Love
Love is a special affection for someone or something, a feeling or emotion. Various different types of love exist, which are more or less related:
- love between family members: parent's love of children, etc.
- love of friends
- romantic love
- sexual love
- loving one another in general
- loving something abstract or inanimate
- loving one's nation or homeland
Some languages, such as ancient Greek, are better than English at distinguishing between the different senses in which the word love is used. For example, ancient Greek has the words philia, eros, agape, and storge, meaning love between friends, romantic/sexual love, unconditional (possibly sacrificial, unreciprocated) love, and affection/familial love respectively. However, with Greek as with many other languages, it has been historically difficult to separate the meanings of these words totally, and so we can find examples of agape being used with much the same meaning as eros. At the same time the ancient Greek text of the Bible has examples of the werb agapo being used with the same meaning as phileo.
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2 Religious views 3 Quotes about love 4 See also: 5 References |
In an attempt to explain the commonalities and differences of the many types of love, Robert Sternberg has suggested a view of love involving three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. Different stages and types of love can be explained as different combinations of the three elements. The combinations are as follows.
The Unification Church defines love in philosophical terms as "the emotional force given by the Subject to the Object". The church classifies love into three types:
Love was the name of a Los Angeles-based rock and roll band of the late 1960s. See Love (band).
Love is also the name given to the score of 0 points in tennis. This is because the zero resembles an egg, the French word for which is l'oeuf.Psychological views
As a person develops their relationship with a loved one over time, the relative strengths of the elements tends to change. Generally love will start off strong in passion but weak in the other elements. However as time passes, the other elements may grow and passion may shrink -- this depends upon the individual. So what starts as Infatuation or Empty love may well develop into one of the fuller types of love. Likewise when a person has known a loved one for a long time, passion may fade, changing love from Consummate to Companionate, or from Romantic love to Liking. Note that the feeling which Sternberg terms passion is similar to, if not the same as, that termed limerence by Dorothy Tennov. Religious views
Quotes about love
See also:
Human love
Other types of love (philias)
