The Philosophy of Love: Exploring Its Essence and Ethics

How Philosophy Contributes to The Understanding of Love

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Course and Course Code

Date of Submission

The Philosophy of Love and Its Ethical Dimensions

Love seems to be a primal force—elaborately defined as an intoxicating mix of jealousy, ecstasy, and care that is hard-wired into our hearts. This primal force is strong that none can imagine it can weaken. Indispensable, philosophy can be used to measure logic and theoretical speculations about love. when we brainstorm deeply about any world topic, it ends up with philosophical arguments. The same observations are made when dealing with love as a topic. Although their arguments mirrored culturally valued love types, philosophers such as De Bouvier Aristotle, and Kant explored love in their writings and established it fits into their theories of excellence, human reasoning, and freedom. In Greek, love is eulogized in terms of friendship. Philosophical researchers in the middle age reflected the love of God, which in the renaissance era shifted to romantic love (Cicovacki, 2017). Interrogating love continuously and drawing practical lessons on how to approach it in our lives is philosophical.

What Do We Know About Love?

In expressing the uniqueness of love, we find ourselves making statements that distinguish it from other similar qualities. For example, imagine someone saying it is not love, she is showing infatuation, or it is not love, he is just my friend. These statements draw a line between love and qualities such as friendship and infatuation (Cristaudo, 2017). Ideally, when accounting for love, we have to distinguish it from similar qualities such as respect, care, friendship, liking, admiration, obsession, lust, and infatuation, love, as an established definition (introduction), seems deeper and different from qualities often played by individuals to insinuate it. 

Whether love can be used in different ways is also an issue to think about. For instance, when we speak of loving a book, do we use the same concept as speaking about the love of a person? Absolutely no, since in expressing the two cases we may want to explain different types of love. The difference occurs even when focusing on love for different classes of people. While we express love between young couples as honeymooners love, for elderly couples, we simply say they love one another. In acknowledging different types of love, renowned world philosophers, including St. Augustine, Plato, and Aristotle differentiated agape (brotherly love) and philia (friendship) from eros (passionate desire). Other philosophers such as Susan wolf affirmed the ideas of early philosophers by stating that, despite the existence of different love types in early ages, they grow similar after a long time. The tendency of various love types to grow towards a convergence point with time shows the essence of love.

What is the Essence of Love?

When we use love, do we know what it means? The response given to this question has been a partial yes/no. In extending the ‘yes’ response, love seems to be a perfect example of emotional expression. Nonetheless, unlike destabilizing emotions such as sadness and anger, mental states are strangely changeable when expressing love. Perhaps, love can make a person swoon and daydream—though it can also drive them to feel jealous, confused, aspired, ambitious, and more. Essentially, love is a fount of many and not a one-man feeling. 

People can focus on love from different lenses. Looking at it as a desire to improve the life of our beloved, it depicts agape love. On the other hand, we may desire to be with our lovers physically or emotionally, which is a show of romantic love. These desires pull in different directions, creating a rift between agape and romantic love. Above all recognizing love might be difficult because the ability to see it in another person is hidden and we cannot realize how important lovers are to us. Simply put, love is ubiquitous, and as established by famous philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and St. Augustine, it can be given different meanings (Cobham, 2021). Some people might even perceive love to be inherently ineffable, but can be recognized using its ethics. 

What are the Ethics of Love?

In different contexts, the use of love seems like a moral danger. Sometimes people say love is blind since it beguiles actors into seeing the world wrongly. Indeed, the expression of unwavering love stops us from valuing people impartially. By weakening morals and swaying us into misjudging individuals, love seems to be contravening ethical requirements. Essentially, love also seems to be having a sophisticated relationship with our autonomy. It is linked to an inbuilt ability to control and direct our lives, which makes us feel responsible and free. In equal measure, love can also threaten our autonomy to the extent that we believe our lives can only be controlled by others (Cobham, 2021). This makes us relinquish control over small and big life decisions. 

Love is also perceived to be ethical in many ways. When we love others, it extends the scope of attention beyond ourselves, giving us more attachments to friends, strangers, and relatives. Therefore, people who ever love lose touch with self-interests and no longer become self-centred. Moreover, how we value our beloved equates to moral respect given to them. Loving simply means valuing and desiring that belove become successful, similar to what morality requires of us. In their philosophical writing, Plato and Socrates affirm that love uplifts us morally, especially when it allows us to see beauty and value in the world (Cristaudo, 2017). Love gives a reason to live and attend to chores. This makes us acknowledge that the world inspires things and houses wonderful people worth our protection and care. 

What is the Link Between Love and Philosophy?

The above-discussed philosophical ideas about love suggest practical lessons. First, love is depicted as a concept that is sophisticated and ubiquitous. The way thoughtful philosophers like Aristotle and Socrates never agreed on its qualities, people equally understand it differently (Cobham, 2021). However, the depth of disagreement matters. For instance, when someone says, I love you, they might be insinuating something different from what we imagine. It can mean commitment and togetherness, while we imagine they are speaking about desire and passion.

Again, love often involves susceptibility—in many cases making it a risk. Various features of love noted in the discussion, including value, care, desire, and commitment, are potential causes of vulnerabilities. Many times, love frees us to open ourselves to other people blindly, and we mistakenly show our intimate parts, hoping the care and support provided will be reciprocated. Surprisingly, we end up becoming disappointed human beings (Cristaudo, 2017). Pouring much concern, desire, and admiration onto someone, while simultaneously investing time, precious resources, and experiences, and feeling their pain are the true definition of love. 

To some extent, lovers respond to their vulnerability by exercising control. This can be healthy, especially when prompting oneself to make sensible decisions about life management (Cobham, 2021). This way lovers can decide when a relationship is harmful and separate or improve it. However, the dark side of the desire to control is that lovers may choose to respond to their emotional susceptibility by trying to control their partners. This can be toxic to them and may end the relationship eventually. For this reason, love can only last when there is care and respect.

In conclusion, love is a complicated concept that cannot be understood easily. While describing its qualities, world-renowned philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle, and St. Augustine differed substantially. The search for reality about love continues and the current scholars in this field are even looking more confused. As observed from the discussion, love can be understood from various philosophical perspectives, including definition as well as its essence and ethics. Love can only stand the test of time when lovers respect and care for one another.    

 

References

Cicovacki, P. (2017). Philosophy as the Wisdom of Love. Ethics & Bioethics, 7(1-2), 75-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ebce-2017-0006

Cobham, H. (2021). The Meaning of Life is the Pursuit of Love. Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol. 3, 144. https://www.philosophyoflife.org/jpl202108.pdf

Cristaudo, W. (2017). A philosophical history of love. Routledge.