Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and it has got us thinking about love and the origins of love. This interesting topic came to us from KQED in San Francisco in their article, “The Ontology of Love.”
Love in all its ramifications is an encompassing human phenomenon. It is a challenging topic and shouldn’t surprise anyone that it evokes interest in academics, philosophers, psychologists, religious enthusiast, etc. It appears however that its elusive nature has continued to fascinate such that there seems to be no hard and fast rules about it. Does love exist in actuality or is it just a mere concept? Is love a preserved human activity which other sentient beings do not participate or can it be extended to animate beings as well?
On an ontological level, love is an aspect of a more encompassing human phenomenon, which Viktor E. Frankl called self-transcendence. It is this quality of man as a self-transcendent being that enhances the capacity of man to reach out beyond himself.
For Plato, Love is “responding to death anxieties through the channel of creation. It is love that binds a man and a woman in an act that results in pro-creation. Through their progeny, the parent perpetuates themselves and finds a sort of immortality that mitigates the death that awaits them as individuals.”
However you view love, may it visit you on this special day.
Melody K. Smith
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