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Do You Know What Love Really Is?

Is it just a second-hand emotion?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Verywell / Laura Porter

• How Do You Know You're Feeling Love for Someone?

Is Love Influenced By Biology or Culture?

How to show love to another person.

• Tips for Cultivating

Negative Emotions Associated With Love

Take the love quiz.

When it comes to love, some people would say it is one of the most important human emotions . Love is a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust.

Many say it's not an emotion in the way we typically understand them, but an essential physiological drive. 

Love is a physiological motivation such as hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex drive.

There are countless songs, books, poems, and other works of art about love (you probably have one in mind as we speak!). Yet despite being one of the most studied behaviors, it is still the least understood. For example, researchers debate whether love is a biological or cultural phenomenon.

How Do You Know You're Feeling Love for Someone?

What are some of the signs of love? Researchers have made distinctions between feelings of liking and loving another person.

Zick Rubin's Scales of Liking and Loving

According to psychologist Zick Rubin, romantic love is made up of three elements:

• Attachment : Needing to be with another person and desiring physical contact and approval
• Caring : Valuing the other person's happiness and needs as much as your own
• Intimacy : Sharing private thoughts, feelings, and desires with the other person

Based on this view of romantic love, Rubin developed two questionnaires to measure these variables, known as Rubin's Scales of Liking and Loving . While people tend to view people they like as pleasant, love is marked by being devoted, possessive, and confiding in one another. 

Are There Different Types of Love?

Yup—not all forms of love are the same, and psychologists have identified a number of different types of love that people may experience.

These types of love include:

• Friendship : This type of love involves liking someone and sharing a certain degree of intimacy.
• Infatuation : This form of love often involves intense feelings of attraction without a sense of commitment; it often takes place early in a relationship and may deepen into a more lasting love.
• Passionate love : This type of love is marked by intense feelings of longing and attraction; it often involves an idealization of the other person and a need to maintain constant physical closeness.
• Compassionate/companionate love : This form of love is marked by trust, affection, intimacy, and commitment.
• Unrequited love : This form of love happens when one person loves another who does not return those feelings.

Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

Specifically, psychologist Robert Sternberg developed his well-regarded triangular theory of love in the early 1980s. Much research has built upon his work and demonstrated its universality across cultures.

Sternberg broke love into three components—intimacy, passion, and commitment—that interact to produce seven types of love .

Love is most likely influenced by both biology and culture. Although hormones and biology are important, the way we express and experience love is also influenced by our own conceptions of love.

Some researchers suggest that love is a basic human emotion just like happiness or anger, while others believe that it is a cultural phenomenon that arises partly due to social pressures and expectations. 

Research has found that romantic love exists in all cultures, which suggests that love has a strong biological component. It is a part of human nature to seek out and find love. However, culture can significantly affect how individuals think about, experience, and display romantic love.

Is Love an Emotion?

Psychologists, sociologists, and researchers disagree somewhat on the characterization of love. Many say it's not an emotion in the way we typically understand them, but an essential physiological drive. On the other hand, the American Psychological Association defines it as "a complex emotion." Still, others draw a distinction between primary and secondary emotions and put love in the latter category, maintaining that it derives from a mix of primary emotions.

There is no single way to practice love. Every relationship is unique, and each person brings their own history and needs. Some things that you can do to show love to the people you care about include:

• Be willing to be vulnerable.
• Be willing to forgive.
• Do your best, and be willing to apologize when you make mistakes.
• Let them know that you care.
• Listen to what they have to say.
• Prioritize spending time with the other person.
• Reciprocate loving gestures and acts of kindness.
• Recognize and acknowledge their good qualities.
• Share things about yourself.
• Show affection.
• Make it unconditional.

