A discourse on love, beauty, and good.
I would like to begin a discourse on love, beauty, and good.
In the language of mythos, the ancient Greek poets sang of love as a mighty God. In the language of logos, the ancient Greek philosophers wanted to describe love in more rational terms as a desire. In the dialogue Phaedrus, Plato quoted Socrates saying; "Everyone sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover?"
I will start the discourse by answering Socrates' question. The answer is love. Love distinguished the lover from the non-lover. The lover is the one who loves, and the non-lover is the one who loves not. Love is the defining attribute of the lover.
We have now distinguished the lover from the non-lover, but the eternal questions remain. What is love? Is love a mighty God, or is love a desire? And what is the beautiful and good that is desired and beloved by all?
In the language of mythos, the ancient Greek poets sang of love as a mighty God. In the language of logos, the ancient Greek philosophers wanted to describe love in more rational terms as a desire. In the dialogue Phaedrus, Plato quoted Socrates saying; "Everyone sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover?"
I will start the discourse by answering Socrates' question. The answer is love. Love distinguished the lover from the non-lover. The lover is the one who loves, and the non-lover is the one who loves not. Love is the defining attribute of the lover.
We have now distinguished the lover from the non-lover, but the eternal questions remain. What is love? Is love a mighty God, or is love a desire? And what is the beautiful and good that is desired and beloved by all?
Comments (74)
Love is a combination of lust and trust. Desire for love -- either to be loved or love someone -- has an essential physical component that accompanies the emotion and thought of desire (for love). Love is said to make the world go round. Nobody ever said that the desire for the beautiful and the good makes the world go round. Of course, "love" requires an object. Free-floating objectless love is... what?
I tend to discount the ancient philosophers when they say things like "non-lovers desire the beautiful and good". Or that the beautiful and the good is loved by all.
Sure: who wouldn't desire what they think is good? Who wouldn't desire what they think is beautiful? Quite possibly Plato, you, and me would not find the same things good and beautiful. I suppose Plato and Socrates spent some time coming to a pat conclusion about what is supposed to be considered beautiful and good. You and me might be in complete agreement with Plato and Socrates, or not. Plato and Socrates also might not have experienced sexual/love desire the same as me.
Isn't love more than lust, more than physical or sexual desire? In the dialogue Phaedrus, Plato made the ironic argument in two speeches that the lover ought not to be trusted or preferred because physical desire can wear off.
I do not agree with that statement because I experience love as a given. Walking along the river on a beautiful sunny day can intensify that feeling of love. I feel loved simply because I feel love. I can totally relate to the Christian notion that God is love, even though I think the Biblical explanation of God. Satan and sin are messed up. Believing in a personal God has unpleasant consequences, necessitating deifying Jesus as a personal savior.
I don't know how it is for others, but when I was young, I was much more needy than I am now. I would expect a person's notion of love to change with age.
That is an interesting observation about beauty. However, I think free-floating objectless love is enhanced by beauty. Like when I walk along the river on a sunny day, I can not help but be overwhelmed by a good feeling and feel gratitude for this experience. Beautiful, sacred places stir the feeling that all is well and manifest a feeling of joyfulness. That is not born out of desire but the opposite, appreciation of what is experienced.
Love is more than lust. It can also entail comfort, security, warmth, and acceptance. The 'feeling' of loving or being loved isn't exclusively a sexual sensation but may be accompanied by it. We are embodied beings; thought, emotion, and physical response are combined. Even the sense of God's love may have a sexual dimension (thinking here of the Ecstasy of St Theresa of Avila). She wrote:
"The body has a share in it." That is the case, and the necessity of our embodiment as physical beings. What St. Theresa experienced included 'awe' -- a sense now totally degraded in that damned dead-horse-word "awesome". But 'awe' means "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder." Run of the mill love or sex may be 'awesome', but a terrific experience of love might invoke actual awe.
Quoting Athena
We have an inventory of feelings, senses, and emotions which arise from experiences in the physical world as well as from encounters with ideas, such as those found in great speeches, powerful poetry, or moving novels, and science books. Perhaps what you feel on your sunny river walk is not love, but not therefore worth an iota less. I also am moved by beautiful landscapes as well as by wild storms -- thunderstorms or blizzards. Even an ordinary day with wind and strong gusts can be a significant experience. A good storm is physically exciting, objectively frightening, and altogether fascinating.
