Funny Quotes About Love Definition
Source(Google.com.pk)
What does Love Mean?
One place to seek definitions is the dictionary. In the English language unabridged dictionaries provide some two dozen meanings for love, most of them applicable to romantic or close relationships. These are the first two meanings in the American Heritage Dictionary (1992):
1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
These two definitions are of great interest, because they touch upon several complexities. Particularly daunting is the idea that love is ineffable (indescribable). I can sympathize with this idea because genuine love seems to be quite complex. Both popular and scholarly accounts flirt with the idea that one of the crowning qualities of love is that it is mysterious and therefore indescribable. Nevertheless, in this chapter I will proceed along the lines that “love” as it is often perceived, may feel like a mystery, especially to the person obsessed with it, but it can be described. I propose a concept of love to reduce the extraordinary ambiguity of the meaning of what may be the most important of the emotions.
The first dictionary definition (above) is very broad, covering both romantic and other kinds of love, such as love of kin. The second is narrower, involving only romantic love, and emphasizing sexual attraction. Of the twenty or so remaining definitions, a few are unrelated to interpersonal relationships (such as the use of the word love in scoring a tennis match.) Most of them, however, involve various shadings and gradations of love, and especially, of romantic love. Given the many possible meanings of the word, it is no wonder that scholars and, more recently, social scientists, seem so divided on its significance.
Of all the basic emotions, love is the least clearly defined. Our conceptions of anger, fear, shame, grief, contempt, disgust, and joy may be fuzzy around the edges, but they are clear enough so that we can communicate about them. At the most elementary level, we feel we are able at least to distinguish between painful emotions, such as fear, grief and shame, and pleasurable ones, like interest, excitement, and joy.
But about love, particularly romantic love, there is nothing but disagreement. Even on so basic an issue about whether love is painful or pleasurable, experts are divided. Indeed, reading the scholarly literature, it often seems that they are not talking about the same emotion. Some experts, both classical and modern, consider love not only pleasurable, but in many ways the most important thing in life. Nevertheless, this view represents only a minority. The dominant view has long been that love, especially romantic love, is a painful affliction or madness, a view widely held by the ancient Greeks (De Rougement 1940). Over 2500 years ago, Sappho described the pain and impairment of love:The majority of secular scholars have also taken the position that romantic love is an affliction or madness. The most elaborate description of romantic love is found in Stendhal's Love (1975). Although he denies that passionate love is pathological, he inconsistently acknowledges that it is a disease. Certainly his description emphasizes the painful rather than the pleasurable aspects. At the beginning, one is lost in obsession:
The most surprising thing of all about love is the first step, the violence of the change that takes place in the mind… A person in love in unremittingly and uninterruptedly occupied with the image of the beloved.
In the later stages, Stendahl notes, many other surprises await, most of them unpleasant: "Then you reach the final torment: utter despair poisoned still further by a shred of hope"
Although Stendahl included positive aspects of love, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset saw only the negative (On Love 1957), calling romantic love an abnormality. This passage suggests the flavor of his critique:
The soul of a man in love smells of the closed-up room of a sick man--its confined atmosphere is filled with stale breath.
Even Freud, a champion of sexuality, saw romantic love negatively. He commented that falling in love was a kind of "sickness and craziness, an illusion, a blindness to what the loved person is really like" (Freud 1915). Here he seems to equate love with infatuation, a topic I will take up below.
On the other hand, to give Freud credit, he also saw the positive side of love, at least of non-erotic love. When Jung challenged him to name the curative aspect of psychoanalysis, Freud answered very simply “Love.” This answer is very much in harmony with the definition of love that will be offered in this chapter.
Modern scholarship is more evenly divided between positive and negative views than classical discussions. Hatfield and Rapson (1993) distinguish between passionate love (infatuation) and companionate love (fondness). Both Solomon (1992) and Sternberg (1988) distinguish between love and infatuation. They note that both involve intense desire, but that love also involves intimacy and commitment. Kemper and Reid (1997) also distinguish between what they call “adulation” and what they see as later stages, ideal and romantic love. Like Persons (1988), they seem to assume that beginning with infatuation is likely to lead on to love.
