The Views on Love and Friendship - Essay Example

Henry Nabea # Philosophy # 9 March. Quiz What problems does Solomon identify in attempts to ‘separate different ‘’kinds’’ of love’? In Philosophy, one of the main rules of definitions is that, the defining term(s) should reveal the essence of what it defines. But due to the vagueness and complexity of some philosophical concepts, such as the concept love, applying this rule in defining these kinds of concepts is not essay. This is because it is very hard to give, actually, what constitutes the essence of these vague and complex philosophical concepts. This is the difficulty that Solomon faced in his attempt to define love and to separate various ‘kinds’ of love. Categorising various ‘forms’ of love requires giving both what constitutes love, and the differences between the various ‘kinds’ of love. And Solomon’s main challenge in separating various forms of love was to show how these various forms of love differ, and yet they have one common element that qualifies all of them to be termed as love. Solomon’s investigation on the nature of love revealed that all the feelings called love involve a strong feeling of affection or fondness. But this feeling of affection differs from one ‘form’ of love to another. For instance the affection in filial love is different from the affection in romantic love. Solomon, then, had to find the basis on which he would categorize the various’ kinds’ of the feelings called love. This is because the feelings called love differ in more than one dimension. Different forms of Love differ in their causality, object of desire, and their nature. Solomon, therefore, took all these differences into account in separating the various ‘’kinds of love’’. He separated the various ‘forms’ of love as the romantic love ( eros), the filial love (philia), and the unconditional love (agape). This form of separating different types of love puts into account every peculiarity of each form of love. Quiz. 2. How Does Diotima (as reported by Socrates, according to Plato) explain her claim that,’’ love is … for begetting and birth in the beautiful’’? There are two points that are critical in understanding Diotima’s view on love. First, for Diotima, according to Plato, love is divine. Diotima had an idealistic view of love and for him, true love or goodness/beautiful does not exist in unique, particular and individual things, but exists in the ideal love/beauty or goodness. What we normally term as love, is nothing but particular expressions of the absolute love. The absolute love is divine, and it is our object of love. When we love a particular thing, therefore, we love it not for its own sake but as an expression of the absolute love- what we love in essence is the absolute goodness/goodness. This point is quite understandable in the light of Plato’s idealistic Metaphysics. The second, equally important point in understanding Diotima’s view on love is the point that, for Diotima the reason we love is that we are incomplete and by loving we are make up for what is lacking in us. We love because we are not self-sufficient. Love, therefore, is for filling what is lacking in us. Against this backdrop, it is quite easy to understand her view of love as being for’’ begetting and birth in the beautiful’’. What Diotima essentially means, is that through love, we are able to achieve something that we did not have before. Since we are not complete, through loving what is complete, i.e. the absolute love, we achieve what we are lacking in. It is through love that a man and a woman get into a romantic relationship and through this kind of love a new offspring is born, i.e child. And through love of wisdom, we get to know what we did not know before; this is also, a form of begetting. Quiz. 3. Briefly explain Freud’s reasoning for his claim that ‘’ the behaviour in love of men today in the civilized world bears the stamp of psychical impotence’’. Just like Plato, Freud had a unified view of love, although, he did not conceive love as a divine reality like Plato. For Freud, all forms of love can be originated to sexual instincts. In his famous psycho-analysis, Freud viewed sexual drive as the strongest force in human beings, and as the force that drives all human beings actions. In this regard, even love, being one of the strongest human emotions has it genesis in sexual drive. This view of love sharply contrasts with Plato’s view of love because for Plato, love is purely divine. But for Freud love can be explained purely in scientific form, without any recourse to divinity. In this vain, the various forms of love that human beings exhibit, i.e. romantic love, filial love, and agape are just different modes of sexual love. It is sexual love that is expressed in various forms. For Freud, the romantic love expressed by a sexual intimacy between two people of opposite sex is the classic example of love. But love, in its various forms, and as a sexual drive takes various stages to develop, i.e., from childhood till one fully develops into an adult. And for this love to be well expressed and nurtured, there should be no cultural taboos and inhibitions regulating how we out to exercise and to express love. But in civilized societies, there are numerous regulations guiding how people ought to express love, and sexual intimacy is allowed only in a marriage union between two people of opposite sex. And in this kind of environment, sexual expressions outside marriage are suppressed. Due to these suppressions of sexual expressions, people develop a kind of psychical impotence, whereby mentally they are conditioned to view sexual expressions outside marriage as a wrong thing, and this in turn affect their sexuality Quiz. 4. What reason does Delaney Give for his reason that unconditional love should not be part of the ideal of romantic love or of loving commitment? Answering this question requires us first to have a good comprehension of these two forms of love, i.e., unconditional love and romantic love. The main difference between these two types of love lies in the fact that while romantic love is conditional, in the sense that there is always something contingent in our object of romantic love that attracts us and make us to develop romantic love towards the other person, unconditional love is purely a love that is not based on any contingent quality or character. The nature of romantic love is that there is a kind of merge of love between two individuals; it is actually a conditional form of love in that it is bound to change any time. Unconditional love on the other does not change; it is not based on any contingent reality. More often than not, unconditional love is associated with unconditional love. For instance in marriage, the marriage couples swear to love each other unconditionally till death does them apart. But is unconditional love, really, the ideal of romantic love? What is the relationship between the two forms of love? Delaney contends that, although, romantic love is supposed to be enduring and life-long, especially in marriage, it should never be idealized as unconditional love. The reason that Delaney adduces to support his position is that, since romantic love is conditional and based on a contingent reality, it can never be viewed as unconditional love which is not based on any contingent reality. The natures of these two kinds of love are quite different, and they cannot, therefore, be viewed as one reality. While there is a need for romantic love to be enduring and lifelong for the stability of the family in marriage, romantic love can never be unconditional love. Read More