In the face of Valentine’s Day – the holiday of love – it is important to look at love through an objective lens … What is love, truly? Why do we feel it? Do we need it? This article is not meant to discourage you, but to allow you to look at “love” with a new point of view; and decide for yourself what the true meaning of love is.
Love comes in many different forms: there is platonic love, romantic love, parental love, and so many more that I could get into.
While trying to sound as least pessimistic as possible, I have some unfortunate truths to share. First, that love may just be a social construct, something that we have forged the conditions of. Second, that love may be something that is imagined and heightened by our delusions.
But at the same time, the opposite may be true: love may be a real, tangible emotion that is shared between people.
As stated by Socrates in The Symposium, love just may be universal and we may not have the intellectual capacity to understand its true nature. And maybe, according to Plato, some people already do understand the meaning of love. Those such people include philosophers, musicians, and artists.
There is no one right conception of love, as it is a truly different feeling for everyone. Love is a situational emotion based on preconceived notions and past events.
For example, as stated by American philosopher, Georgi Gardiner, if someone has heard the term “puppy love,” they are less likely to believe that the love they experienced as a child is real. The same goes for if the idea of “young love,” when this idea is instilled in someone’s life, they are then more likely to find truth in past, youthful experiences.
According to philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, the word love comes from the Greek terms “eros,” “philia,” and “agape.” Eros is the part of love that shows us true beauty and love does exist, due to an innate desire. Philia is the fondness and appreciation felt for another person in familial and platonic connections. Agape is the feeling of love for God or humanity. These three terms are thought to make up what love is.
According to expressionists, love reflects an internal emotional or spiritual state shown through language and behavior; it is seen as a physical response to stimuli. And, on that note, according to physical determinists, love is an entirely physical extension of chemical-biological desires.
By taking this scientific approach to love, we can use behaviorists such as Skinner to make these assumptions. Based on the laws of conditioning, love may just be an overtly strong reaction to a set of positive conditions in the presence of another. If you think about it that way, it has to make sense. This is because love causes a physical, measurable response in our bodies; some of the effects of love include raising levels of cortisol, which can weaken the immune system, and turning on the neurotransmitter dopamine, which stimulates pleasure centers.
You can choose to take the safe and drawn-out scientific approach to love – and understand that it may just be a biological process – or you can choose the epistemology of love.
By choosing to follow the epistemology of love, you are choosing to question how we love and how we understand love.
