Eros (concept)
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Eros (
In literature
The classical Greek tradition
In the classical world, erotic love was generally referred to as a kind of madness or theia mania ("madness from the gods").
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Whether by "first sight" or by other routes, passionate love often had disastrous results according to the classical authors. In the event that the loved one was cruel or uninterested, this desire was shown to drive the lover into a state of depression, causing lamentation and illness. Occasionally, the loved one was depicted as an unwitting ensnarer of the lover, because of her sublime beauty—a "divine curse" which inspires men to kidnap her or try to rape her.[8] Stories in which unwitting men catch sight of the naked body of Artemis the huntress (and sometimes Aphrodite) lead to similar ravages (as in the tale of Actaeon).
There are few written records of women's lives and loves in ancient Greece. Nevertheless, some historians have suggested that women may have been the objects of love more often than was previously believed and that men's love for women may have been an ideal.
In
Plato
The ancient Greek philosopher
"Platonic love" in this original sense can be attained by the intellectual purification of eros from carnal into ideal form. Plato argues there that eros is initially felt for a person, but with contemplation it can become an appreciation for the beauty within that person, or even an appreciation for beauty itself in an ideal sense. As Plato expresses it, eros can help the soul to "remember" beauty in its pure form. It follows from this, for Plato, that eros can contribute to an understanding of truth.
Eros, understood in this sense, differed considerably from the common meaning of the word in the Greek language of Plato's time. It also differed from the meaning of the word in contemporary literature and poetry. For Plato, eros is neither purely human nor purely divine: it is something intermediate which he calls a daimon.
Its main characteristic is permanent aspiration and desire. Even when it seems to give, eros continues to be a "desire to possess", but nevertheless it is different from a purely sensual love in being the love that tends towards the sublime. According to Plato, the gods do not love, because they do not experience desires, inasmuch as their desires are all satisfied. They can thus only be an object, not a subject of love (Symposium 200-1). For this reason they do not have a direct relationship with man; it is only the mediation of eros that allows the connecting of a relationship (Symposium 203). Eros is thus the way that leads man to divinity, but not vice versa.
Paradoxically, for Plato, the object of eros does not have to be physically beautiful. This is because the object of eros is beauty, and the greatest beauty is eternal, whereas physical beauty is in no way eternal. However, if the lover achieves possession of the beloved's inner (i.e., ideal) beauty, his need for happiness will be fulfilled, because happiness is the experience of knowing that you are participating in the ideal.[20]
European literature
The classical conception of love's arrows was developed further by the troubadour poets of Provence during the medieval period, and became part of the European courtly love tradition. The role of a woman's eyes in eliciting erotic desire was particularly emphasized by the Provençal poets, as N. E. Griffin states:
According to this description, love originates upon the eyes of the lady when encountered by those of her future lover. The love thus generated is conveyed on bright beams of light from her eyes to his, through which it passes to take up its abode in his heart.[21]
In some medieval texts, the gaze of a beautiful woman is compared to the sight of a basilisk—a legendary reptile said to have the power to cause death with a single glance.
These images continued to be circulated and elaborated upon in the literature and iconography of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.[22] Boccaccio for example, in his Il Filostrato, mixes the tradition of Cupid's arrow with the Provençal emphasis on the eyes as the birthplace of love: "Nor did he (Troilus) who was so wise shortly before... perceive that Love with his darts dwelt within the rays of those lovely eyes... nor notice the arrow that sped to his heart."[23]
The rhetorical antithesis between the pleasure and pain from love's dart continued through the 17th century, as for example, in these classically inspired images from The Fairy-Queen:
If Love's a Sweet Passion, why does it torment?
If a Bitter, oh tell me whence comes my content?
Since I suffer with pleasure, why should I complain,
Or grieve at my Fate, when I know 'tis in vain?
Yet so pleasing the Pain is, so soft is the Dart,
That at once it both wounds me, and Tickles my Heart.[24]
Roman Catholic teachings
Ancient
Modern psychologists
Freud
In
In his 1925 paper "The Resistances to Psycho-Analysis",
However, F. M. Cornford finds the standpoints of Plato and of Sigmund Freud to be "diametrically opposed" with regard to eros. In Plato, eros is a spiritual energy initially, which then "falls" downward; whereas in Freud eros is a physical energy which is "sublimated" upward.[26]
The philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse appropriated the Freudian concept of eros for his highly influential 1955 work Eros and Civilization.
