Plato’s Definition of Love.

Great Debates
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  1. Plato said, “Love is the love of what is lovely.” (Symp. 204 B).

While that may sound tautological, there still might be a problem with it. For example, God is characterized in Christianity precisely as loving the unlovely. And, the most caring, compassionate, and loving people I know also make a point of loving those who do not merit it. I’ve always said that those who do not deserve love are the ones who need it the most. (For the therapeutic power of love is exactly what a “bad” person needs.)

What do you dopers think?

  1. For Plato, Love is the desire for perpetual possession of the good (206 A). However, I think this is selfish and egoistic. Shouldn’t true love involve an altruistic concern for others rather than an emphasis on MY possession of what is beautiful?

  2. For Plato, Love is a deficiency–a longing for something one lacks (200A), and love is a longing for the Good (204 B). Therefore, the lover lacks what is good, and wants to make the good his own possession.

But, however, “the happy are happy in as much as the possess the good.” (205 A). Putting these together, we find that lovers can never be happy, because they lack the good; and happy people can never love, for they do not lack.

(As a consequence, then, God cannot truly love, for he is deficient in nothing.)

What is the best definition of Love that you have found?

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http://ndeweb.com/Love.htm

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I liked Robert Heinlein’s defination. Paraphrasing because I’m at work & don’t have it handy:

Love is that condition where another persons happiness is essential to your own.

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“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks
but bears it out even to the edge of doom
If this be error, and upon me proved
I never writ; nor no man ever loved.”

  • William Shakespeare, sonnet 116.

“Love is when you feel as comfortable around someone as you do around your own mother,” and, “Love is knowing that you’re not going to break up every time you have a fight,” both paraphrases stolen from Alias