How do you know when you are really in love?And.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

And is love a form of sickness?

Whether loving a person or ideas or role models. How do you know?

Are you really in love what you are doing are really for the money?
Do you really love your wife, or it was just accident that you just wanted to start a family?

When I look at love stories whether in books or in films, I say thats not real, thats mere fantasy. As Aristotle said about Plato’s repulic, it is mere fantasy not real.

Does love develop through time and experience? How do I forget and abandon this feeling of love #-o ?

2

Yes to question 1! Actually I think the best way to look at it is two people working on some form of “mutual creation” - Forgeting is the tough part - but the absolute key- one of the hardest bits being to “fall in love”

again

  • with yourself!

Krossie

3

Why to complicate things?
Romantic love is just some chemicals working together.
Other “loves” have other psychological or biological explanations.
Really, I think its a scientific question and not a philosophical one.

4

OK here’s an experiment

Fall in love

Get dumped! (easy bit!)

Used advanced medical technology to produce a neural map of how you feel.

Use an awesome computer to map down to protien level

Use a universe sized computer to map down to DNA level

Use a computer which will not nor can never exist (probably!!) to map to atom level

(lets leave out the quantum one for now)

Look at the “output” a fantastic 3 d map of the atomic structure of your brain - maybe even a dynamic model giving you every atomic state…

Now don’t you feel much better…

Hasn’t the heart ache being explained very, very well?

Why its almost gone

Science is great!

But wait!

what?

But you’re still blubbing about something

5

Empedocles states that there are 2 prinicples that governs the universe, love and strife.

So love is a form of sickness. To fall in love is to create strife and disunity among the self, while uniting with the thing your are in love with. Creating a different unity or identity.

For the people who got dumped, this unity separates and creates what? A whole new identity has lost its arms and limbs.

Now , why would a person fall in love?

6

That seems more like a definition of dependency to me - i think they’re can be real synergy in relationships where both are enhanced (and not just in erotic relationships either!) e.g. you get extra limbs or maybe even a tail or a pair of wings! (speaking - metaphorically - well mostly!)

You don’t always lose them all on the break up either

Point 2 - who “falls in love” thinkin’ about breakups

  • Fuck I’m going fierce romantic
7

i dont think love has ever been properly defined. maybe because of the limitations of our language or just our inability to. but i dont know how we can all find out when weve achieved something if everyone disagrees on what love is in the first place.

romantic stories will give you an idea of what love can do or what its supposed to be able to do but its just a glimpse of what the experience really is. unless you want to define love as what romantic stories entail. then the shock of fighting constantly is usually upsetting.

you know youre in love when youre relationship with your partner or partners or the relationship of new ideas or role models fits into your own personality with minimal discomfort. i dont think its an emotional state of mind though. its a concept of mental achievement. like happiness. you can feel endorphines from drugs or naturally but understanding where it came from and agreeing with it… thats love thats happiness.

maybe… i dont know. i hate my life :frowning:

8

Thanks for your comments CBA, whose greatest philosopher is Sam Colt.

When you don’t think about it, when it comes about it hurts the most.
Like those who chases girls for fun, waiting for the right time to break up, no pain. While, those who are in a serious relationship, does not think of break ups, and the partner wants out, and bam, depression and tons of beer kicks in.

tell me am I drunk with my words yet.

9

Honestly Dan I went through my last relationship thinkin about and anticipating nothing else but the break up

  • When it happened that didn’t make it a micro fraction easier.

What I learned was holdin’ back won’t help your relationship at all!

If the relationship was good the breakup will be tough

  • you have to leap!

Krossie

10

i dont think this will ever satisfy anyones question of why but i think everyone cares more about the quest to get somewhere more than the actual end result. that the story book version will be more interesting than the scientific one.

id say for the experience but that would be duh.

11

I’ve been in love with Nurse Chappell in Star Trek for 30 years but she’s only got eyes for Spock even though he don’t want her, huh there’s bleddy vulcans for you…
I also fancy Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman and fantasise about staggering into her surgery with a rattler bite to my calf and she has to suck out the venom, then mother and pamper me afterwards…

12

Perhaps when you try to love someone and you fail you are simply becoming aware of the sickness which you have already had?

Deeper love tends to only exist within trust, and trust tends to exist only within honesty.

In a world of lies, it is no longer natural for one person to love the other deeply or purely.

13

:laughing:

I’d say that’s just physical attraction.

I’ve been talking more about spiritual attraction due to the understanding of the potential future of the other individual, recently.

