Relationships

The Reality of Love

Love. A word that has vastly been contorted in our modern language.


Most people would agree there is a distinction between a lesser love, a lust, a physical passion and a greater love, a more holistic interpretation of the word. The latter supersedes a simple animal urge, it is a connection to soul (mind), to the essence of what it means to be human. We are taught at very young age that it's shallow to pursue the former because people are more than the physical body that accompanies them. However we feel it is certainly impossible to love someone we have no physical attraction for. So now we arrive at a contradiction, we praise the greater love because it transcends the physical love, yet we say we cannot experience the greater love with out being attracted to our lover.


This is still because our understanding of the word is rudimentary. Even more so because our understanding of the world is rudimentary. The Greeks struggled extensively with this concept. Aesthetics was core of Greek culture and beauty was seen as a manifestation of the highest good. The goal of life was to attain this highest good and so they saw love to be of something. In other words a love of beauty which gave possession of the highest good. However they were ambitious in their pursuit and desired not only the highest good, but possession of the highest good forever. Now we arrive at the problem of a finite being with desire of the infinite. And so Plato decided to address this topic. Essentially in a short composition he proposed multiple perspectives given by different characters in order to show the popular norms and how they depicted love. Each character talked about a socially relevant rendition of Love and how it applied to their lives and moreover the rest of humanity. And Finally Socrates spoke.


As usual, he is a man of humility, and claims to know little. And so he tells the others he too wondered how they could truly achieve the highest love. He tells his friends of his journey to Oracle. There the oracle, Diatoma begins to answer his question,


"I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he who would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and then many, and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies he should proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and institutions, until he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and from institutions he should go on to the sciences, until at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all, and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir of immortality"


Love is to see the world fully. It is an attraction between all things (living or non living) , it transcends petty emotions. Love is not a conquest, it not something inclusive between two people, rather it is the state of being.


It is not a virtue of man but of the Whole. And in being part of the whole we embrace it.


- Clause Viter


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The Reality of Love


The Reality of Love
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