Love
Love is a condition or phenomenon of emotional primacy, or absolute value. Love generally includes an emotion of intense attraction to either another person, a place, or thing; and may also include the aspect of caring for or finding identification with those objects, including self love. Love can describe an intense feeling of affection, an emotion or an emotional state. In ordinary use, it usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience usually felt by a person for another person. Love is commonly considered impossible to define.
The concept of love, however, is subject to debate. Some deny the existence of love, calling it a recently invented abstraction. Moreover, approximately 13 percent of cultures reportedly have no word for love.[1] Others maintain that love exists but is undefinable; being a quantity which is spiritual, metaphysical, or philosophical in nature. Love is one of the most common themes in art. An unfinished debate about the authenticity of love as other-regard began with Friedrich Nietzsche's charge that love is merely an ideology constructed by the weak to mask "resentment" about their lack of power. Critics of Nietzsche's view find gratuitous his assumptions that self-interest and the "will to power" overshadow all other concerns.
Contents
1 Overview
2 Types
3 Scientific views
4 Cultural views
5 Religious views
6 Definitional issues
7 See also
7.1 Human love
7.2 Other types of love (philias)
8 References
9 External links
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Overview
Love has several different meanings in the English language, from something that gives a little pleasure ("I loved that meal") to something that one would die for (patriotism, pair-bonding). And in contrast to the definition at the top, frequently people use the verb "love" to indicate want or desire for themselves as opposed to for another. For example: "I love ice cream," or even "I love Mabel", does not refer to desiring wellness for ice cream, and it may not refer to desiring wellness for her/him, but rather to the desire for ice cream or for her/him felt by the speaker. The word also frequently indicates elevated appreciation or admiration: "I love that artist."
Love might best be defined as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others to promote overall well-being. Or to put it simply, "love responds intentionally to promote well-being" (Thomas Jay Oord). Love promotes overall flourishing, but often focuses on those close at hand.
Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, et cetera. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept, easier to experience than to explain. Many believe, as stated originally by Virgil, that "Love conquers all", or as stated by The Beatles, "all you need is love". Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of 'absolute value', as opposed to 'relative value'.
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Types
Courtly love – a late medieval conventionalized code prescribing certain conduct and emotions for ladies and their lovers.
Erotic love – desire characterized by a focus on sexual desires.
Familial love – affection brokered through kinship connections, intertwined with concepts of attachment and bonding.
Fatherly love - devotion to one's children.
Free love – sexual relations according to choice and unrestricted by marriage.
Motherly love - devotion to one's children.
Platonic love – a close relationship in which sexual desire is nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated.
Puppy love – romantic affection felt between or as though between adolescents.
Religious love – devotion to one’s deity or theology.
Romantic love – affection characterized by a mix of emotional and sexual desire. Traditionally portrayed in the West as tragicomic, sad, joyful, and complex (e.g. I love Mabel).
Unrequited love – affection and desire not reciprocated or returned.
Covenant love - an unconditional decision of the will to place the needs and benefits of another person before oneself.
Unconditional Love - A voluntary practice of "knowing what someone truly is and caring for that to the exclusion of all else". Linked in some respects to philosophy of Non-duality and certain types of magic. Cited by Deepak Chopra and Marelin Thornton as a more "Wizardly" love, as compared to all other types.
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Scientific views
Main article: Love (scientific views)
Throughout history, predominantly, philosophy and religion have speculated the most into the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. Recently, however, the sciences of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have begun to take centre stage in discussion as to the nature and function of love.
Biological models of sex tend to see it as a mammalian drive, just like hunger or thirst. Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg explains that love has three different components. Intimacy is a form where two people can share secrets and various details of their personal life. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment on the other hand is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. This factor of love is shown in empty love (ex. when two people stay together for the sake of their children). The last and most common form of love is simply sex, or passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation love, as well as romantic love. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin) and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by one’s conceptions of love. Hence, from time immemorial, science, from naturalistic poetry to MRI neurochemistry, has debated the nature of love.
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Cultural views
Main article: Love (cultural views)
Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences. For example, in India, with arranged marriages commonplace, it is believed that love is not a necessary ingredient in the initial stages of marriage – it is something that can be created during the marriage; whereas in the United States, by comparison, love is seen as a necessary prerequisite to marriage.
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Religious views
Main article: Love (religious views)
Whether religious love can be expressed in similar terms to interpersonal love is a matter for philosophical debate. Religious love might be considered a euphemism, more closely describing feelings of deference. Religions may use the term love to express the devotion of a follower to a deity, who may be a living guru or religious teacher, as in the Bhakti traditions of Asia. This love may be expressed by prayer, service, good deeds, and personal sacrifice. Some traditions encourage the development of passionate love in the believer for the deity.
Reciprocally, many eutheistic followers may believe that deity loves the followers and all of creation. Many believe that this type of love that God has for all of creation, often defined as charity, is an unconditional and ultimate, or infinite, form of love.
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Definitional issues
Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness.[2] In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favoured definitions of love include the words:[3]
life - someone or something for which you would give your life.
care - someone or something about which you care more than yourself.
In common use, care refers to a mental or emotional state of predisposition in which one has an interest or concern for someone or something. To care for someone, may also refer to a disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility; or a cause for such anxiety. Caring for an object, such as a house, refers to a state of attendant maintenance; or may also refer to a state of charge or supervision, as in under a doctor’s care.
friendship - favoured interpersonal associations or relationships.
union
family - people related via common ancestry.
bond.
Love was defined in 2006 by F.V. Louvel as "Self-understanding of each other's desire". This is applicable, obviously, only in the context of a bipart relationship composed of hetero- or homo-sexual individuals.