“Love interrupts at every hour at the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds.” – Schopenhauer1 All of us that have been in love can identify with this quote, but the real question is how do we find, and choose our lovers? Schopenhauer would argue that making a decision, about an ultimate lover is merely biological. He believes in something he calls the will to life which he defines as “an inherent drive within human beings to stay alive and reproduce.”1 We sometimes even ask ourselves why him, or why her? We have absolutely no conscious say in the partner we pick, and that our animalistic subconscious picks our lovers. Yes, humans do romantic things with their lovers, and for their lovers to strengthen the connection like: picnics, expensive dinners, and rose petals on the floor. But the main decision is ultimately based on biological factors alone. The last thing you’re thinking about when getting someone’s number at a club is having a baby, but subconsciously that’s the truth .1 I will analyze Schopenhauer’s ideas of love, giving modern evidence, as well as stories of personal experience throughout the next few paragraphs. I believe Schopenhauer hit the nail right on the head when it comes to love (besides his idea of polygamy.)
I didn’t always believe that choosing our partner, was out of our conscious control until I met my current boyfriend Will. I also believed that we had complete free will when it comes to most things, especially when it comes down to picking lovers. But the conditions that we met under seem like they were planned out by something larger. It was two months before my 20th birthday, and I was looking up possible dance venues to go for my birthday. It took a whi...
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...d the same might go for you too.1 Just remember we are all slaves to the will of life.1 We are after all only animals, and it is wrong of us to think that we are superior to them in this respect. We may camouflage this ugly fact with ideas of romance, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are just like animals in the zoo. 1
Works Cited
1) De, Botton Alain. "A Broken Heart." Comp. Arthur Schopenhauer. The Consolations of Philosophy. New York: Pantheon, 2000. N. pag. Print.
2) "NEVER SAY ALWAYS." NEVER SAY ALWAYS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Aug. 2013. http://lornareiko.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/identical-twins-who-were-separated-at-birth-what-are-they-like/
3) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_08.html
4) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99473253
5) http://www.nature.com/news/gene-switches-make-prairie-voles-fall-in-love-1.13112
“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.” (3rd Edition, Page 218, Shelley)
went out of his way for it to happen. It was much more the will
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
In order to understand Schopenhauer’s philosophy, one must understand the concept of the will. Schopenhauer seems to describe the will as a blind force of our feelings, our thoughts, and our perception. The only way we see the world is through the will. We are limited because we only see our representation of it through the will, not the actual reality, the thing in of itself. For this reason the world is will, our will, and it has desires. These desires are insatiable, so life becomes defined by suffering. Suffering, however, is only our representation. The world in of itself, aside from our representation, has no suffering. Schopenhauer says the only way to escape the will, which is suffering, is through knowledge and art. There is a distinction between ordinary knowledge and pure knowledge, however. Ordinary knowledge, according to Schopenhauer, was a result of the will. Pure knowledge is actual contemplation of the world in of itself without influence from the will. This can only be attained through art that is able to separate us from our perceptions of reality and reach a state of pure knowledge. In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche responds to this by agreeing with Schopenhauer’s philosophy in that art is the way to avoid suffering. He argues that the art capable of ending suffering is tragedy, which is a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Based on the readings “Schopenhauer as educator” by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s “thinking of one self” and personal higher education experience I believe college level education obstruct the pursuit of true education. As humans, we enjoy patterns and repetition. The issue with uniformity is the fact we become experts at fulfilling expectations and not discover the true self. Schopenhauer embraced his uniqueness. Although it let him into a pessimistic mid set he accomplished his true self. Overcoming expectations is difficult and the fact that Schopenhauer was able to accomplish what was expected, he inspired people like Nietzsche to do the same. It is difficult to stay within the lines and follow directions blindfolded. It is actually more difficult
Fate determined the lover’s outcome in more than one instance. Romeo and Juliet’s fate is determined before you even get into the story “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their lives” (Shakespeare 1.1.6). An illiterate servant delivers the guest list for the ball and asks Romeo to read the list, coincidence…probably not (Asimov 480). Towards the end, the Friar sends someone else to deliver the message to Romeo but an infectious pestilence occurs and a quarantine of the city ordered that prevent the message from ever arriving. Also, at the very end the friar arrives two minutes too late to save Romeo from committing suicide (497). No matter how hard anyone might have tried fate would still ultimately win.
