Aristotle on Love – From My Perceptive

743 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay kinds of love

How should we look at love? It is merely a vice to be intimately involved with another person? Is it separated into superior and inferior types? Phaedrus, you have done a good job of conveying the strong emotion of love. Love is not a faint or weak thing. There are aspects of love which include much depth and are not for the weary hearted. Pausanias, you have well explained the sexual desires as a result of love. Love is complex, but not in a heavenly and common way, but all love is common. Love is a virtue. Love is good and pleasant. It is one single soul inhabiting two bodies. It does not judge. It should not be solely based on benefit, but the best kinds of love should be a mutual feeling. There are many different kinds of love. There is love of affection, romance, friendship, and unconditional love. The good thing about love is that it strives for a common goal. People love and want to be loved. It brings immense joy to those who can fully embrace it. Considering the idea that there are four types of love, some of these loves must be inferior and others must be superior.
Love of affection is the emotional outburst between two beings that is not forever. Affection can be compared a lot to lust. Lust is a type of passion that can overwhelm an individual very quickly, but as quickly as it comes, it could fade away. Lust in less provocative terms is like having a crush on someone. Unless this type of love is reciprocated, it can never grow. There is only one way for this love to go. It will decrease over time because people love and hope to be loved in return. Without this, they will have no reason to continue feeling affection for this person and their feelings will wither away.
Romance and affection go hand in hand, but roman...

... middle of paper ...

...ve could falter or fail. Even if there was a rhyme or a reason against the person being loved, the lover would not give up on them. This is the strongest kind of love. It is not based on utility or pleasure, but pure unadulterated love.
There are many kind of love and all but unconditional love has its limits. Time and value play huge roles in these loves. They all contain some aspect of affection, but they are examples of what happens if affection grows. Romance is what happens when affection is reciprocated with sexual intent. Friendship is the product of when affection is reciprocated with the intent on bringing happiness into the relationship. Unconditional love includes affection, but it is mainly the love than cannot be unshaken. People can fall out of love, they can fall out of lust, they can end friendships, but unconditional love is the greatest of these.

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Love's Bond

    1435 Words  | 3 Pages

    Robert Nozick’s Love’s Bond is a clear summary of components, goals, challenges, and limitations of romantic love. Nozick gives a description of love as having your wellbeing linked with that of someone and something you love. I agree with ideas that Nozick has explained concerning the definition of love, but individuals have their meaning of love. Every individual has a remarkable thing that will bring happiness and contentment in their lives. While sometimes it is hard to practice unconditional love, couples should love unconditionally because it is a true love that is more than infatuation and overcomes minor character flaw.

    Read More

  • Two Types of Love in Plato's Symposium

    1223 Words  | 3 Pages

    I have always thought that there was only one type of love, which was that feeling of overwhelming liking to someone else. I am aware that Lust does exist and that it is separate from Love, being that the desire for someone's body rather their mind. In Plato's Symposium, Plato speaks of many different types of love, loves that can be taken as lust as well. He writes about seven different points of view on love coming from the speakers that attend the symposium in honor of Agathon. Although all these men bring up excellent points on their definitions on love, it is a woman that makes the best definition be known. I will concentrate on the difference between the theory of Common and Heavenly love brought up by Pausanias and the important role that Diotima plays in the symposium.

    Read More

  • Aristophanes Views On Love

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the Symposium, a most interesting view on love and soul mates are provided by one of the characters, Aristophanes. In the speech of Aristophanes, he says that there is basically a type of love that connects people. Aristophanes begins his description of love by telling the tale of how love began. He presents the tale of three sexes: male, female, and a combination of both. These three distinct sexes represented one’s soul. These souls split in half, creating a mirror image of each one of them. Aristophanes describes love as the search for the other half of your soul in this quote: “When a man’s natural form was split in two, each half went round looking for its other half. They put their arms around one another, and embraced each other, in their desire to grow together again. Aristophanes theme is the power of Eros and how not to abuse it.

    Read More

  • Interpretation of Love in Plato’s Symposium

    1776 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.

    Read More

  • Love: The Most Important Types Of Love In Plato's Symposium

    1248 Words  | 3 Pages

    When it comes to adultery, love is the most important factor in determining if it’s wrong or right. In Plato’s Symposium, love is discussed among Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes Agathon and Socrates. Pausanias is the most important when discussing adultery. Pausanias points out that there are two types of love, Common Aphrodite’s Love and Love of Heavenly Aphrodite. Common love is the root of adultery. It is the love that has plagued the whole world for the past hundreds of years. It is the love shared between two people only for their selfish sexual pleasures. While Heavenly love is the spiritual love between an elder and a boy that provides guidance, and I believe it is the cure for the devastating plague of common love. Most people share common love and have no real soulful love connection between them. In the Symposium, Pausanias refers to a love he calls the common love in which a person is more attached “to the body more than the soul, and to the least intelligent partners, since all they care about is completing the sexual act” (166). Which relates to adultery in that committing sexual acts with someone else’s body is ultimately meaningless if the person is not attached to the soul of the other person. I claim that adultery is morally permissible because having sexual intercores with someone else has little

    Read More

  • A Modern Romantic’s View on Love

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    Love – a simple four letter word shrouded in mystery and many different meanings. Philosophers, poets, and writers have all tried to discern the significance or concept of love for many centuries. Plato, for example, was one such philosopher who in his work the Symposium (which means “Drinking Party”) wrote about “Eros” – the term for sexual love in Greek. The Symposium was written approximately around 384 and 379 B.C.E., and follows five elite Athenian men as they pronounce their admiration of Eros while lounging on couches listening to flute girls play in the distance. Each of the men has different backgrounds ranging from tragic poet, comedian, doctor, playboy, and even Socrates himself (Norton). All these characters bring diverse views on the subject of love, and each speaker seems to build on the last enhancing the story. Times have changed so much since Plato wrote The Symposium is it possible to compare Plato’s ornate description of love to love in the modern world? Love today is much like love in Plato’s time, and I believe people today are still searching for their “other half” – the missing piece, for it is a complete love which makes us better people.