How Love Impacts Your Mental Health

Love, attachment, and affection have an important impact on well-being and quality of life. Loving relationships have been linked to:

• Lower risk of heart disease
• Decreased risk of dying after a heart attack
• Better health habits
• Increased longevity
• Lower stress levels
• Less depression
• Lower risk of diabetes

Tips for Cultivating Love

Lasting relationships are marked by deep levels of trust, commitment, and intimacy. Some things that you can do to help cultivate loving relationships include:

• Try loving-kindness meditation. Loving-kindness meditation (LKM) is a technique often used to promote self-acceptance and reduce stress, but it has also been shown to promote a variety of positive emotions and improve interpersonal relationships. LKM involves meditating while thinking about a person you love or care about, concentrating on warm feelings and your desire for their well-being and happiness.
• Communicate. Everyone's needs are different. The best way to ensure that your needs and your loved one's needs are met is to talk about them. Helping another person feel loved involves communicating that love to them through words and deeds. Some ways to do this include showing that you care, making them feel special, telling them they are loved , and doing things for them.
• Tackle conflict in a healthy way . Never arguing is not necessarily a sign of a healthy relationship—more often than not, it means that people are avoiding an issue rather than discussing it. Rather than avoid conflict, focus on hashing out issues in ways that are healthy in order to move a relationship forward in a positive way. 

As Shakespeare said, the course of love never did run smooth. Love can vary in intensity and can change over time. It is associated with a range of positive emotions, including happiness, excitement, life satisfaction, and euphoria, but it can also result in negative emotions such as jealousy and stress.

No relationship is perfect, so there will always be problems, conflicts, misunderstandings, and disappointments that can lead to distress or heartbreak.

Some of the potential pitfalls of experiencing love include:

• Increased stress
• Obsessiveness
• Possessiveness

While people are bound to experience some negative emotions associated with love, it can become problematic if those negative feelings outweigh the positive or if they start to interfere with either person's ability to function normally. Relationship counseling can be helpful in situations where couples need help coping with miscommunication, stress, or emotional issues.

History of Love

Only fairly recently has love become the subject of science. In the past, the study of love was left to "the creative writer to depict for us the necessary conditions for loving," according to Sigmund Freud . "In consequence, it becomes inevitable that science should concern herself with the same materials whose treatment by artists has given enjoyment to mankind for thousands of years," he added.  

Research on love has grown tremendously since Freud's remarks. But early explorations into the nature and reasons for love drew considerable criticism. During the 1970s, U.S. Senator William Proxmire railed against researchers who were studying love and derided the work as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Despite early resistance, research has revealed the importance of love in both child development and adult health.  

Our fast and free love quiz can help you determine if what you've got is the real deal or simply a temporary fling or infatuation.

Burunat E. Love is not an emotion .  Psychology . 2016;07(14):1883. doi:10.4236/psych.2016.714173

Karandashev V. A Cultural Perspective on Romantic Love .  ORPC. 2015;5(4):1-21. doi:10.9707/2307-0919.1135

Rubin Z. Lovers and Other Strangers: The Development of Intimacy in Encounters and Relationships: Experimental studies of self-disclosure between strangers at bus stops and in airport departure lounges can provide clues about the development of intimate relationships . American Scientist. 1974;62(2):182-190.

Langeslag SJ, van Strien JW. Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies, and Feasibility .  PLoS One . 2016;11(8):e0161087. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0161087

• Sorokowski P, Sorokowska A, Karwowski M, et al.  Universality of the triangular theory of love: adaptation and psychometric properties of the triangular love scale in 25 countries .  J Sex Res . 2021;58(1):106-115. doi:10.1080/00224499.2020.1787318

American Psychological Association. APA Dictionary of Psychology .