In life all humanity faces a struggle or heartbreak that seems almost impossible to make it through. In the poem Everybody Has a Heartache the author Joy Harjo discusses and introduces the opinion that everyone faces a heartache or blues. The author goes into detail about the different kinds of heartbreak that goes on in a variety of peoples’ everyday life. This poem was very interesting to me because the author chose very diverse and out of the normal heartbreaks for her characters to face rather than the normal heartbreaks that everyone can see. The author used several literary devices to establish an emotional connection with the readers.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (Ch. 2), Sigmund Freud argues that happiness is routed in two basic ideas: the first having to do with no pain and the other having to do with pleasure. Along with his idea of what the root of happiness is, he also describes multiple ways this happiness can be attained. Freud states that love and beauty are both means of achieving happiness. Although love and beauty cannot completely prevent all worldly suffering, they both offer a powerful explanation that can help an individual determine the true meaning of their life. In this presentation, we will argue that this argument succeeds because true happiness is difficult to come by in this life, but things such as love and beauty provide a basis for passionate strife in an individual, while also causing an intoxicating kind of sensation that may lead to a definite meaning to Earthly existence for a human being.
Tropp, Martin. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Schopenhauer, and the Power of the Will." Midwest Quarterly Winter 1991: 141-55. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 126. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
McDowell, Deborah E. "Philosophy of the Heart." Women's Review of Books 21.3 (Dec. 2003): 8-9. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale,2005.Literature Resource Center.Web. 13March. 2011
In the poem “The Broken Heart”, the narrator’s disgust of his own emotional response to having lost his first love is strongly illustrated as violent and malignant. Using terminology to define love such as “plague” and then referring to his chest as “shattered glass” is what creates the emotion that the narrator is looking for. The narrator even goes far enough to call love a “tyrant” who steals hearts and destroys them. By using words with heavy and negative connotations, love loses the idealistic softness that is it typically known as and takes on a meaning akin to something a fearful as death. By creating the illusion that love has broken him and all he has remaining are the fragments of his “love”, he completely ignores the blame of the
How are humans able to hate something they desire so badly? Love is something each and every individual seeks throughout their lifetime. Yet in some instances, love can hurt those who have fallen prey to their significant other. This is because, love is an emotional, physical, and psychological roller coaster with rapid unpredictable twists and turns. In Aldous Huxley’s riveting novel Brave New World, the concept of love is nothing but a fleeting emotion locked away and suppressed in the back of everyone's minds through conditioning and drug use. However, outside of their utopia resides a reservation; a peculiar land consisting of “savages”, religion, and love. In particular, there happens to be a savage named John that finds love utterly distasteful.
Marrying because of romantic love is ill-fated because love is merely an emotion, and emotions are just a response of the limbic system of the brain being stimulated by the body’s attempt at regulating neural processes and the release of pheromones and chemicals. The release of such chemicals are caused by a random sequence of events, mainly the increase of one’s heart rate alongside the increase of respiration rate. This sequence of events is what can cause the “falling out of love” experienced by many, because the release of dopamine and phenylethylamine is not permanent and the high experienced quickly fades. For the feeling of love to last a steady chemical benefit of serotonin and oxytocin are required.
One of the most commonly asked questions throughout the ages is: What is love? While there are endless variations of the answer to this question, the closest answer can be found through another question: What forms of love exist, and when do they apply? By understanding that there are different types of love, and depicting the meaning behind them, people are better equipped to access the answer to the aforementioned age-old question. Love is a universal language that is the core of a functioning society. Therefore, it is, and has been, a hot topic, for people are relational beings and crave an answer: “The elusiveness of love, like that of lovers, has not discouraged people altogether: several psychologists have proposed to capture the essence
It’s part of life for people to find his or her soulmate. A whole world filled with a great amount varying personalities, lifestyles, cultures, and opinions. Us humans, have found a way to find our, “true love”. Unfortunately, that is decided through the influence of expectations raised in books and movies.