14

Spot on Dan~! – You can think you’re in love and actually be imposing a whole load of your needs on some poor head who may find themselves responsible for your emotional survival.
Actually the “problems” (maybe not a fair word) were in you well before the relationship

But people may cling on to each other the more tightly as a form of “retreat” – love would probably not be the right word for this tho!

Krossie

15

I notice that most of the above posts have to do with eros. Romantic love might be the stuff of our films and pulp fiction, but across the whole of our lives eros is perhaps the most ephemeral and shallow of all of the many and complex ways that humans love. The ancient Greeks knew as much. They considered eros to be akin to a mania; a threat to their ataraxia. They understood that ludus, pragma, agape and storge form the basis of their deepest, most satisfying and enduring ways of loving; few of which are based upon physical attraction.

“Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name…”

John Donne, Air and Angels

If you’re a 16 year-old boy then I suspect you’re already confused by what I’m saying. But answer me this, do you love your mother because of her cute nose or her nicely shaped breasts? By all means, enjoy your intoxification with eros, only bear in mind that it amounts to a Dixie cup as compared to man’s Niagra of love. The love you have for your parents will likely deepen, even after they’ve died. Your love for the children that you will someday nurture is part of that Niagra. The pragma that you may someday have with your wife of twenty-five or so years is also part of the Niagra.

My favorite definition of love is the brainchild of philosopher, Harry Frankfurt.

“Love is the originating source of terminal value.”

Cheers,
Michael

edit: spelling

16

I think some really nice points from Michael
Maybe too many lads here and maybe a lot of us “in recovery”!
Mind you sustaining any deep relationships and friendships (It’s been observed to me that women especially put as much or more into friendships as romantic relationships - maybe this is a bit exaggerated??) still brings up some of the same issues I raised above - if stuff is “missing” in you and your always looking to recover it “out of another” - then it’s difficult for them - of course some element of dependency is always inevitable and eh er we’re back to psychology rather than philosophy

You learn a lot about yourself in relationships (all sorts) both successful and, maybe, more so with unsuccessful ones? Then there’s the deep long term ones yer stuck with good or bad – parents especially – who partly “made” you

and your lacks that you try to make up for
…wierd

Krossie

17

Love is often a sharing of various strength forms.
Strong lovers are the best ones.

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Praise to everyone’s insight. My sickness of the idea of love has gotten worst.

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Sorry Dan!

As to love I’m still a believer - it’s no more of an illness then anything else about us - It may spring from strength or weakness - tho’ I’d be
with Dan~ Squiggle that a love springing from an over flow of strength being the best.
Other people can never be crutches - in fact the constant need for crutches is a problem.

Krossie

20

Krossie wrote

Hi Krossie,

Such was the myth of Aristophanes, recounted at the famous drinking party in Plato’s Symposium. In this story people were once complete, that is, they had two faces and four legs, etc. But Zeus, thinking we had gotten a bit too big for our britches decided to cut us down to size - literally. So, we’re left today with a yearning to find our original partner in order to make ourselves whole again.

“They love each other, marry, in order to love each other better, more conveniently, he goes to the wars, he dies at the wars, she weeps, with emotion, at having loved him, at having lost him, yep, she marries again, in order to love again, more conveniently again, they love each other, you love as many times as necessary, as necessary in order to be happy, he comes back, the other comes back, he didn’t die at the wars after all, she goes to the station, to meet him, he dies in the train, of emotion, at the thought of seeing her again, having her again, she weeps, weeps again with emotion again, at having lost him again, yep, she goes back to the house, he’s dead, the other is dead, the mother-in-law takes him down, he hanged himself. With emotion, at the thought of losing her, she weeps, weeps louder, at having loved him, at having lost him, there’s a story for you, that was to teach me the nature of emotion, that’s called emotion, what emotion can do, given favourable conditions.”

I suspect you might be familiar with this piece, Krossie. It’s from the great Irish writer, Sam Beckett. It comes from his trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable (Beckett was amazing, and colorful: Stabbed by a French pimp he married the French woman who came to his aid).

But there’s a story for you, eh? That’s what emotion can do given favorable conditions. I don’t believe Aristophanes’ myth is accurate. That is, I don’t believe that we complete ourselves by loving. Rather, we open ourselves up to the world. And in so doing, in comes pouring loss, remorse and grief - along with sublime and transcendant joy. Love doesn’t complete you. It tears you into bits; beautiful bits.

Too bad, I’m just getting worked up and I have to go.

Best,
Michael