These are experiences not to be 'desired' but to be had when they are available.
In my youth, sex had an intense urgency; love was more intense than, too. Our "first love" is remembered until we die, and that intense feeling is, perhaps, once and done. The love between mates may cool yet deepen over the decades, and if death parts us from them, we remember them with painful loss for a long time, also till we die. Now, in my old age, sex isn't urgent at all, and in love I feel complete. I have loved and been loved in return. I live alone now, content. I suppose I am waiting to die -- though I am certainly not rushing it.
Indeed, I work at delaying it. I am still delighted to learn new things. My current book is "The British Are Coming: From Lexington to Princeton". I've heard American history since 7th grade, but now I'm finding the (new) gory details of the revolution from both British and American POVs fascinating. It took 78 years to get here, but I'm glad to have arrived.
Quoting Athena
I agree with you both. Love is the love of something and not of nothing. I believe that something is beauty. Beauty can be manifested in a man, a woman, or a Grecian urn. And if the beautiful is also good, then love is the love of the beautiful and good. My question is, what is the nature of the beautiful and good that is beloved?
Keates and his overwrought urns and lines of verse!
I've always been reluctant to embrace this statement. Truth defining beauty defining truth: one large abstraction defining another even larger one.
There are many manifestations of beauty for which we should be grateful. Men, trees, mountains, planets (now that we have closeups), galaxies, flowers, horses, houses, towers, oceans and beaches, lakes, rivers, springs, cars (mostly in the past--now they all look alike), sculptures, paintings, film, photos, music (especially music), and more -- much more.
But is a beautiful horse, car, or tree "truth"? Was Keates thinking of a beautiful object conforming to Plato's forms? What about horse shit, car wrecks, and rotten trees? Bombed out Gaza is not beautiful, but there is a grave truth there.
Does Keates think that scientific truths are beautiful? (Don't know enough about the man.) What about Germ Theory; fission; DNA; gravity waves; the speed of light; continental drift? These are, as far as we know, real, true, and reliable. Are they beautiful in the way Greek sculpture, architectural proportion, urn-shape and urn-decoration is beautiful?
Perhaps. But "truth" seems dicier than beauty. Most people would probably agree that Mount Fuji is beautiful. Suppose it blew up (it could; it's considered an active volcano.). Suppose many were killed in the blast. Would it still be beautiful?
Truth, as Trump has demonstrated, is slippery. I think it is true that Donald Trump's policies are a threat to democracy and our economy. Millions will dispute that view. So is it true?
for example: https://www.sorefingers.co.uk
Other body parts can become painful when other activities are beloved.
But love pays the price, no matter how high.
[quote=Jesus]Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.[/quote]
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15%3A13&version=KJV
There is a secular myth, that Jesus tricked Judas into betraying him, thinking he was magic and would escape, in order to forestall a populist rebellion against Rome, using Jesus as a figurehead - ie he sacrificed himself to prevent a massacre.
I too cannot accept Keats' proclamation that beauty is truth. Beauty is not the same as truth. I believe that truth and beauty are a part of good. Now the obvious question is raised. What is the nature of the good of which truth and beauty are a part? I would welcome any insight that you may have.
Quoting BC BC, you are advocating that love is lust and trust.
Quoting Athena Athena, you are advocating that love is feeling.
You are saying these are parts of love. But what is love as a whole? In what way is love to be distinguished from its parts?
Well if you want to theorise, I might say it is the transcendence of identity. That is, whereas rationality identifies a self and acts in its own interest, love is not interested in self as a limit to action. Because it goes beyond the limits of self it is beyond the ratios of comparison and attains to the immeasurable. In this sense, to answer you question in a way satisfactory to the rational mind would be to set a limit to the illimitable.
But to get serious, we need to reference some Greek terms. It isn't that the Greeks experienced emotions that we do not, but they developed a vocabulary which is maybe more efficient than English's terms.
philia (affectionate friendship)
eros (sexual desire)
agape (unconditional love)
storge (familial love)
Philautia (self love)
mania (obsessive love)
meraki ("to do something with soul, creativity, or love)
ludos (playful, noncommittal love - from Latin)
xenia (the moral obligation of hospitality)
eroteuo (this verb can mean to love, say, an artwork, or a house)
These are not different parts of love, they are different kinds of love. All the various kinds of love, in your phrase "love as a whole", are what attaches us to one another, and without which we would not exist.
It takes a lot of love to make us human.
A human infant will not thrive without loving care--not just food and warmth, but touch, stimulation, eye to eye contact, and so on. From infancy onward, love in its various kinds builds the complex fabric of both personality, mind, and society.
I'm in my fifties and so far absolute categories of 'good' and 'beauty' have never really come up or mattered. It strikes me that these adjectives are contingent qualities varying between eras, cultures and individuals. Love? I think we feel emotional attachment toward people that can't be readily put into words. It's more like a commitment, a bond with intimacy and concern. You are raising idea of transcendentals - I have no good reason to believe in ideals or values which transcend ordinary experince or material reality.
Tom, I will save the discussion of absolute categories of good and beauty for later. But good and bad, beauty and ugliness are subjects that we experience that govern our everyday lives. I am leaning into Plato's claim that love is a desire and what love desire is the beautiful and good.
Well, it is the depth of that relationship that is the issue. Delicious, revolting, warm and cold are also experiences 'governing our lives' in your words. I'm not so keen on this word 'governing', it lends a particular resonance. I would prefer 'influences our choices'.
Quoting Tom Storm
I do not agree that love is immeasurable and illimitable. Love is an experience shared by all. I am leaning into Plato's claim that love is a desire, a desire for the beautiful and good.
Well the best of luck with that. We don't have to agree.
Fair point.
Quoting GregW
Plato believed in transcendentals (the forms in his language) and thought there was an ideal form of love (along with beauty and goodness). I don't.
Quoting GregW
Do you know this for certain? Ive worked with a lot of career criminals and gang members, and I would say that some people never experience love and, as a result, may not be able to give or receive it.
I can understand why you don't believe that "Love is a mighty God".
Quoting Tom Storm
I can't understand why you believe that "some people never experience love". Are you saying that some people never experience the desire for the beautiful and good?
These are two separate matters. Yes, I am saying that some people never experience love. As for the beautiful and the goodno doubt some people attempt pursue these abstract notions through things like porn or sport, perhaps?
The beautiful and good are not abstract notions. Beautiful and good things exist. It can be experienced through art, music, and human interactions like friendship and marriage. Not just through things like porn (?) or sport.
I am 78 too, and know what you mean about getting more meaning out of books than we once did.
Thank you. I believe you are correct. I think we have underestimated the importance of nurturing and the people who do the nurturing. This is what AI has to say...
Love is hormonal. This is what AI has to say.....
We can stimulate the production of these hormones by doing kind things for others, nursing a baby, running on a path. Don't believe me? this is what AI says.....
Here is what AI has to say.....
This would also go with notions of good music. Here is what AI has to say...
I want to say this thinking is very dependent on words. Without a word for a concept, we can not think about the concept. Linguistic differences separated Rome and the Greeks, and some of us believe the Greek culture in areas like Athens was superior. So Kalos Kagathos is a mix of good and beauty.
Another way to look at this is through science, and what proportion has to do with recognizing beauty. Here is what AI has to say.....
I believe the "they" that you say are abstractions are beauty and goodness and not the beautiful and good. Beauty and goodness are the defining attributes of beautiful and good things. The beauty of art, music, and human interactions are physical things that can be experienced by our sense of sight, hearing, and feeling. Beauty and goodness belong to the undisputed class. It is our measure of the beautiful and good that can be debated. It is the "dramatic variations in what people recognize as good or beautiful" that is endlessly debated. I believe what you described as intangible abstractions is the recognition of beauty absolute with knowledge absolute in existence absolute. The beauty and goodness that can only be witnessed in a winged chariot through the "heaven above the heavens". This beauty [s undisputed and undebatable.
Winged chariot? I don't think any subject in philosophy is undisputed and undebatable.
Quoting GregW
That's a circular argument. E.g., Truth is what true statements express.
If you believe that beauty is not a culturally constructed or contingent concept, then what exactly is beauty as you understand it and how do you access or recognise it?
Too over the top? This is an allusion to the revelation of beauty absolute in a speech by Socrates in the dialogue Phaedrus.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, philosophy is endlessly debatable. What I meant to say was that debating this beauty, beauty absolute, is fruitless.
Quoting GregW
Quoting Tom Storm
I was trying to distinguish beauty from beautiful things. Beautiful things are a part of beauty, just as true statements are a part of truth.
Quoting Tom Storm
As I see it, beauty is a part of good, the part that is perceived by our senses. When we say that the sunset was beautiful, we are saying that the sunset looked good. When we say that the symphony was beautiful, we are saying that the symphony sounded good. When we say that the sex was beautiful, we are saying that the sex felt good. Beauty is sensible goodness.
A serial killer could see beauty when his hands are around the neck of a victim taking their last breath?
There is a savage beauty in an apex predator despatching it's prey.
To answer your question, let me define some terms as the basis for our discourse. The beautiful is that which is nearest to beauty and the ugly is the farthest. The ugly is measured against the beautiful, and the beautiful is measured against beauty, and beauty is measured against what Plato called "beauty absolute", and beauty absolute have no part of ugliness. However, between the beautiful and the ugly is a range of measures. Let's call these measures not beautiful and not ugly.
By his measure, the serial killer sees the murder as beautiful. Let's take the victim's point of view, by his measure, the victim sees the murder as very, very, ugly. Now how should the beauty of the murder be measured? There is beauty and ugliness in most human endeavors. Most people would say, at best, the murder should be measured at the low end of the not beautiful and not ugly range. But beauty should not be measured by what most people say. The beautiful murder as measured by the killer, must be measured against beauty, and beauty absolute. The murder falls short of the beautiful because the ugliness of the murder falls short of beauty and beauty absolute which have no part of ugliness.
There are people who say that there is a beautiful world where all our needs are provided for, where we live a life of simplicity and contentment free from vexation and strife. A world where knowledge is forbidden, where savagery is banished, and where the lion lay with the lamb. Aren't you glad that we live in a world where savage beauty can exist?
Dont want to against Plato but Im not convinced there is a beautifully absolute. It is all relative to the beholder.
Absolutely. We need obstacles for fulfilment.
Really enjoying this thread guys. Prior to joining TPF, I would never have chosen to read something with the title 'a discourse on ...'.
That is a remarkable experience Tom Storm. I imagine a philosophical mind would be a great help in such a situation?
There is a part of me that defaults to big broad questions like this with 'how would I explain this to kids'? Years of teaching high school and other things brought me to that state, and kids react to storms, heavy winds, thunder, lightning in a different way than adults finding the divine, but the joy appears to be universal, in some ways, with perhaps different expressions.
If my curious little neighbour were to ask me 'what is beauty?' I'd remind him of that crazy snow day we had a few months ago and the big fort he built in his front yard.
Quoting Athena
I really enjoyed this comment, although I do know many religious people who do not subscribe to literal interpretations of Christian theology, some of them quite devout. We had an atheist minister here in Toronto a few years back, although that one goes too far for me.
As an atheist, I feel not believing in a 'God', faith, personal spiritual practice or otherwise also has unpleasant consequences.
Quoting Athena
I believe that not believing in "the things of God", like beauty, truth, virtue, and love have more unpleasant consequences.
Quoting Malcolm Parry
Let me tell you why I believe that beauty is not relative to the beholder. I believe that it is our own measure of beauty that is relative to the beholder. Beauty, like truth, justice, piety, and the other virtues are a part of good; and truth absolute, true beauty, true virtue, and true love are a part of goodness absolute; and goodness absolute is a part of God.
(This is my first time using the quote function, I'll see how it turns out.)
I think that it is not that everybody has felt love, but everybody can feel love.
My experience with philosophical thinking has mainly come from fiction books. That is why I bring fictional examples to the table to get an emotional connection, without denying the need for base.
For this example, like you said gangsters who haven't felt love can have problems with emotional development. However, do you think it is impossible for him to ever love or ever feel love again?
Many times in fiction you see a gangster have a child and 'soften up'. Though only a fictitious example with little base to it, it is quite relatable (at least to the heart.) It also shows a possibility which isn't impossible.
However, my argument still falls to the same question,
'Are you certain that everybody can potentially feel love?'
I cannot say for certain because I have never met every single person on the planet.
All of this brings me to the question,
Is the ability to feel love something you are born with?
In the example with the gangsters they were not given love growing up, they started with the ability to feel love, but their ability to love was not 'developed/nurtured'. (Words that do not quite fit)
Does the lack of love kill the sense of it? Or is it just dormant like a seed during winter? I think the later is correct, because no matter how little evidence I have of my workings, you have just as little to oppose them.
P.S I know that my argument is based on mere ideas, and I will not argue if you wish to deny it. Through reading fiction I have gained the ability to think on a deeper level than before. Using these examples is how I can argue without practical experience or quoting the words of others.
Greetings.
Seems I did not use the quote function correctly, here is the other part.
Don't know. I was just reporting what I have seen. I suspect the ability to give and receive love is innate in most people. It takes many forms and does not always look the same across individuals, cultures or time periods. It's an emotion that has been hijacked by storytellers and marketing people who describe and promote specific and often commercial indicators of love.
There are people who are abused from infancy, and the way their understanding and behavior is shaped by this may preclude them from experiencing love. I have certainly met people who claim never to have experienced it.
Shouldnt we also consider the evolutionary function of love?
Greg, could the things of God not simply be what many religious people mean by God, essentially? Ive certainly known religious people who this statement feels true for.
If you want. Humans are a social species who organise and flourish in family units. Not hard to see how love has survival pay offs. But what do we do with this frame?
Expand on that, please. What is the frame of reference for true beauty etc?
Is it your faith in God? If so, I'll stick with my original statement.
The frame of reference for true beauty and true goodness is perfection. If we define perfect beauty and perfect goodness as beauty and goodness to the highest degree, then the measure between beauty and goodness, and between perfect beauty and perfect goodness is just a matter of degrees. We know that beauty and goodness exist because we can measure the beauty and goodness of beautiful and good things with our senses. So true beauty and true goodness exist as beauty and goodness to the highest degree.
As for faith, I choose to believe in the God of perfection. The God who is not only perfectly good but also perfectly powerful, which means that He cannot use His power for evil.
What for you is perfection?
He seems nice
As I see it, truth, beauty, virtue, and such are a part of goodness; goodness is a part of true goodness; true goodness is a part of perfection; and perfection is a part of God.
He is perfectly nice.
I have come up with some thoughts, after a review of our discourse. I would like to offer an apology of my statements of love, beauty, and good. Like the ancient Greek poets and the ancient Greek philosophers, I think that we may be speaking past each other by speaking in two different languages. The language of mythos and the language of logos. So how do we reconcile the differences in how we present our arguments?
BC suggested that there are different kinds of love, such as philia, eros, agape, storge.... etc.
Quoting BC
The Greek poets and the Greek philosophers also speak of different kinds of love. The poets suggest that "love is divine" or that love is at least something between the mortal and the divine. The philosophers suggest that "love is a desire.... the desire for the beautiful and good". This sounds true but it is not the complete truth. Love is not the same as desire. Love is a part of desire just as the lover is a part of the non-lover. While the non-lover may desire many things including the beautiful and good. The lover desire only the beautiful and good, of the ugly and bad there can be no love.
Tom Storm suggested that there are some people who never experience love. Is it possible that there are people so immersed in ugliness and evil that it precludes the beautiful and good and love can never be experienced?
Quoting Tom Storm
I believe this is possible only if love is just a desire. In a poem, Aristophanes described the origin of Love:
".... Black-winged Night
Into the bosom of Erebus dark and deep
Laid a wind-born egg, and as the seasons rolled
Forth sprang Love, the long-for, shining, with
wings of gold."
The poem suggests that even in the darkest and deepest part of Erebus, we will find love.
I'm going by what I have seen. The excerpt doesn't speak to me.
