Theory of love

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Theory of love

Occasionally when reading I run across a phrase or sentence or paragraph, which really rings a bell for me. The bell may be recognition of the compatibility of the point to my own conclusions or perhaps the point caused an epiphany, or other reasons. When I encounter such a point I often copy it and store it in a file for later analysis. One such point is as follows: “Platonic idea that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love”.

My analysis of this sentence led me down a long trail over an extended period of time to an understanding of the meaning of the statement and to an agreement with the meaning of that statement.

When studying philosophy I had read some of Plato’s work and had a slight remembrance of one of his Dialogues in which he dealt with the subject of love. After some study of the particular Dialogue in question and some further study of Plato’s general philosophy I realized what was meant by the point made in the sentence I had saved.

Plato wrote, “An unexamined life is not worth living”. I find this a bit hyperbolic but nevertheless agree with the general point. Plato also argued that the giving and receiving of knowledge, the active formation of another’s character, or the more passive growth under another’s guidance, is the truest and strongest foundation of love. Plato judged that the basis of love is centered upon the mutual struggle for truth.

I would not attempt to explain why Plato’s Idealistic philosophy leads to this conclusion but I think one can find justification for this point of view by considering the nature of the parent to progeny relationship. Considering the nature of evolution one might easily discover that the origin of love could be observed in the obvious relationship of present day mammals. The educational relationship between the animal mother and their progeny are evident to the most casual observer.

I often watch the Discovery Channel on TV. As you probably know this channel often has a great documentary on animal life. Their audio/visual presentations give the viewer wonderful insights into the life of animals. Often the animals in question are large mammals such as lions, gorillas, monkeys, etc. I find verification of Plato’s theory every time I see the relationship between mother and progeny in these documentaries.

Evolutionary Psychology is based on the theory that all human psychological traits, such as love, must be traceable to our evolutionary ancestors. The source of love in humans is evolved from the mother infant relationship in early mammals (perhaps).

I find this theory of love makes sense. Do you agree?

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Symbiotic need. Perhaps the mother infant is by large the best example of love in humans. But I think need is the core of it. A mother is driven by need to nurture the infant the infant is driven by need to cling to its nurturing mother. Life is the ultimate need for both. Both gain life from this love.

Friends and family become symbiotic in different degrees or ways. We form life giving relationships. Our minds need exchanges our bodies need exchanges from others. This gives us life enhanced and the will to continue living. In all love relationships there is giving and recieving even if the relationship may be convoluted or perverted by normal standards.

But, the problems with love is lust. Lust is so close to love in feelings that it can be misinterpreted. one can lust giving false signals love to another and the one that recieves that lust interprets the lust as love. Human sentience has created a mess with symbiotic love.

Perhaps symbiotic love is the essence that we search for. I could be wrong and I am sure I will be told so if I am. :smiley:

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You are correct, need is the core of the matter. The instinct love is necessary for the survival of mammals. Truth for a lion cub is what is the correct manner to deal with a snake, or an elephant, or etc. All of which the cub learns from the mother.

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And to further the difference :laughing: Only a male would think of lust in only sexual context, even when they know lust is more than just sexual.

Coberst,

The lion cub learns from the older male as well as the mother, many times I have seen the male lion grooming and playing with his cubs.

Love is an inate thing when a creature is born to a social species. It is not learned. The ability to love is within from birth. A human infant clings to a special toy or blanket, it has emotional attachment to it. Remove it and it will scream, return it and it is happy. Now how can such an attachment be learned? It is a display of having the ability to create a social symbiotic love. Much like learning to walk. the ability is in the infant to walk upright, it crawls and pulls itself up practicing and learning to gain control over its physical body so that it will walk. It may also have to do with mimicing. what it sees or feels in regards to love and walking.

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I like your breakdown but for my personal experience i put it:

males: love = (#1)protection,(#2)lust
females love = (#1)nurturance,(#2)lust

I know for myself protecting those i love comes before everything, there is no thought to it, it is there. Women i have found very nurturing. I have also found woman very lustful. Women are lustful creatures, you can not leave that of the list. If a women is not satisfied with her physical attraction she will cheat, maybe even easier than a man will.

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kris

I agree love is an instinct.

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Truth for a lion cub is what is the correct manner to deal with a snake, or an elephant, or etc. All of which the cub learns from the mother.

Love is an instinct without which mammals would not have survived.

We have all kinds of ways to use the word love. If we remove all the contingencies we will find that in all cases the essence of love is an emotion, i.e. an instinct.

I love chocolate, I love mom, and I love April in Paris. Love is an instinct and love is an abstract idea. Remove all the contingencies and you are left with the emotion we call love. That feeling resulting from the emotion is really what we are speaking of. We attach that feeling to many things. Just as we attach fear to many things and these emotions help the species to survive.

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I dont feel love. I honestly cant feel love. I do however feel numb. I’m guessing this might be a personal problem, although feeling numb isn’t so bad.

Love for me, seems like an aberration. I dont feel like I need pity in this instance because I dont even know what I’m missing.

If I’ve never had it, I can never lose it, therefore I cant even begin to value it.

oh well.

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“Love” is not separate from its maker, in so far as blood is not a separate thing from the whole body which it flows through. In the same way that each organ comes from and has the SAME DNA within it, so too do “love” and “hate” come from and have in them the same source and are both made of the same basic priori.

Love or hate from a fool disgusts me. Each one is foolish.

But hate from a wise one makes me rejoice, aswel as love from a wise one; in either case the eventuality is of the same whole system.

Love as a universal specific – that itself would be a myth. Another idol of idealism. A word with so much glamor, an idol so ideal that it becomes “transcendent meaning”.

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“I love chocolate” ? The desire to eat something is not necissarily “love”.
“I love mom” – that bond and set of memories is generally allot, allot of sensations, persectives and ideas, which is not exactly or purely “love” either.
“I love April in Paris” ? Again, though a word is applied to it, the sensation and experience aswel as the goal is very different in every case.

The human species, in general, is unloving and self-hating. So much morality, so much “be right”, so much “do not”, and to even exist or feel anything at all requires first some sort of permission, as its priori is so bitter, so suppressive and so “reasonable” that it must gain permission somehow, and must make some sort of sense before it can be allowed to feel good about anything at all. That selectiveness was preceeded by and created from a sort of hatefulness which is only melted for a short time during the yea-saying madness of “love”. The twisted, twisted words and ideas surrounding this process are so thick that I will not bother to try to explain it, especially not to persons who will emediately misread and misunderstand what I am saying and besides this go on to forgetting what I meant only a few moments after reading this.

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I suspect that the instinctive feeling caused by love is displayed in our self love that is also our survival instinct. We call it the survival instinct but it is probably the love instinct as focused upon the self.

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Yeah, you could say that. So now it’s a mix of morality and “science”, the brain chemical, evolved evolutional survival, brain hemespheres, biology, mammals, behavior, etc.etc.etc. to help the species survive and being naturally selected.

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What are the emotions? The primary emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The secondary or social emotions are such things as pride, jealousy, embarrassment, and guilt. Damasio considers the background emotions are well-being or malaise, and calm or tension. The label of emotion has also been attached to drives and motivations and to states of pain and pleasure.

Antonio Damasio, Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, testifies in his book “The Feelings of What Happens” that the biological process of feelings begins with a ‘state of emotion’, which can be triggered unconsciously and is followed by ‘a state of feeling’, which can be presented nonconsciously; this nonconscious state can then become ‘a state of feeling made conscious’.

“Emotions are about the life of an organism, its body to be precise, and their role is to assist the organism in maintaining life…emotions are biologically determined processes, depending upon innately set brain devices, laid down by long evolutionary history…The devices that produce emotions…are part of a set of structures that both regulate and represent body states…All devices can be engaged automatically, without conscious deliberation…The variety of the emotional responses is responsible for profound changes in both the body landscape and the brain landscape. The collection of these changes constitutes the substrate for the neural patterns which eventually become feelings of emotion.”

The biological function of emotions is to produce an automatic action in certain situations and to regulate the internal processes so that the creature is able to support the action dictated by the situation. The biological purpose of emotions are clear, they are not a luxury but a necessity for survival.

“Emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage or disadvantage. Inevitably, emotions are inseparable from the idea of good and evil.”

Emotions result from stimulation of the senses from outside the body sources and also from stimulations from remembered situations. Evolution has provided us with emotional responses from certain types of inducers put these innate responses are often modified by our culture.

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I think it’s counter-intuitive, meaning that in order to love, one first has to detach. Otherwise, the object of our love is limited to being defined by our own illusory ideas of self and the resulting projection of its needs. In which case, the whole effort has little to do with the happiness and well-being of the other.

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Read on my essay on love. It’s related to what your talking about. ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=161961

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We must first create a better distinction between “lust” and “love.” I believe much confusion about the differences between these two concepts concerns how the emotional subject projects them. Though the emotion spawns unconsciously, it must still be projected through the conscious ego. (Or how else would we know we were feeling lust or not.) But the ego’s function is to make discinctions. So the subject encounters and object and through the subject’s ego develops an intense emotional attachment to the “idea” of the object. Yet eventually the subject will begin to discover the true nature of the object and will than either accept it for what it is, or reject it.

Example: A man and a woman meet eachother and decide to begin dating. After the inital meeting and a few dates, each person begins to form an idea of the other. Yet after furter dates, each idea begins to crack under pressure of the person’s “true” being. The initial emotional attachment to the idea would rightly be designated as lust. If true actualization of the other’s being occures, and is accepted, this we can call love.

Therefore, lust is an emotional catalyst causing desire for the false idea of the object. To love is to accept and embrace the true being formerly shadowed by the illusionary lust.