    Read More

  • Comparing Love In The Lottery And To His Coy Mistress

    1328 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is love? The age-old question arises once more. In truth, a universal definition has not been agreed upon, but generally one can define love as “an indication of adoration” or an “an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in interpersonal and sexual relationships.” Love can be directed towards kin, a lover, oneself, nature, or humanity- but regardless that love in an emotional sense is eternal. Some fall into love, and some claim they fall out. Love should be endless, lasting, and pure, but half of the time that love ends up being a sham. There is solid record of this false love- love that is meant to look pure- in the famous writings The Lottery and To His Coy Mistress.

    Read More

  • Socrates And Agathon's Best Explanation Of Love

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    Can one really know when one is in love? Buzzers and fireworks and confetti canons do not typically follow the harmonic sound of horns and violins that signal the occurrence of attraction. Can one really describe love? Compound the sheer difficulty of describing an emotion with the limitation of a single four letter word in the English language to explain all of the various forms. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates and an assemblage of Greek men gathered together to celebrate the poet Agathon’s victory in his first dramatic competition, decide to forgo drinking games for a symposium—a discussion on love. Unsurprisingly, it is Socrates who offers the best description of love, but not until every other attendant has had an opportunity to voice a view.

    Read More

  • Love in Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Love is said to be one of the most desired things in life. People long for it, search for it, and crave it. It can come in the form of partners, friends, or just simply family. To some, love is something of a necessity in life, where some would rather turn a cold shoulder to it. Love can be the mixture of passion, need, lust, loyalty, and blood. Love can be extraordinary and breathtaking. Love being held so high can also be dangerous. Love can drive people to numerous mad things with it dangerously so full of craze and passion.

    Read More

  • Aristophanes Account Of Love In The Symposium

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    I’m going to give you my view on Aristophanes, Socrates, and my account of love. Aristophanes speech on “What is Love,” in the Symposium was very interesting. I say this, because back then humans were more powerful, and knowledgeable than we’re today. Nowadays there’re a lot of things that we can’t prove about the past, simply because we don’t have any evidence or proof. Aristophanes says, “Humans once had four legs, four arms, two heads, and so on.”

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Love In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1631 Words  | 4 Pages

    Love is arguably the most powerful emotion possessed by mankind; it is the impalpable bond that allows individuals to connect and understand one another. Pure love is directly related to divinity. Without love, happiness and prosperity become unreachable goals. An individual that possesses all the desired superficial objects in the world stands alone without the presence of love. For centuries love has been marveled by all that dare encounter it. Countless books and poems have been transcribed to explain the phenomenon of love, but love surpasses all intellectual explanations and discussions. Love is not a definition, but rather a thought, an idea. This idea, the idea of love, burns inside us all. Instinctually, every soul on Earth is

    Read More

  • Believe in Love at First Sight

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    Love is affection, devotion, passion, desire, warmth, respect or loyalty. You choose. It doesn't really matter which one because they are all forms of love. Some are powerful and demand attention while others are more subtle and just below the surface. In recent years, love has drifted from these subtle levels to the more noticeable ones, namely passion. In my opinion, our society downplays the real necessity for genuine affection. By this I mean that we, as a society, spend so much time focusing on only one level of love (passion) that we tend to neglect and not recognize the need for closeness and trust (friendship). Love is an all-encompassing emotion that can be powerful and demanding, but also rewarding and pleasurable.

    Read More

  • The Definition of Love

    1038 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Definition of Love Love by definition is an emotion explored in philosophy, religion, and literature, often as either romantic love, the fraternal love of others, or the love of God based on the definition found in The Encarta Encyclopedia. As I explored the definitions through the Internet, books, and articles, I noticed the definitions changed quite a bit, but yet had the same basic understanding. The definition I found in The Encarta Encyclopedia is probably the most simple and most basic. It refers to love in the whole aspect, which is Godly, fraternal, and romantic. All of which can only be defined by one word and that is love.

    Read More

  • Pausanias Conceptions Of Love

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Different cultures and societies have various mental schemas pertaining to the interpretation and proper expression of romantic love. Additionally, over time many societies have changed the way they view love by adopting new definitions and revising previously held beliefs. In The Symposium Pausanias’ claims that there are two forms of love, “common love” and love derived from a “heavenly goddess” (Plato, 14). He stresses that love derived from the “heavenly goddess” is superior to “common love” because it involves gay love and because lovers aim to further their boyfriend’s knowledge and virtue. Although this might have been a prevailing idea of love in ancient Greece, I disagree with Pausanias’ idea of what constitutes ideal love.

    Read More

  • Interpersonal Relationships Essay

    1300 Words  | 3 Pages

    Love is an interpersonal relationship developed, maintained, and possibly destroyed through communication, but also can be enhanced by communication. Love is often described as a feeling of closeness, caring, intimacy and commitment between two people. There are six different types of love: eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania, and

    Read More

More about Aristotle on Love – From My Perceptive

Open Document