Love And Philosophy Essay Research Paper Throughout free essay sample

Love And Philosophy Essay, Research Paper Throughout history, philosophers have written about love. In the yearss of the ancient Greeks, Erotic Love, which included instruction, wisdom, and sensualness, was praised. As the centuries moved frontward, nevertheless, Christian Love, which heralded charity, devotedness, and celibacy, became the love of pick for most philosophers. Finally, blending together the sensualness of the Greeks and the ideals of the Christians in the 18th century, Romantic Love came to be. This new theory of love included the legitimization of sexual desire, equality of the sexes, and enlargement of one s inner ego to include another. It besides brought with it a new mentality on the establishment of matrimony in society. Romantic Love nowadayss matrimony as the consequence of a brotherhood of two people in love, non as a agency of reproduction or economic practicality as in anterior old ages, but merely as a agency of wholly uniting two people. It is this position of love and matrimony that society thinks of today. However, this construct of love is non every bit perfect as it sounds. Throughout its continuance, Romantic Love has non been equal to both sexes. Womans frequently get the short terminal of the stick when it comes to this complex topic. Through their Hagiographas, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Simone deBeauvoir, and Shulamith Firestone all show how the constructs of love and matrimony today disadvantage adult females. Often times when one reads a aggregation of philosophical Hagiographas on a topic, one will happen writers who are normally associated with another field. Among these are Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, who are all considered psychologists instead than philosophers. However, they present battalions of information sing the disadvantages of adult females when it comes to love and marriage. The footing of Freud s statement comes from the Oedipal composite. Freud argues that in order to develop one s gender in a normal manner one must fall in one s Affectionate and Sensual currents. If a male fails to make so right he will neer get the better of his natural libidinal fond regard to his female parent. Therefore, he will non be able to be intimate with those adult females who he has great regard and fondness for, since they will efficaciously remind him of his female parent. This presents a job, for a adult male chooses for a married woman person who he does hold regard and fondness for. Consequently, he will non be able to be intimate with his married woman, and must seek a far inferior replacing to carry through his sexual desires. This theory is called Debasement. Freud provinces: Where they love they do non want and where they desire they can non love. 1 This adulteration decidedly disadvantages adult females, as they can neer be sexually fulfilling to their hubbies. As a consequence, they feel worthless and in some manner faulty. I stated above that a adult male chooses to get married person whom he has great regard and fondness for. However, it is frequently the instance that the adult male will idolise his married woman so much as to disfavor her. Carl Jung argues that all worlds have a Collective Unconscious, where they store images and thoughts from long ago, prior to their ain lives or even coevalss. These images are called Archetypes. The archetypical image of the opposite sex in worlds is called the anima ( for work forces ) or animosity ( for adult females ) . Harmonizing to Jung, Every adult male carries with him the ageless image of adult female The same is true of the adult female: she excessively has her congenital image of a adult male an image of work forces. 2 Note that while the adult female s archetypical image is of legion different work forces, the adult male s image is of one ideal adult female. This consequences in a great overestimate of his married woman. She becomes an graven image, an d must populate up to her hubby s impossible criterions in order to derive his love. A adult male does non love his married woman for who she is ; instead, he loves his archetypical image of what she should be. Therefore, no affair what she does, his married woman will neer populate up to his impossible criterions. Sing the establishment of matrimony, Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung all agree that it disadvantages adult females in many ways. For one thing, as Nietzsche provinces, matrimony merely can non digest due to the fact that its vows are made based on a love that may or may non digest. Regardless, legion people get married each twenty-four hours. However, society has taken it upon itself to maintain immature adult females as sexually nescient as possible, while at the same clip anticipating them to cognize precisely what to make when they eventually do enter matrimony. If, by opportunity, a adult female does come in a matrimony cognizing a small about sex, she is considered wicked. Nietzsche provinces: All the universe is agreed to educate them with every bit much ignorance as possible in erotics, and to animate their psyche with a profound shame of such things 3 Freud goes on to reason that since society Teachs us to pattern abstention until matrimony, the male uneasily awaits the twenty-fou r hours when he will eventually be satisfied sexually. However, when that twenty-four hours comes he finds that his married woman knows nil at all about familiarity. Therefore, he is defeated. Freud provinces: the readying for matrimony frustrates the purposes of matrimony itself. ( Freud 175 ) When this letdown in matrimony occurs, the male frequently times looks other topographic points ( to other people ) for sexual satisfaction. But, the more purely a adult female has been brought up and the more sternly she has submitted to the demands of civilisation, the more she is afraid of taking this manner out ( Freud 173-4 ) This is the authoritative dual criterion in love, as explained by Nietzsche. A adult female is expected to be loyal to her hubby ; nevertheless ; fidelity does non belong to the kernel of his love. ( Nietzsche 147 ) These things result in the adult female one time once more feeling as if she has done something incorrect, when truly all she has done is conform to the outlooks set Forth by society. She may utilize her kids as a kind of apology for her deficiency of sexual cognition, and when faced with an extramarital hubby may lose more of her dignity. Showing a more modern philosophical position of love and matrimony are Karen Horney, Simone deBeauvoir, and Shalamith Firestone. As deBeauvoir argues, adult females are socialized from childhood to be wholly dependent on work forces. Throughout their lives work forces are encouraged to take the harder paths while, conversely, adult females are presented with about resistless enticements ; everything incites her to follow the easy slopes 4 Therefore, work forces achieve power and success and adult females become both economically and socially dependent on them. Besides, deBeauvoir, Horney, and Firestone all agree that regardless of their economic or societal art, work forces are presented in society as far superior to adult females. They control virtually everything in society, and anticipate to command their married womans every bit good. The adult females, hence, live their lives in changeless servitude, for they know that they will non be accepted in society without a adult male at their side. In society To be without a adult male, neer to hold had anything to make with one, to hold remained a virgin, to be single all these things are a shame and cause people to look down upon one. 5 Therefore, they must maintain their hubbies and lovers at all costs. As deBeauvoir provinces: For adult female, love is a supreme attempt by accepting the dependance to which she is condemned ; but even with consent a life of dependence can be lived merely in fright and obsequiousness. ( deBeauvoir 239 ) After an drawn-out period of clip, pathological prevaricators begin to believe the prevarications that they tell. In much the same manner, after legion old ages of society stating them that they are inferior to work forces, many adult females really believe this falsity. Consequently, they dedicate their lives to acquiring a adult male, and will make practically anything in order to accomplish this end. Therefore, it is non hard to hold on a adult female s apprehension of love and matrimony. Love, to adult females, means non lone devotedness but a entire gift of organic structure and psyche, without reserve, without respect for anything whatever. ( deBeauvoir 234 ) They feel unequal as females, and strive to achieve felicity through work forces. In kernel, adult females must hold love non merely for healthy grounds but really to formalize their being. 6 This unhealthy compulsion with happening a hubby or lover causes them to neglect in both love and other facets of their lives. Besid es, since they are so despairing for male blessing and company, adult females frequently accept an emotional lacking in work forces that they would happen unacceptable in adult females. Society s deification of work forces has educated adult females to non merely accept, but to really be satisfied and happy with 2nd topographic point. As deBeauvoir points out, it is a little affair to her to hold 2nd topographic point if she has her topographic point ( deBeauvoir 237 ) It is obvious to some adult females that matrimony should non happen in order to accomplish greater societal position, but instead in order to to the full fall in two peers in every manner. Often times these adult females opt non to acquire married, for they find that true romantic love is nowhere to be found in a society which inequalizes the sexes from birth. There are those who will reason against such positions, saying that work forces s idealisation and glory of adult females in matrimony will catapult them to a higher degree of society, therefore extinguishing their built-in category lower status. However, these independent adult females will see this theory as a prevarication. They realize that, in achieving a adult male s love, they must efficaciously disinherit their ain true egos in order to populate up to his ideal criterions. So they enter society and the on the job universe without a adult male. Yet every bit fantastic as this rebellion from the norms of society sounds, it is really hard for these adult females to win due to society s outlooks and their ain battle to interrupt off from their ain acquisition. As Horney provinces: adult females who nowadays obey the urge to the independent development of their abilities are able to make so merely at the cost of a battle against both external resistance and such oppositions within themselves as are created by an intensification of the traditional ideal of the entirely sexual map of a adult female. ( Horney 192 ) Society will ever put force per unit areas on single adult females to conform to the norms of female being, and, hence, will penalize them when they refuse to make so. The stating behind every good adult male is a adult female may be true non merely in matrimonies, but in the concern universe every bit good. Womans do non have recognition for much of their work irrespective of their endowment. Clearly, there is no equality between adult male and adult female today, in love and concern. Besides, in trying to get away being in private owned by their hubbies, independent adult females alternatively go, in a sense, public belongings. They are seen everlastingly every bit merely the other adult females whether in an extramarital or pure manner. Basically, these other adult females mean nil to work forces or society. Therefore, they feel the same ineptitude in taking non to get married as they would in neglecting at snagging work forces for matrimony. They still retain a desire for true lo ve, and must quash this in order to get away the social paradigm. Due to society s socialisation of both sexes, being a adult female is a lose-lose state of affairs. As Firestone provinces, the life of a non-married adult female is a life snake pit. ( Firestone 252 ) Romantic Love, despite all of its enthusiastic recommendations, has proven to disfavor adult females whether one analyzes it from a psychological or philosophical sense, or both. Since it lists equality as one of its properties, every bit long as our society continues to advance the inequalities between work forces and adult females, we will neer see it in its true signifier. Our society today deifies work forces and convinces adult females that they are far inferior to their male opposite numbers. As a consequence, love and matrimony becomes complicated and corrupted. The adult females who believe society s claims accordingly live their lives as one giant Manhunt, and experience worthless when they do non hold a adult male at their side. This attitude is fueled by society, which treats single, unattached adult females as if they are worthless. The patriarchal ideal of muliebrity, of adult female as one whose lone yearning is to love a adult male and be loved by him, to look up to hi m and function him ( Horney 191 ) still holds true today, irrespective of adult females s assorted accomplishments. Until we can accomplish equality amongst the sexes, our love lives will stay a really distant province of personal businesss with a decidedly impersonal character, entirely regulated by traditional imposts and biass, the paradigm of every conventional matrimony. ( Jung 181 )