Socrates on Love: Agree?

[Matt23]

Socrates' Logic

• Love is love of something rather than nothing.  Just like "brother" is brother of sister, and "father" is father of children, etc.. 
• Love desires the object of love, whatever it may be; a spouse, a virtue like freedom, money, etc..
• You cannot have that which you desire.  Even if you are healthy at present and also desire to be healthy, this desiring to be healthy is desiring to be healthy in the future, a future which you don't yet have.  
• Therefore, love lacks freedom, goodness, virtue, beauty, grace, kindness, and any other thing we can attribute to it.  

 

For me, I'm not totally sold on the first premise that love needs to be "of" or "for" something.  I can see the possibility that it may be able to simple be, spontaneously arise, and just exist without needing it to be for something.  Just like an emotion can arise without it being about something.  For example, you can literally just create anger in yourself by willing it to arise without it needing to have a "trigger" or something else causing it or it being "for" something.  It's like an acting technique I think.  

[ZzzleepingBear]

7 hours ago, Matt23 said:

Love is love of something rather than nothing.  Just like "brother" is brother of sister, and "father" is father of children, etc.. 

Sounds true to me. Even if we where to point out that a random emotion arised, we objectify or lable it by calling it 'emotion' as we become aware of it, and can then say that we love this emotion since we are aware of it as an emotion no matter how it came about.

7 hours ago, Matt23 said:

Love desires the object of love, whatever it may be; a spouse, a virtue like freedom, money, etc..

Yup, love is understood as love once it meets it's own criteria of objectifying it's target, and from there either remain and then enhance what is considered  to be love.

7 hours ago, Matt23 said:

You cannot have that which you desire.  Even if you are healthy at present and also desire to be healthy, this desiring to be healthy is desiring to be healthy in the future, a future which you don't yet have

True. Desire is to seek, and to seek is to move away from where you are in the present, either mantally/physically or both.

7 hours ago, Matt23 said:

Therefore, love lacks freedom, goodness, virtue, beauty, grace, kindness, and any other thing we can attribute to it.  

Love binds, is selective through objectifying. What is love has to exclude inorder to be known as love. Since love and desire goes hand in hand. There is a driving force that can overide freedom, goodness, virtue, beauty, grace, kindness. Since it's a goal driven persuit of meeting it's unatainable standard of being attained in a so called future, fuled with desire that knows no end.

 

As a disclaimer, I think love is a broadly used term, and desire can't be seperated from love. Love tends to be a sticky subject. What often may be mistaken as love, is most likely Joy. Joy in the present moment, and the joy of being content.

[AtheisticNonduality]

I would say you can desire what you already have. Also a Void can love.

[ZzzleepingBear]

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

I would say you can desire what you already have. Also a Void can love.

Let's say that one of your friends have a desire to buy their dream car. And one day, your friend call you to show you his new dream car that he just bought. And he says to you:

"I have a strong desire to own this car that I just bought."

And you respond:

"yeah but it's yours now, you just bought the car so you own it right??"

  And he respond:

"Yeah I just bought it and I am finally got the car of my dreams to show you, I just wish I have this car that I have now, because it's one of my greatest desire to get it you know."

 

You can love what you desire, or desire what you love. But you can't desire what you already have.

[Ulax]

I disagree with premise 2.

If you've ever done loving-kindness meditation, you might have experienced a love-like state where you have wished someone well, despite them not being around you. You just want the best for them.

[ZzzleepingBear]

11 minutes ago, Ulax said:

I disagree with premise 2.

If you've ever done loving-kindness meditation, you might have experienced a love-like state where you have wished someone well, despite them not being around you. You just want the best for them.

So you had a person in mind that you can direct love towards. Awareness of a person whether present or absent is both object of the mind.

[Ulax]

@ZzzleepingBear I agree. However, the point I intended to make was that love doesn't desire the object of love. There can be love without desire for the object of love, imo.

[ZzzleepingBear]

Just now, Ulax said:

@ZzzleepingBear I agree. However, the point I intended to make was that love doesn't desire the object of love. There can be love without desire for the object of love, imo.

I think you have a point. I suspect that joy is the word you may be looking for. Notice how the word  love is being directed in various ways "I love this and that." "I love love." While joy can't be directed in the same way to make sense. "I joy joy." "I joy you" "I feel joy with my new car". It sounds odd, because joy is something that is present. While love is more of a explicit statement of something or other.

