Beautifully Broken Issue #40: Magic Mirror: Solving Humanity through Sympathetic Reflection

IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Welcome to Beautifully Broken Issue #40: MAGIC MIRROR: Solving Humanity Through Sympathetic Reflection

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IDEAS:  MAGIC MIRROR: Solving Humanity Through Sympathetic Reflection

What is love? Love is a word we tend to use a lot and so its potency easily becomes muddied in linguistic confusion. The Greeks have four words for love:

• Eros (ἔρως) means "love, mostly of the sexual passion". The Modern Greek word "erotas" means "intimate love". Plato refined his own definition: Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, and may ultimately transcend particulars to become an appreciation of beauty itself, hence the concept of platonic love to mean "without physical attraction". In Plato's Symposium, Socrates argues that eros helps the soul recall its inherent knowledge of ideal beauty and spiritual truth. Thus, the ideal form of youthful beauty arouses erotic desire, but also points toward higher spiritual ideals.

• Philia (φιλία) means "affectionate regard, friendship", usually "between equals". It is a dispassionate virtuous love. In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, philia is expressed variously as loyalty to friends ("brotherly love"), family, and community; it requires virtue, equality, and familiarity.

• Storge (στοργή) means "love, affection" and "especially of parents and children". It is the common or natural empathy, like that felt by parents for offspring. It is rarely used in ancient works, almost exclusively to describe family relationships. It may also express mere acceptance or tolerance, as in "loving" the tyrant. It may also describe love of country or enthusiasm for a favorite sports team.

• Agape (ἀγάπη) means, when translated literally, affection, as in "greet with affection" and "show affection for the dead". The verb form of the word "agape" goes as far back as Homer. In a Christian context, agape means "love: esp. unconditional love, charity; the love of God for person and of person for God". The Christian priest and philosopher Thomas Aquinas described agape as "to will the good of another".

This last sentence, where Aquinas defines Agape as the “to will the good of another” is interesting and gets to what I think these four categories have in common—that the different forms of love are ways in which we commonly see the other (anyone else) as ourselves—a kind of sympathetic reflection.