The Philosophy of Love

Topic:
The Philosophy of Love.

Chairperson:
Mary Kennedy

Moderator:
Spencer Sinclare

Meetup Date:
Wednesday, September 3rd. 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with a 15 minute break at 8:00 p.m.

Meetup Location:
Upstairs at The Bent Mast, 512 Simcoe St. Victoria, BC, V8V 1L8

Members:
If you plan to attend, please take a moment and RSVP. If your plans change and you cannot attend, to the right of your name there are three dots. Please click on them and move yourself to "Not Going."
Thank you :)

Quotes:
“The greatest pleasure in life is love.” ~ Euripides

“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” ~ Plato

Synopsis:
Philosophy of love is the field of social philosophy and ethics that attempts to describe the nature of love.

There are many different theories that attempt to explain what love is, and what function it serves. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of love there are: psychological theories, evolutionary theories, and spiritual theories.

Stoic love is a love of appreciation rather than a love of attachment. If you are attached or clinging to that which you love, it becomes suffocating for the subject of your affection and opens you up to unnecessary suffering and clouded judgment.

Platonic love, as devised by Plato, concerns rising through levels of closeness to wisdom and true beauty, from carnal attraction to individual bodies to attraction to souls, and eventually, union with the truth.

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle presents the idea of love as a search for goodness, sharing Plato’s theory that bad or evil things cannot be loved. This assumption is made in Aristotle’s claim that the object of love is always useful, pleasant, and/or good, from which is derived the three kinds of love or friendship: friendship based on utility, friendship based on pleasure, and the “perfect friendship.” The latter is, by definition, a friendship where two people love each other for what they are, and not because of instrumentalities—on which the two former kinds of friendship are based.

Watch:
“Kierkegaard on Love” on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/9oIDVxTHsUA?si=OQ4EWZbIkO7HVDS7