Wong CW, Kwok CS, Narain A, et al. Marital status and risk of cardiovascular diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis .  Heart . 2018;104(23):1937‐1948. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2018-313005

Robards J, Evandrou M, Falkingham J, Vlachantoni A. Marital status, health and mortality .  Maturitas . 2012;73(4):295‐299. doi:10.1016/j.maturitas.2012.08.007

Teo AR, Choi H, Valenstein M. Social Relationships and Depression: Ten-Year Follow-Up from a Nationally Representative Study . PLoS One . 2013;8(4):e62396. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062396

Roberson PNE, Fincham F. Is relationship quality linked to diabetes risk and management?: It depends on what you look at . Fam Syst Health. 2018;36(3):315-326. doi:10.1037/fsh0000336

He X, Shi W, Han X, Wang N, Zhang N, Wang X. The interventional effects of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions and interpersonal interactions .  Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat . 2015;11:1273‐1277. doi:10.2147/NDT.S79607

Freud S. The Freud Reader . New York: W. W. Norton & Company; 1995.

Winston R, Chicot R. The importance of early bonding on the long-term mental health and resilience of children . London J Prim Care (Abingdon). 2016;8(1):12-14. doi:10.1080/17571472.2015.1133012

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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11 The Importance of Love

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Ask anyone to name the most important things in life, and “love” will come up in almost every answer. Yet academic philosophers have historically given relatively little attention to the subject. This chapter takes up the basic questions “What is love?” and “What is so great about it?” After canvassing the wide variety of relationships that are plausibly characterized as loving, the chapter rejects definitions that focus on desires to benefit or be with the beloved as well as definitions that associate love with an “arresting awareness” of the beloved’s value. Rather, the chapter suggests that the only thing all serious loves may have in common is the fact that they involve caring, deeply and personally, about the objects of love for their own sake. As such, the chapter proposes, love provides an orientation in the world that roots us motivationally to it.

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What is love?

Associate professor in Social Psychology / Relationship Science, Deakin University

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Gery Karantzas receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is the founder of relationshipscienceonline.com

Deakin University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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From songs and poems to novels and movies, romantic love is one of the most enduring subjects for artworks through the ages. But what about the science?

Historical, cultural and even evolutionary evidence suggests love existed during ancient times and across many parts of the world. Romantic love has been found to exist in 147 of 166 cultures looked at in one study.

The complexity of love has much to do with how people experience it differently and how it can change over time.

Read more: Friday essay: finding spaces for love

Like, love, or ‘in love’?

Psychological research over the past 50 years has investigated the differences between liking someone, loving someone and being “in love”.

Liking is described as having positive thoughts and feelings towards someone and finding that person’s company rewarding. We often also experience warmth and closeness towards the people we like. In some instances we choose to be emotionally intimate with these people.

When we love someone we experience the same positive thoughts and experiences as when we like a person. But we also experience a deep sense of care and commitment towards that person.

Being “ in love ” includes all the above but also involves feelings of sexual arousal and attraction. However, research into people’s own views of love suggests that not all love is the same.

Passionate vs companionate love

Romantic love consists of two types: passionate and companionate love. Most romantic relationships, whether they be heterosexual or same sex , involve both these parts.

Passionate love is what people typically consider being “in love”. It includes feelings of passion and an intense longing for someone, to the point they might obsessively think about wanting to be in their arms.

The second part is known as companionate love . It’s not felt as intensely, but it’s complex and connects feelings of emotional intimacy and commitment with a deep attachment toward the romantic partner.

How does love change over time?

Research looking at changes in romantic love over time typically finds that although passionate love starts high, it declines over the course of a relationship.

There are various reasons for this.

As partners learn more about each other and become more confident in the long-term future of the relationship, routines develop. The opportunities to experience novelty and excitement can also decline, as can the frequency of sexual activity . This can cause passionate love to subside.

Although a reduction in passionate love is not experienced by all couples, various studies report approximately 20-40% of couples experience this downturn. Of couples who have been married in excess of ten years, the steepest downturn is most likely to occur over the second decade .

Life events and transitions can also make it challenging to experience passion. People have competing responsibilities which affect their energy and limit the opportunities to foster passion. Parenthood is an example of this.