Anyways, I get what you mean. I'm just picky because of the topic we are engaged with.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@ZzzleepingBear Desire is a state where you want something, whether you want to get it in the first place or keep it or get deep into it. Of course this is connected with love and joy, but all three of these are not the same even if similar and right next to each other; the issue is finding out where one begins and the other ends. Joyful love or loving joy, however, is a way of collapsing the duality by showing the borders between them intermingle.

4 hours ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

So you had a person in mind that you can direct love towards. Awareness of a person whether present or absent is both object of the mind.

In the deepest loves the loved is not an object but becomes one, wholly identical, with the subject.

[thisintegrated]

I guess I agree with him.

 

17 hours ago, Matt23 said:

• Love is love of something rather than nothing.  Just like "brother" is brother of sister, and "father" is father of children, etc.. 
• Love desires the object of love, whatever it may be; a spouse, a virtue like freedom, money, etc..

Even if you're in an abstract state of love then you're just loving your self, even if that's your infinite self.

 

17 hours ago, Matt23 said:

• You cannot have that which you desire.  Even if you are healthy at present and also desire to be healthy, this desiring to be healthy is desiring to be healthy in the future, a future which you don't yet have.

Also agree with this.  Desire is a function with a goal.  Goal met = no more goal = no more desire.

[ZzzleepingBear]

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

@ZzzleepingBear Desire is a state where you want something, whether you want to get it in the first place or keep it or get deep into it. Of course this is connected with love and joy, but all three of these are not the same even if similar and right next to each other; the issue is finding out where one begins and the other ends. Joyful love or loving joy, however, is a way of collapsing the duality by showing the borders between them intermingle.

In the deepest loves the loved is not an object but becomes one, wholly identical, with the subject.

You seem to suggest that language is a complex matter that can be untangled, without offering any pointers to how you do so. This only obfuscating your own attempt to clarify definitions by telling me a story of something that goes "deeper" somehow is suppose to explain what you mean.

The use of language and words is initself by definition a imposed limitation on what ever you try to say or describe. So definitions and destinctions matters if you don't want to make wordsallad out of everything in the end.

What does "collapsing the duality" suppose to mean when defining words for example?

[AtheisticNonduality]

35 minutes ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

What does "collapsing the duality" suppose to mean when defining words for example?

Distinctions exist to divide things in half, two qualities or states or locations of reality. Collapsing the duality is showing a third term that exists in between as a gray area that goes against the dual notions/definitions. Or further still it could be a fourth term of Emptiness/Everythingness/Divinity that permeates all regardless of their relative relations.

[ZzzleepingBear]

9 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Distinctions exist to divide things in half, two qualities or states or locations of reality. Collapsing the duality is showing a third term that exists in between as a gray area that goes against the dual notions/definitions. Or further still it could be a fourth term of Emptiness/Everythingness/Divinity that permeates all regardless of their relative relations.

I'd say that is a half-truth if there is such a thing. To break apart and divide things to distinguish them further doesn't come with a fixed number as you try to suggest. To give you a simple example, a cows tail is not half a cow. And no butcher would agree to such a deal for obvious reasons. Laguage has to first and foremost arive at a specific use. Speaking of definitions has another purpose in contrast to speaking of poetry or story telling where you may find play on words to be of more importance than what precise destinctions of word may boil down to. 

 

I can't tell what you try to convey other than saying that all is emptiness/everythingness/divinity in the end of the day.

[Leo Gura]

Love is not that.

Love is the Unity.

[ZzzleepingBear]

27 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Love is not that.

Love is the Unity.

 

You first imply to Socrates definition as "not that" for not being a correct argument, basically amount to no value = (nothing)

and then you use love to refer to what you see as the correct statement that love is "the unity". Unity becomes the object of value labled as love.

So the desire for unity is what binds it to the word love. Unity being something rather than nothing as a reference of direction for the word love to latch onto.

 

You just proved Socrates statement to be correct by the way you use the word love.

[AtheisticNonduality]

15 hours ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

I'd say that is a half-truth if there is such a thing. To break apart and divide things to distinguish them further doesn't come with a fixed number as you try to suggest.

Dualities each make two qualities. One might overshadow the other or be more quantitatively significant (like if there is a large amount of light and a small amount of dark or vice versa), but there are still two qualities. When they're balanced with each other you could call them halves, but if not, you could still call them halves because they're both from a certain imaginable depth infinitely complex and two sides of reality.

If you're trying to say joy is more important than love, I'd say both are important as separate sides of reality (first term is joy and second term is love), that both can intermingle and are interrelated (third term, the duality being a triplicity when the two have a gray area), and that there is something which unites them on a deeper level by being both because it is everything (you could call this the fourth term).

