Why do we Love?
Romantic love, beautiful and intoxicating, heartbreaking and soul-crushing, often all at the same time. Why do we choose to put ourselves through its emotional wringer? Does love make our life meaningful? or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering? Is love a disguise for our sexual desire, or a trick of biology to make us procreate? Is it all we need? Do we need it at all? If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet. But over the course of history, some of our most respected philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories. 1. Love makes us whole, again: The ancient Greek philosopher Plato explored the idea that we love in order to become complete. In his "Symposium" he wrote about a dinner party, at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright, regales the guests with the following story: Humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces. One day, they angered the gods, and Zeus sliced them al...