Read more: Love by design: when science meets sex, lust, attraction and attachment

In contrast, companionate love is typically found to increase over time.

Although research finds most romantic relationships consist of both passionate and companionate love, it’s the absence or reductions in companionate love, moreso than passionate love, that can negatively affect the longevity of a romantic relationship.

But what’s the point of love?

Love is an emotion that keeps people bonded and committed to one another. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, love evolved to keep the parents of children together long enough for them to survive and reach sexual maturity .

Read more: What is this thing called love?

The period of childhood is much longer for humans than other species. As offspring rely on adults for many years to survive and to develop the skills and abilities needed for successful living, love is especially important for humans.

Without love, it’s difficult to see how the human species could have evolved .

A biological foundation too

Not only is there an evolutionary foundation to love, love is rooted in biology. Neurophysiological studies into romantic love show that people who are in the throes of passionate love experience increased activation in brain regions associated with reward and pleasure.

Read more: Love lockdown: the pandemic has put pressure on many relationships, but here's how to tell if yours will survive

In fact, the brain regions activated are the same as those activated by cocaine.

These regions release chemicals such as oxytocin, vasopressin and dopamine, which produce feelings of happiness and euphoria that are also linked to sexual arousal and excitement.

Interestingly, these brain regions are not activated when thinking about non-romantic relationships such as friends. These findings tell us that liking someone is not the same as being in love with someone.

What’s your love style?

Research has found three primary styles of love. First coined by psychologist John Lee , the love styles are eros, ludus and storge. These styles include people’s beliefs and attitudes about love and act as a guide for how to approach romantic relationships.

This style of love refers to erotic love and is focused on physical attraction and engaging in sex, the quick development of strong and passionate feelings for another and intense intimacy.

This style involves being emotionally distant and often involves “game-playing”. It’s not surprising people who endorse this love style are unlikely to commit, feel comfortable ending relationships and often start a new relationship before ending the current one.

Storge is often regarded as a more mature form of love. Priority is given to having a relationship with a person who has similar interests, affection is openly expressed and there is less emphasis on physical attractiveness. People high on storge love are trusting of others and are not needy or dependent on others.

Or is a mixture more your style?

You may see yourself in more than one of these styles.

Evidence suggests some people possess a mixture of the three main love styles; these mixtures were labelled by Lee as mania, pragma and agape.

Read more: Darling, I love you ... from the bottom of my brain

Manic love includes intense feelings for a partner as well as worry about committing to the relationship. Pragmatic love involves making sensible relationship choices in finding a partner who will make a good companion and friend. Agape is a self-sacrificing love that is driven by a sense of duty and selflessness.

Why do you love the way you do?

A person’s love style has little to do with their genetics . Rather, it’s associated with the development of personality and a person’s past relationship experiences.

Some studies have found people who are high on dark traits, such as narcissism, psychopathy and machiavellianism, endorse more of a ludus or pragma love style.

Read more: There are six styles of love. Which one best describes you?

People who have an insecure attachment style , involving a high need for validation and preoccupation with relationship partners, endorse more mania love, while those who are uncomfortable with intimacy and closeness do not endorse eros love.

No matter the differences in the way love is experienced, one thing remains common for all: we as humans are social animals who have a deep fascination for it.

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Before You Write a Love Essay, Read This to Get Examples

The day will come when you can’t escape the fate of all students: You will have to write a what is love essay.

No worries:

Here you’ll find tons of love essay topics and examples. No time to read everything? Scroll down to get a free PDF with original samples.

Definition: Essay on Love

First, let’s define what is love essay?

The most common topics are:

• Definition of love
• What is love?
• Meaning of love

Why limit yourself to these hackneyed, general themes? Below, I’ll show how to make your paper on love original yet relevant to the prompt you get from teachers.

Love Essay Topics: 20 Ideas to Choose for Your Paper

Your essay on love and relationship doesn’t have to be super official and unemotional. It’s ok to share reflections and personal opinions when writing about romance.