How That or This or It is divided into Love or Truth or Joy, is insoluble, at least if considerable study and experience and incessant thought is not put into it.

[Leo Gura]

Unity is not really a desire. It is existence itself.

The distinction between something and nothing is silly.

Love does not work according to Socrates silly human logic. It's way deeper than that.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Danioover9000]

@ZzzleepingBear

On 8/26/2022 at 5:04 PM, ZzzleepingBear said:

Let's say that one of your friends have a desire to buy their dream car. And one day, your friend call you to show you his new dream car that he just bought. And he says to you:

"I have a strong desire to own this car that I just bought."

And you respond:

"yeah but it's yours now, you just bought the car so you own it right??"

  And he respond:

"Yeah I just bought it and I am finally got the car of my dreams to show you, I just wish I have this car that I have now, because it's one of my greatest desire to get it you know."

 

You can love what you desire, or desire what you love. But you can't desire what you already have.

   Well, in this case it wouldn't be called 'love' or 'desire' after the obtaining of that car, it would instead be called 'cherish' or 'cherishing' or 'appreciation' of this object you have physically, so it become a semantics issue more than an issue of a lack of love, or a deluded form of love. And even this is ultimately love too, metaphysically, epistemically and existentially speaking.

[ZzzleepingBear]

10 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Dualities each make two qualities. One might overshadow the other or be more quantitatively significant (like if there is a large amount of light and a small amount of dark or vice versa), but there are still two qualities. When they're balanced with each other you could call them halves, but if not, you could still call them halves because they're both from a certain imaginable depth infinitely complex and two sides of reality.

If you're trying to say joy is more important than love, I'd say both are important as separate sides of reality (first term is joy and second term is love), that both can intermingle and are interrelated (third term, the duality being a triplicity when the two have a gray area), and that there is something which unites them on a deeper level by being both because it is everything (you could call this the fourth term).

How That or This or It is divided into Love or Truth or Joy, is insoluble, at least if considerable study and experience and incessant thought is not put into it.

I'd say this. I think we are on two different missions here when it comes to our angle of interest in this topic of definition. The gist I get from your explanations is that you try to show me a underlying reality to why language and definitions has the possibility to exist the way they do. And I am not saying I disagree with that take on definition and language per se.

However I will try to clarify my position on the matter by first saying that I do recognize and acknowledge that there is a inherit limitation to language and definitions. And that is my intended position. So when speaking of love for example. We try to convey something or direct our attention with a inherit limited tool. So exploring and fintune the bounderies is the crucial part of definitions if we intend to be aware of it's full use on a concious level, and not be swept away by unconcious believs that may have attached them selves to certain words, imo.

 

Here is example that I believe the majority of people with some dating experience understand, wheter that is consciously or unconsciously.

If you go on a first date with a person, and you hit off really well. What you can't do unless you want to ruin your potential next date, is to say the word "I love you". This should be painfully obvious to most people, but I'm not sure if everyone who knows this can explain why you can't say that to others. And explanations like that it is "stupied to do so on a firt date" offers no further explanation to what is self-evident already. So here is the explanation why you can't say "I love you".  To love something is a desire, it comes with a possesive strive that is conditional to get. So desire is a sticky behaviour that can't be separated from what you say you love. A first date can be enjoyable, and that is healty. But if someone say that they love a stranger on their first date, then it's a unhealty mental pattern of desire that has fully developed into "I love you". And the person who say such a thing has made the other person a desired object, instead of following the healthy pattern of wanting to know more about them. The desire for sex is diffrent from desire of a person as a whole. So it's possible to say, "I love sex" but "I don't love you" despite the persuing to have it with them.

Anyways, I hope this wasn't to hard to follow. Point being, we seem to have different interest in the matter of definition on this particular topic from what I can tell.

[ZzzleepingBear]

50 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Unity is not really a desire. It is existence itself.

The distinction between something and nothing is silly.

Love does not work according to Socrates silly human logic. It's way deeper than that.

Unity isn't unity unless there is something or other that unites. So you can't for example say that you want to unite nothing with nothing.

The distinction between something and nothing is that one of them represent form, while the other is either absence of form or just unknown.

To say that something "is way deeper than that" is at best a weak argument for impliciting something or other that isn't even presented. To superimpose certain words as "deeper" makes what you try to convey even more shallow than if it was left unsaid imo..

Edited August 28, 2022 by ZzzleepingBear