One place to seek definitions is the dictionary. In the English language unabridged dictionaries provide some two dozen meanings for love, most of them applicable to romantic or close relationships. These are the first two meanings in the American Heritage Dictionary (1992):
1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
These two definitions are of great interest, because they touch upon several complexities. Particularly daunting is the idea that love is ineffable (indescribable). I can sympathize with this idea because genuine love seems to be quite complex. Both popular and scholarly accounts flirt with the idea that one of the crowning qualities of love is that it is mysterious and therefore indescribable. Nevertheless, in this chapter I will proceed along the lines that “love” as it is often perceived, may feel like a mystery, especially to the person obsessed with it, but it can be described. I propose a concept of love to reduce the extraordinary ambiguity of the meaning of what may be the most important of the emotions.
The first dictionary definition (above) is very broad, covering both romantic and other kinds of love, such as love of kin. The second is narrower, involving only romantic love, and emphasizing sexual attraction. Of the twenty or so remaining definitions, a few are unrelated to interpersonal relationships (such as the use of the word love in scoring a tennis match.) Most of them, however, involve various shadings and gradations of love, and especially, of romantic love. Given the many possible meanings of the word, it is no wonder that scholars and, more recently, social scientists, seem so divided on its significance.
Of all the basic emotions, love is the least clearly defined. Our conceptions of anger, fear, shame, grief, contempt, disgust, and joy may be fuzzy around the edges, but they are clear enough so that we can communicate about them. At the most elementary level, we feel we are able at least to distinguish between painful emotions, such as fear, grief and shame, and pleasurable ones, like interest, excitement, and joy.
But about love, particularly romantic love, there is nothing but disagreement. Even on so basic an issue about whether love is painful or pleasurable, experts are divided. Indeed, reading the scholarly literature, it often seems that they are not talking about the same emotion. Some experts, both classical and modern, consider love not only pleasurable, but in many ways the most important thing in life. Nevertheless, this view represents only a minority. The dominant view has long been that love, especially romantic love, is a painful affliction or madness, a view widely held by the ancient Greeks (De Rougement 1940). Over 2500 years ago, Sappho described the pain and impairment of love:The majority of secular scholars have also taken the position that romantic love is an affliction or madness. The most elaborate description of romantic love is found in Stendhal's Love (1975). Although he denies that passionate love is pathological, he inconsistently acknowledges that it is a disease. Certainly his description emphasizes the painful rather than the pleasurable aspects. At the beginning, one is lost in obsession:
The most surprising thing of all about love is the first step, the violence of the change that takes place in the mind… A person in love in unremittingly and uninterruptedly occupied with the image of the beloved.
In the later stages, Stendahl notes, many other surprises await, most of them unpleasant: "Then you reach the final torment: utter despair poisoned still further by a shred of hope"
Although Stendahl included positive aspects of love, the philosopher Ortega y Gasset saw only the negative (On Love 1957), calling romantic love an abnormality. This passage suggests the flavor of his critique:
The soul of a man in love smells of the closed-up room of a sick man--its confined atmosphere is filled with stale breath.
Even Freud, a champion of sexuality, saw romantic love negatively. He commented that falling in love was a kind of "sickness and craziness, an illusion, a blindness to what the loved person is really like" (Freud 1915). Here he seems to equate love with infatuation, a topic I will take up below.
On the other hand, to give Freud credit, he also saw the positive side of love, at least of non-erotic love. When Jung challenged him to name the curative aspect of psychoanalysis, Freud answered very simply “Love.” This answer is very much in harmony with the definition of love that will be offered in this chapter.
Modern scholarship is more evenly divided between positive and negative views than classical discussions. Hatfield and Rapson (1993) distinguish between passionate love (infatuation) and companionate love (fondness). Both Solomon (1992) and Sternberg (1988) distinguish between love and infatuation. They note that both involve intense desire, but that love also involves intimacy and commitment. Kemper and Reid (1997) also distinguish between what they call “adulation” and what they see as later stages, ideal and romantic love. Like Persons (1988), they seem to assume that beginning with infatuation is likely to lead on to love.
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
Funny Quotes About Love Photos Pictures Pics Images 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment