for this particular object. And as one can not desire something that they already have, love must be a desire of something one does not possess. If Eros, the god of Love, love all things that are beautiful and happy, that means Eros must not posses either beauty of happiness. Since all good things are beautiful, Eros must lack all that is good, and without goodness, how can Eros be a god?…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Antigone vs. Iliad

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages

    for example, or the love for a close family member or friend. There is also the…

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Progress of Love

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Plot: Woman gets call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly dissapointed that the mother did not have money. Description of the house follows, very high ceilings, old mansion it seems, with chimney stains, it has been let go. Jumps in time to narrators ex-husband making fun of narrator fantasizing about stains. Next paragraph is the father in a retirement home, always referring to things: ‘The lord never intended.’, shows how old people have disdain for new things, the next generation appears to be more and more sacreligious. Shows streak of meanness when ‘spits’ out a reference to constant praying, narrator claims he does not know who he is talking to, but appears to be the very pious mother. Following paragraph jumps back in time to when narrator was a child, she asks her mother constant questions about her white hair and what color it was, mother says she was glad when it wasn’t brown like her fathers anymore, shows high distaste towards her father, the narrators grandfather. Mother claims hate is sin, that it spreads throughout your body like black ink in water. Next paragraph jumps to older narrator, discussing her name, Euphemia, how they called her Phemie at home, but when she started to work she called herself Fame (hated her real name), dialogue between her and a bar guest, which is where she worked, at a bar in a hotel. Shows the type of place and type of people she converses with on a regular basis. After that the next paragraph jumps back to 1947 when Euphemia was 12 (so she was born in 1935), she was helping her mother paper the downstairs bedroom because her mother sister Beryl was coming to visit. Her mother…

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Psychology of Love

    • 2279 Words
    • 10 Pages

    You said that you think people are born with their destinies set. To a degree, maybe, but I also believe that when we are born, in front of each of us lies a series of projects...projects we can choose, or choose not to undertake. In choosing not to work through these, we seal our fate—we live our destiny. In choosing, however, to face and complete the projects, we open doors—not only for ourselves, but for others who will follow.…

    • 2279 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    "There can be no knowledge without emotion...until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours".(adapted from Arnold Bennet.) Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.…

    • 326 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Art of Loving

    • 3442 Words
    • 14 Pages

    In Erich Fromm's novel, The Art of Loving, the author tackles the task of defining what exactly is meant by the word love and what it means to love someone. He begins by presenting his theories on love and how they apply to the different areas and aspects of life. He then explains how these theories should be applied. The author's account is very convincing and gives readers a clear understanding of what exactly love is and how they should use his explanation in developing their own love lives.…

    • 3442 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics