What is love?

Woman peeking through a paper heart
[Image: Photos.com]

The meaning of sex

When does sex bring fulfilment and when is it hollow? What are the limits of sexual expression? Roger Scruton talks about sex and perversion.

Chemistry lessons

They don't call it sexual chemistry on a whim, as Margi Clarke discovers when she explores the science of love.

Like a butterfly

It's a dizzying, intoxicating thrill. Sometimes. Sometimes, though, it's like waking up with a flatiron on your chest. Ever wondered... about love?

Related programme

Ever Wondered

Plato considered the question a long time ago... but we're still, perhaps, no nearer an answer.

Perhaps the greatest works on love are by one of the most famous philosophers of ancient Greece - Plato. Plato was the first to use the term philosophy, which means "love of wisdom".

Born around 428 BC, Plato investigated a wide range of topics. Chief among his ideas was the theory of forms, which proposed that objects in the physical world merely resemble perfect forms in the ideal world, and that only these perfect forms can be the object of true knowledge.

The goal of the philosopher, according to Plato, is to know the perfect forms, to get behind the appearance of things and try to discover what they are really like.

Plato’s writings were in dialogue form; philosophical ideas were discussed and criticized in the context of conversations or debates. He wrote two great dialogues dealing with love - The Symposium, an account of conversation at a dinner party that tackles love and The Phaedrus, is an account of erotic passion, mingled with reverence and awe.

Sharing the same general theory of human nature, The Phaedrus treats love as a divine madness, a natural, if not wholly desirable, emotional imbalance.But the diverse speeches delivered in The Symposium offer several more favorable accounts of human emotion in general and of love in particular.

Take it further

Would you like to learn more about the philosophy of love? Why not find out about the foundations of philosophical thought and how it relates to us with course A211 Philosophy and the Human Situation.