Jung
In Carl Jung's analytical psychology, the counterpart to eros is logos, a Greek term for the principle of rationality. Jung considers logos to be a masculine principle, while eros is a feminine principle. According to Jung:
Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos. The concept of Eros could be expressed in modern terms as psychic relatedness, and that of Logos as objective interest.[27]
This gendering of eros and logos is a consequence of Jung's theory of the anima/animus syzygy of the human psyche. Syzygy refers to the split between male and female. According to Jung, this split is recapitulated in the unconscious mind by means of "contrasexual" (opposite-gendered) elements called the anima (in men) and the animus (in women). Thus men have an unconscious feminine principle, the "anima", which is characterized by feminine eros. The work of individuation for men involves becoming conscious of the anima and learning to accept it as one's own, which entails accepting eros. This is necessary in order to see beyond the projections that initially blind the conscious ego. "Taking back the projections" is a major task in the work of individuation, which involves owning and subjectivizing unconscious forces which are initially regarded as alien.[28]
In essence, Jung's concept of eros is not dissimilar to the Platonic one. Eros is ultimately the desire for wholeness, and although it may initially take the form of passionate love, it is more truly a desire for "psychic relatedness", a desire for interconnection and interaction with other sentient beings. However, Jung was inconsistent, and he did sometimes use the word "eros" as a shorthand to designate sexuality.[29]
See also
- Colour wheel theory of love
- The Four Loves
- Greek love
- Limerence, a modern term describing the infatuation and romantic desires commonly associated with eros
- Sisyphus
References
- ISBN 1600060021.
- ^ C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves.
- ^ Tallis, Frank (February 2005). "Crazy for You". The Psychologist. 18 (2).
- ^ See, for example, the Amores and the Heroides of Ovid which frequently refer to the overwhelming passion caused by Cupid's darts.
- ^ See Paris's letter to Helen of Troy, in Ovid, Heroides and Amores, XVI, 36-38.
- ISBN 0-674-99045-5
- ^ Ovid, Heroides and Amores, translated by Grant Showerman, second edition revised by G.P. Goold (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), XVI, 36-38, pp. 199-201.
- ISBN 90-04-09724-4.
- ^ R.J. Sternberg, Cupid's Arrow, 63
- ^ Plutarch, Alcibiades, 8
- ^ S. Monoson, Plato's Democratic Entanglements, 195
- ^ M. Ostwald, Athens as a Cultural Center, 310
- ^ P. Cartledge, The Spartans, 234
- ^ P. Cartledge, The Spartans, 235
- OCLC 19740359.
- )
- ^ M.B. Mineo, Diotima of Mantineia, 102
- ^ M.B. Mineo, Diotima of Mantineia, 134
- ^ Plato, Symposium, 202b-203a
- ^ Plato. Symposium. 199c5-212c
- ISBN 0-8196-0187-X), p.76, note 2.
- ^ For a full discussion of the scene of "love at first sight" in fiction, see Jean Rousset, "Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent" : la scène de première vue dans le roman, Paris: José Corti, 1981.
- ^ Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filostrato, canto 1, strophe 29; translation by Nathaniel Edward Griffin and Arthur Beckwith Myrick, p. 147. According to Griffin: "In the description of the enamorment of Troilus is a singular blending of the Provençal conception of the eyes as the birthplace of love with the classical idea of the God of Love with his bows and quiver..." (ibid., p.77, note 2).
- ^ Anonymous, "If Love's a Sweet Passion", from the libretto of Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen, act 3.
- ^ Freud, S. (1925). "The Resistances to Psycho-Analysis", in The Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 5, p.163-74. (Tr. James Strachey.)
- ^ Cornford, F.M. (1950), "The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium", in The Unwritten Philosophy.
- ISBN 0-7100-9522-8.
- ^ For a critical perspective on this viewpoint, which also summarizes the Jungian position well, see James Hillman, The Dream and The Underworld (1979), p.100.
- ^ Robert H. Hopcke, A Guided Tour of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Shambhala Books, 1999, p.45ff.