Thsi form you - Quoting GregW
If I read this correctly then i woudl have thought it was precisely the opposite. Love as desire is readily sought and found. I'm not sure I'd count this as love.
If you are referring to love as a deep concern for anothers good, their sacredness in relation to your own, then no.
In the 1970s Prof. Harry Harlow, University of Wisconsin, deprived one group of baby chimps of anything resembling a mother--nothing soft, nothing warm, nothing stroking the babies. Another group of baby monkeys were provided with mother surrogates -- a warm cloth dummy. Both groups were provided bottled milk (but were not held during feeding). The second group of monkeys, the one with the surrogates fared much better -- their behavior was more normal; they grew faster; etc. The ones who were not provided with so much as a surrogate dummy did not fare well at all. (I heard about this about 50 years ago, and am relying on memory.)
After the 1985 fall of the Nicolae Ceau?escu regime in Romania, a similar but "non-experiment" was found in a number of orphanages where human infants had lived, in some cases for years, with very minimal human nurture. They were victims of extreme neglect. Like Harlow's chimp babies, these human children not normal; they hadn't thrived, their development was poor, their personalities had not developed well at all. Many of the children were placed in foster care and many of them were rehabilitated to a large extent. (That was all 40 years ago--I'm relying on memory here.)
So there is experimental and observational evidence that primates infants (that includes us) who do not receive love and adequate care fail to develop normally, and in turn are not able to attach to partners or infants.
Humans are normally and naturally capable of love, and it's essential that we receive it in infancy going forward. We are able to love because we have received love--maternal and paternal love given readily and abundantly. You might say that 'love is the chain of being'.
Tom, let me present an apology of my arguments. This is what I said in my post.
Quoting GregW
Let me ask this. The career criminals and gang members that you say never experience love and, as a result, may not be able to give or receive it. Do they love themselves?
BC, I agree with you. Infants who are not nurtured or loved are prone to become psychotic. But isn't the treatment for neglected infants nurture and love?
AmadeusD, isn't affection just love to a lesser degree?
I don't know what you mean by "do they love themselves?" It's certainly not a topic that comes up. In my world the term, "love yourself" has a tinny, American, self-help book ring to it. But if you mean whether they respect themselves, take care of themselves, take pride, and hold their own survival and life in high regard, then I would say its a mix.
What did you mean by love as desire? I'm still unclear about that one.
Yes. What else but nurture and love would help?
One problem is that such therapy can't be delayed for 20 or 30 years and still be effective. While the brain is famously plastic, as far as I know it isn't readily plastic in all ways at all time. Just for example, paralysis from injury to the CNS is best treated right away. I suppose that the best time for therapy vanishes over time. 30 years later, therapy might not help much.
Can 30 year olds, who are very disturbed personalities with poor mental development resulting from pervasive neglect in their first years, be emotionally rehabilitated? I doubt it, but I have little expertise about the matter.
Real big problem. Emotional dysregulation is something that's extremely hard to overcome. As I understand, having no example of some fundamental behaviour prior to the age of four roughly precludes that from being assimilated.
I mean can they experience love by loving themselves?
AmadeusD, what is some "solidarity" notion?
Well, in many cases, self-love may be more akin to narcissism, so probably not, especially if we understand love as a rich, selfless experience involving abnegation and sacrifice.
Love = Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
In the soil we shared, these flowers we chose
Truth: tulip, goodness: lily, beauty: rose.
Nurtured with care they yet wave to and fro;
Storms cant scatter the flowers that love grows.
Theres the tulip, the lily, and the rose,
Growing togetherno separate rows!
What does it mean, as it must be rarely so,
When they so intwined all together grow?
The tulips a dependable sign of spring;
One can always count on the news it brings;
So, tulips have always well stood for truth.
The lily is often white, as the proof,
Representing purity and goodness bright.
The rose is the symbol of beautys might.
So these three combined together here
Means weve grown loves bouquet with great care.
Truth, goodness, beautyof their braided length,
Makes for lasting love, giving it its strength.
So, lifes storms can never scatter them bare.
Loves not an easy thing to grow, anywhere.
