Classical roots The roots of the classical philosophy of love go back to
Plato's
Symposium. Plato's Symposium digs deeper into the idea of love and bringing different interpretations and points of view in order to define love. Plato singles out three main threads of love that have continued to influence the philosophies of love that followed. • The idea of two loves, one heavenly, one earthly. As
Uncle Toby was informed, over two millennia later, "of these loves, according to
Ficinos' comment on
Valesius, the one is
rational - the other is
natural - the first...excites to the desire of philosophy and truth - the second, excites to desire, simply". • Aristophanes' conception of mankind as the product of the splitting in two of an original whole:
Freud would later draw on this myth - "everything about these primaeval men was double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces" - to support his theory of the
repetition compulsion. • Plato's
sublimation theory of love - "mounting upwards...from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty".
Aristotle by contrast placed more emphasis on philia (friendship, affection) than on eros (love); and the relationship of friendship and love would continue to be played out into and through the
Renaissance, with Cicero for the Latins pointing out that "it is love (
amor) from which the word 'friendship' (
amicitia) is derived" Meanwhile,
Lucretius, building on the work of
Epicurus, had both praised the role of Venus as "the guiding power of the universe", and criticized those who became "love-sick...life's best years squandered in sloth and debauchery".
Eros in Greek, also known as
Cupid, was the mischievous god of love. He was a companion of the goddess
Aphrodite. Eros was known for sparking the flame of love in gods and men. He is known for being portrayed as being armed with a bow and arrows or a flaming torch. He is also known for being disobedient but a loyal child of Aphrodite.
Philia love is the type of friendship love. In Greek, this translated to brotherly love. Aristotle was able to describe three main types of friendships. These are Useful, Pleasurable, and Virtue. Useful is when a friendship has a benefit to it which is derived by desire. Pleasurable is based on pleasure that one receives. Virtue is when it is based on true friendship and not receiving anything from it.
Agape in Greek simply means love. The presence of agape love is when there is goodwill, benevolence, and willful delight in the object of love. This type of love does not relate to that of romantic nor sexual love. Nor does it refer to Philia type of love where it is a close friendship or brotherly love. What sets this love apart is how it involves the natural actions of spirituality, such as through religiously-guided generosity and compassion to all. ===
Petrarchism=== Among his love-sick targets,
Catullus, along with others like
Héloïse, would find himself summoned in the 12C to a Love's Assize. From the ranks of such figures would emerge the concept of
courtly love, and from that Petrarchism would form the rhetorical/philosophical foundations of
romantic love for the early modern world.
French skepticism A more skeptical French tradition can be traced from
Stendhal onwards. Stendhal's theory of
crystallization implied an imaginative readiness for love, which only needed a single trigger for the object to be imbued with every fantasized perfection.
Proust went further, singling out absence, inaccessibility or
jealousy as the necessary precipitants of love.
Lacan would almost parody the tradition with his saying that "love is giving something you haven't got to someone who doesn't exist". A
post-Lacanian like
Luce Irigaray would then struggle to find room for love in a world that will "reduce the
other to the same...emphasizing eroticism to the detriment of love, under the cover of sexual liberation".
Western philosophers of love •
Hesiod •
Sappho •
Empedocles •
Plato (
Symposium) •
St Augustine •
Thomas Aquinas •
Héloïse •
Leon Hebreo •
Baruch Spinoza •
Nicolas Malebranche •
Hegel •
Jean-Pierre Rousselot •
Antonio Caso Andrade •
Sigmund Freud •
Søren Kierkegaard -
Works of Love •
Carl Jung •
Anders Nygren •
Martin D'Arcy •
Irving Singer -
Philosophy of Love: A Partial Summing-Up •
Arthur Schopenhauer - "Metaphysics of Love" •
Thomas Jay Oord •
Friedrich Nietzsche •
Max Stirner "Egoistic Love" •
Max Scheler "The Nature of Sympathy" •
Erich Fromm, author of
The Art of Loving •
C. S. Lewis, "
The Four Loves" •
Michel Onfray, author of
Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire (2000) •
Karl Popper •
Jean-Paul Sartre •
Jean-Luc Marion, "The Erotic Phenomenon" •
Luce Irigaray, "The Way of Love" •
bell hooks -
All About Love: New Visions •
Roger Scruton -
Notes from Underground •
Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins •
Robert Nozick -
The Examined Life • Bennett Helm • Neil Delaney •
J. David Velleman - "Love as a Moral Emotion" •
Alan Soble ==Eastern traditions==