Should Love Be Romantic?

Are you a hopeless romantic?

Is love a “special feeling” or is it something you learn how to do?

Should you be entirely honest with your lover?

Join the Syracuse Philosophy Meetup for our first talk on love: what it is and what it should be. We’ll anchor our discussion around a short and funny lecture by British philosopher Alain de Botton in which he presents his thoughts on love in the modern world. He argues against the idea of “romanticism” (which he thinks only came about in the last few centuries) in favor of a different notion of love inspired by ideas taken from ancient Greek philosophy.

It’s a quite funny and interesting talk - even if you don’t agree with everything (or anything), I think it’ll be a great starting point for discussion.

Some quotes from the talk include:

• “The way we love is very dependent on our societies.”
• “Let’s stop treating our partners as if they were adults, and let’s start treating them like small children.”
• “Love is an attraction to perfection, virtue, and accomplishment.”

Here’s a link to the video: https://youtu.be/jJ6K_f7oSdg?si=nuhVJY-z8yKQTOXL

We're trying out the Liverpool Public Library this time, and moving the meeting time to 1PM.

Happy (lovely) thinking!