Often, students get a general task to write an essay on love. It means they can choose a theme and a title for their paper. If that’s your case,  feel free to try any of these love essay topics:

• Exploring the impact of love on individuals and relationships.
• Love in the digital age: Navigating romance in a tech world.
• Is there any essence and significance in unconditional love?
• Love as a universal language: Connecting hearts across cultures.
• Biochemistry of love: Exploring the process.
• Love vs. passion vs. obsession.
• How love helps cope with heartbreak and grief.
• The art of loving. How we breed intimacy and trust.
• The science behind attraction and attachment.
• How love and relationships shape our identity and help with self-discovery.
• Love and vulnerability: How to embrace emotional openness.
• Romance is more complex than most think: Passion, intimacy, and commitment explained.
• Love as empathy: Building sympathetic connections in a cruel world.
• Evolution of love. How people described it throughout history.
• The role of love in mental and emotional well-being.
• Love as a tool to look and find purpose in life.
• Welcoming diversity in relations through love and acceptance.
• Love vs. friendship: The intersection of platonic and romantic bonds.
• The choices we make and challenges we overcome for those we love.
• Love and forgiveness: How its power heals wounds and strengthens bonds.

Love Essay Examples: Choose Your Sample for Inspiration

Essays about love are usually standard, 5-paragraph papers students write in college:

• One paragraph is for an introduction, with a hook and a thesis statement
• Three are for a body, with arguments or descriptions
• One last passage is for a conclusion, with a thesis restatement and final thoughts

Below are the ready-made samples to consider. They’ll help you see what an essay about love with an introduction, body, and conclusion looks like.

What is love essay: 250 words

Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Indeed, love can transform individuals, relationships, and our world.

A word of immense depth and countless interpretations, love has always fascinated philosophers, poets, and ordinary individuals. This  emotion breaks boundaries and has a super power to change lives. But what is love, actually?

It’s a force we feel in countless ways. It is the warm embrace of a parent, filled with care and unwavering support. It is the gentle touch of a lover, sparking a flame that ignites passion and desire. Love is the kind words of a friend, offering solace and understanding in times of need. It is the selfless acts of compassion and empathy that bind humanity together.

Love is not confined to romantic relationships alone. It is found in the family bonds, the connections we forge with friends, and even the compassion we extend to strangers. Love is a thread that weaves through the fabric of our lives, enriching and nourishing our souls.

However, love is not without its complexities. It can be both euphoric and agonizing, uplifting and devastating. Love requires vulnerability, trust, and the willingness to embrace joy and pain. It is a delicate balance between passion and compassion, independence and interdependence.

Finally, the essence of love may be elusive to define with mere words. It is an experience that surpasses language and logic, encompassing a spectrum of emotions and actions. Love is a profound connection that unites us all, reminding us of our shared humanity and the capacity for boundless compassion.

What is love essay: 500 words

A 500-word essay on why I love you

Trying to encapsulate why I love you in a mere 500 words is impossible. My love for you goes beyond the confines of language, transcending words and dwelling in the realm of emotions, connections, and shared experiences. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express the depth and breadth of my affection for you.

First and foremost, I love you for who you are. You possess a unique blend of qualities and characteristics that captivate my heart and mind. Your kindness and compassion touch the lives of those around you, and I am grateful to be the recipient of your unwavering care and understanding. Your intelligence and wit constantly challenge me to grow and learn, stimulating my mind and enriching our conversations. You have a beautiful spirit that radiates warmth and joy, and I am drawn to your vibrant energy.

I love the way you make me feel. When I am with you, I feel a sense of comfort and security that allows me to be my true self. Your presence envelops me in a cocoon of love and acceptance, where I can express my thoughts, fears, and dreams without fear of judgment. Your support and encouragement inspire me to pursue my passions and overcome obstacles. With you by my side, I feel empowered to face the world, knowing I have a partner who believes in me.