Loves spirit weaves the souls warp, weft, and wave,
Creating an eternal, perfect braid,
Wound from strands of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty;
Each different forms, but from the same All made.
Quoting AmadeusD
Allow me to present my entire train of thought on the subject of love.
We love our wives, our children, our family, our friends because to us they are beautiful and good.
Self-love, brotherly love, love of ethnic peers(?), philia, eros, agape, storge.... etc. are all a part of love.
Love is a part of desire as the lover is a part of the non-lover because the lover and the non-lover can both exist as a part of the same person. While the non-lover can desire many things such as wealth and power along with the beautiful and good, the lover desire only the beautiful and good.
Now, there is no shame in desiring and using power. The shame is in using power not well but badly. Everyone sees that power can be used for good or for evil, but the power of love can be used only for good. The power of love is not just the means of attainment but also of creativity, the creation of the beautiful and good. "The great and subtle power of love" lies first in the creation of the lover. It is love that turns the non-lover into the lover.
Beautiful poem.
Is love really the same as truth, beauty, and goodness? If not, what distinguish love from truth, beauty, and goodness?
Doesn't work for me. I love because I love. It's a feeling and nowhere does good or beautiful enter my conception. I would say love moves beyond such characteristics. Love transcends qualities.
Quoting GregW
I can't follow this. Can you summarise the point I'm lost in the lover-non-lover-lover-non-lover train.
Quoting GregW
Why are you talking about power? What have I missed?
When love is described as a power, it generally means that the experience of love can make hardship and suffering bearable and inspire us to strive for things beyond ordinary ambition. In this way, love can clothe, soothe, and rebuild a broken and deprived being. Yet I suspect that naked ambition and jealousy can also provide a similar fillip toward transformative deeds.
Love is not just a feeling. Love is the love of something and not of nothing. You love because the thing you love is good. You cannot love evil. Love does not transcend qualities; love is the desire for the qualities of the good.
Quoting Tom Storm
Love is a part of desire. The part that desires only the good. The statements distinguish love from desire.
The lover is a part of the non-lover. While the non-lover can desire many things, the lover desires only the good. The statements distinguish the lover from the non-lover.
Quoting Tom Storm
The power of love is a part of power. While power can be used to attain many things, the power of love can be used to attain only the good. The statements distinguish power from the power of love.
Quoting Tom Storm
I agree that love and the power of love "can make hardship and suffering bearable and inspire us to strive for things beyond ordinary ambition. It can also clothe, soothe, and rebuild a broken and deprived being." I do not agree "that naked ambition and jealousy can provide a similar fillip toward transformative deeds."
Yes, you can love evil. And sometimes you may not know it as evil. Love is a feeling for someone or something. An emotion. It doesn't come with a quality control function.
Quoting GregW
You seem to have a preoccupation with good and evil, and take a strongly binary view of them. Personally, I dont think the difference is always so clear. I tend to see good and evil as contingent qualities, shaped by context, perspective, and circumstance. While there are obvious examples of actions driven by hatred or self-sacrifice, at a broader, more human level, evil (which is not a category I generally use) is not always so easy to identify. Some acts of duty and patriotism and courage may also be considered evil.
Quoting Tom Storm
Evil is a part of bad. If you can love evil, then what evil and bad things can you love?
Quoting Tom Storm
If you loved something that you didn't know was evil, then you were fooled. You did not love evil.
Quoting Tom Storm
Love is not just an emotion. Love is a desire for someone or something that is good. Love, the desire for only the good, is the ultimate quality control function.
Quoting Tom Storm
I believe a strongly binary view of good and evil is the only view to take.
Quoting Tom Storm
The measure of good and evil is not always obvious. The path to good and from evil can be narrow and short. It can sometimes be as thin as a razor's edge.
Our world views are too different to continue this discussion. Take care.
Take care, Tom.
I enjoyed our discourse.
Quoting Red Sky
Quoting Jeremy Murray
The "things of God" are not the same as God. They are an essential part of God. I choose to believe that before all else, there exist the perfection of God, which include the "perfect things of God": perfect goodness, perfect power, and perfect desire. We commonly call this desire, love. The ability to feel love and goodness are with us from the beginning because love and goodness are the image of God.