What exactly is love, and does it exist?
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What exactly is love, and does it exist?
You'll get cynical psychology/neurology/philosophy students saying that it doesn't, but I think it does. The answer to that question is subjective, because you can never know what other people are feeling or thinking so if you yourself have never experienced romantic love you can't prove it's existance (I don't hear many people arguing against the existance of, for example, parental love because it's almost universal).
I think that we can know love.
My parents never loved me. At most they felt responsible for me, and maybe when I was little they thought I was "cute."Quote:
Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf
Do other parents love? Or do they all just use the word "love" because they feel like they should? I know what affection, respect, admiration, and so on, are, but what is love?
"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be" (Anna Karenina) ...
"To love is to suffer."
I suffer, but I don't love. Sometimes I wonder if love was another falsehood the idealists invented. It is a tempting thing to believe in.
You mean that you never loved your parents?Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
When I was too little and vulnerable to take care of myself I trusted them. I imagine all babies need someone to trust, whether or not they really love that person.
Trust is nine-tenths from love, the other tenth from honesty.Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
Love is something that you do.
whether it exists or not is entirely up to you my friend
One sign of love is when you are very angry at someone and willing to put your anger aside and compromise, meet them half way, or whatever, to move on from the conflict. It's like a natural process that occurs because there is love present and its reciprocated. It's a very frustrating process, but you do this because you want to be with the one you love.
Well, since the answer is subjective all we can do is speak for ourselves. For my part, if you're curious, I feel certain that I love my mother and father. For me, subjectively, love exists. Of course, if you've decided that love doesn't exist you might chalk my conviction up to self-deluding guilt. That's what's meant by "subjective," and that's why this question is impossible to answer.
It can't be helped.Quote:
Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC
Like all human constructs, it certainly exists. Most people just mistake lust for love.Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
Maybe love is what's there when everything superficial has been stripped away.
I'm not so sure if it is subjective, if it is the type of love that is shared between two people or a family.
I will say insouciantly that people who have fallen in love know what it is and that it exists and that people who have not fallen in love are the people who don't believe that love exists. Of course people who have known love can try and explain it to those who have not, but it will never be explainable, much like an individuals relationship with the stars - and the people who don't believe it exists can only ever find out that it exists by falling in love - there is no other way.
Of course "eros" is only one kind of love. The Greeks (and C.S. Lewis) also identified storge, philia, and agape (loosely translated as friendship, family love, and charity).Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
I think most of those of us who are parents would agree that philia is at least as powerful as eros. Read Alexander Hemon's recent New Yorker story about his daughter who died, for example.
I think the word love is so vague and general. In Arabic language we have more than 20 words to describe love according to its level and symptoms.
Here's a very special book written 1000 years ago on love . The translator says it's on Arab love! So if u think love is love since the dawn of history u can have a look at it.
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hazm/dove/ringdove.html
Right you are, as a son, I would also say that Philia is the strongest, but the Philia is very different to Eros - if anything Eros is like burning Magnesioum and Philia is burning coal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Love is love, lust is another thing.
What if the universe was created by a God who hated? Although I do not believe in any sort of Creator.
He can't have hated to create the Universe.Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
I know the power of philia! The strongest of forces!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Mateship is a kind of love.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta40
The 'good on ya mate' type? Cameraderie definitely contains an element of affection.Quote:
Originally Posted by G L Wilson
I was thinking more about mateship in war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delta40
No, there could be some perverted God who created the Universe to better inflict pain. Happiness also proceeds from that naturally, since someone who has nothing to compare pain to cannot identify pain as pain.Quote:
Originally Posted by G L Wilson
Where is the pleasure in pain without joy?Quote:
Originally Posted by cl154576
Love is animal. Some animals are wired to love as others are wired to float in the sea.
Beautifully put.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrowni
I disagree. Love is human. In other words, it's culturally constituted rather than hard-wired. That's why notions of romanitc love, familial love and charity vary from culture to culture. Since this is a literary board, it should be obvious that our notions of romance are influenced by literary archetypes, poetic and mythic traditions, and culturally constituted goals and ambitions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arrowni
This is not to say, of course, that there is not a biological component to love. Obviously, all mammals have sexual urges, and all female mammals must take care of their babies in order to reproduce (in general). Nonetheless, like many othe reductionist explanations for complex, culturally constituted behaviors, the idea that love is "hard-wired" is insufficient to explain the richness and diversity of our beliefs and traditions.
The love of freedom is certainly animal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Except that without the biological imprinting of behaviours which allow the construct of "love" to flourish, it wouldn't exist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
Unless you're saying that love is not material in origin.
Have you watched many mammals with their babies?
The chemistry of love is fascinating. But it is not everything in mammals.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
It is indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by G L Wilson
Correct. I never suggested otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by G L Wilson
I specifically mentioned mammalian behavior. No doubt we can "explain" love in biological, reductionist terms. However, such an "explanation" is trivial and superficial. The romantic ideals of one culture differ from those of another. Those of one person differ from those of another. Can we reduce the stories of Romeo and Juliet, or Lancelot and Gueneviere to some biological "explanation" of love? Can we determine why some cultures have arranged marriages, and others have marriages based on a romantic ideal?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Atheist
Obviously, without "biological imprinting" none of us would be alive to feel love, hate, or anything else. So what? The question is: which theories of love have depth and profundity in terms of explanatory value? Isn't the human approach to love sometimes different from that of dogs, or pigs, or rats? Aren't love poems and love songs only possible given culture (i.e. language)? Don't they influence how individuals see love, and the hopes they invest in it?
Reductionist explanations of complicated, culturally constituted human behaviors and experiences are not necessarily "wrong". Instead, they tend to by trivial. Anna Karennina had a biologically determined sex drive -- much like other women -- but that offers no explanation of why she had her affair with Vronsky and Kitty did not; of what hopes and dreams she invested in her affair; etc., etc.
Anna Karennina was a slut, that explains everything. Love in books is as longlasting as their paper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
You say "trivial and superficial", but admit that without the genetic imperative it wouldn't exist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecurb
That makes no sense to me - it's like saying that the supports of the Golden Gate Bridge are trivial. Aesthetically, they certainly are, but without 'em, it'd be rubble in the bay.