I love the memories we have created together. From the laughter-filled moments of shared adventures to the quiet and intimate conversations, every memory is etched in my heart. Whether exploring new places, indulging in our favorite activities, or simply enjoying each other’s company in comfortable silence, each experience reinforces our bond. Our shared memories serve as a foundation for our relationship, a testament to the depth of our connection and the love that binds us.

I love your quirks and imperfections. Your true essence shines through these unique aspects! Your little traits make me smile and remind me of the beautiful individual you are. I love how you wrinkle your nose when you laugh, become lost in thought when reading a book, and even sing off-key in the shower. These imperfections make you human, relatable, and utterly lovable.

I love the future we envision together. We support each other’s goals, cheering one another on as we navigate the path toward our dreams. The thought of building a life together, creating a home filled with love and shared experiences, fills my heart with anticipation and excitement. The future we imagine is one that I am eager to explore with you by my side.

In conclusion, the reasons why I love you are as vast and varied as the universe itself. It is a love that defies logic and surpasses the limitations of language. From the depths of my being, I love you for the person you are, the way you make me feel, the memories we cherish, your quirks and imperfections, and the future we envision together. My love for you is boundless, unconditional, and everlasting.

A 5-paragraph essay about love

I’ve gathered all the samples (and a few bonus ones) in one PDF. It’s free to download. So, you can keep it at hand when the time comes to write a love essay.

Ready to Write Your Essay About Love?

Now that you know the definition of a love essay and have many topic ideas, it’s time to write your A-worthy paper! Here go the steps:

• Check all the examples of what is love essay from this post.
• Choose the topic and angle that fits your prompt best.
• Write your original and inspiring story.

Any questions left? Our writers are all ears. Please don’t hesitate to ask!

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What It Really Means to Be in Love

Get past your own defenses and learn to build a real relationship..

Posted December 18, 2013 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

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• Love can be key to a happy and fulfilling life.
• With love so closely connected to meaning and fulfillment, it's valuable to define love as an action or series of actions.
• Love should have a positive effect on each person's self-esteem and sense of well-being.

While many of us may have sensed it intuitively, there is now science behind the statement that "Love is all you need." A 75-year longitudinal study by Harvard researchers suggests that love is indeed key to a happy and fulfilling life.

While love seems to be a universally valued attribute, defining it in behavioral terms can be a challenge. As the Harvard study's lead researcher, George Vaillant, wrote of his team's findings, two essential ingredients are proven to correlate with a happy existence: "One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away."

While many of us believe we would like to be in love, we face many hurdles in taking the actions that allow love to flow freely throughout our lives and relationships. We have many ways of defending ourselves against love and can struggle to give and receive love with ease, openness , and vulnerability.

With love being so closely connected to meaning and fulfillment, it's valuable for each of us to define love as an action or series of actions we can take to bring us closer to the people we value. In a romantic context, some essential characteristics that fit the description of a loving relationship include:

• Expressions of affection, both physical and emotional.
• A wish to offer pleasure and satisfaction to another.
• Tenderness, compassion, and sensitivity to the needs of the other.
• A desire for shared activities and pursuits.
• An appropriate level of sharing of possessions.
• An ongoing, honest exchange of personal feelings.
• The process of offering concern, comfort, and outward assistance for the loved one's aspirations.

Love includes feeling for the other that goes beyond any selfishness or self-interest on the part of the loved one. As such, love nurtures and has a positive effect on each person's self-esteem and sense of well-being. Love never involves deception , because misleading another person fractures his or her sense of reality.

So how well do we meet these standards for being loving? When we think about a relationship that is meaningful to us, we have to ask:

• Do we both behave in ways that nurture each other?
• Do we take actions to make the other person feel good?
• Do we consider what lights that person up, separate from our own interests?

