Love and philosophy

Throughout history, philosophers have written about love. In the days of the ancient Greeks, Erotic Love, which included education, wisdom, and sensuality, was praised. As the centuries moved forward, however, Christian Love, which heralded charity, devotion, and chastity, became the love of choice for most philosophers. Finally, fusing together the sensuality of the Greeks and the ideals of the Christians in the eighteenth century, Romantic Love came to be. This new theory of love included …

…ideal of womanhood, of woman as one whose only longing is to love a man and be loved by him, to admire him and serve him…” (Horney 191) still holds true today, regardless of women’s various achievements. Until we can achieve equality amongst the sexes, our love lives will remain “a very distant state of affairs with a decidedly impersonal character, wholly regulated by traditional customs and prejudices, the prototype of every conventional marriage.” (Jung 181)