Too often, we think of love as an almost passive state of being, as opposed to a conscious choice we make. When we regard love as something we simply fall into, we can easily slip into routines with the person we value or lose a sense of separateness and respect. Instead, we view that person as a part of us. We then run the risk of creating a fantasy bond , an illusion of fusion in which real feelings of fondness and attraction are replaced by the form of being in a relationship. In other words, we come to see ourselves and our partner as a single unit. We then fall into roles rather than appreciating each other as individuals and experiencing the exciting, loving feelings that result.

A fantasy bond offers a false sense of security—the illusion that we are no longer alone. However, when we connect to someone in this way, we lose our sense of vitality, and we give up significant aspects of our relationship. The behavioral operations of love are replaced with a fantasy of being in love, which does not nurture either partner.

Relationships tend to go south when we stop taking actions that our partner would perceive as loving and instead start looking to our partner solely to meet our own needs. It's important to distinguish emotional hunger from real love. Have you ever witnessed a parent hugging a child and wondered whether the hug was intended to comfort the child, offering reassurance and care, or to soothe the parent, taking something from the child? When we reach out to our partner, it can be valuable to examine whether our behaviors are for them or for ourselves . Are we looking to them to fulfill us in some way that is unfair to them? Are we hoping they will make up for an emptiness or hurt from our past?

A couple I worked with recently recognized an example of this dynamic. The wife would often compliment her husband, but he rarely felt acknowledged by her words. When she recounted some of the recent comments she made, she noticed that they were less of a reflection of him and more a reflection on her. Statements such as, "Aren't I married to such a handsome, well-put-together man?" and "Haven't I picked a winner?" didn't capture qualities that were important to him . They were traits she valued in a partner that reconfirmed her own self-esteem and sense of worth.

Love should never be an act of manipulation. It is not a mark of ownership over another person, but the exact opposite—a genuine appreciation of a person as a separate individual. When we see a person this way, we allow ourselves to fully value them for who they are and for the happiness they bring to our lives. We are driven to be generous toward the person, to show compassion and kindness in a way that both they and the outside world would view as loving.

Of course, there are many barriers we put in place that not only keep us from finding this type of relationship but from achieving it with the person we love. One reason we wind up in less-than-loving relationships is the ways we were treated in our past. We may have become familiar with family dynamics in which we were rejected or intruded on, in which case we tend to seek out or recreate these same dynamics in our adult relationships. To become more loving thus means recognizing ways we self-sabotage : How are we recreating past hurts in our current relationships?

As we reflect on these behaviors, we learn a lot, not only about how we interfere with our naturally loving feelings for others but about the negative ways we feel about ourselves. It's difficult to express love outwardly when we don't feel our own sense of self-worth. One of the biggest reasons we shut out love is because we feel unworthy or self-denying. Therefore, to have a loving relationship, we must challenge our negative self-concept or critical inner voice . When we do this and take the loving actions that contradict our critical self-image, we enhance our own sense of worth and are able to get closer to the people we love.

Lisa Firestone, Ph.D. , is a clinical psychologist, an author, and the Director of Research and Education for the Glendon Association.

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The Research on Love: A Psychological, Scientific Perspective on Love

Dr. Nina Mikirova

And now here is this topic about love, the subject without which no movie, novel, poem or song can exist. This topic has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters. I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to research and to write this article, and I am hoping it will be interesting to you as a reader.

Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject.  The following is a comprehensive review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically-informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships as presented in the article: “Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?”  by H. Reis and A. Aron. A brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE RESEARCH

Most popular contemporary ideas about love can be traced to the classical Greek philosophers. Prominent in this regard is Plato’s Symposium. It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas

have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first of these was led by Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second important figure was Sigmund Freud. He introduced many psychodynamic principles, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior.

A third historically significant figure was Margaret Mead. Mead expanded awareness with vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality. This led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

The emerging women’s movement during the 1970s also contributed to a cultural climate that made the study of what had been traditionally thought of as ‘‘women’s concerns’’ not only acceptable, but in fact necessary for the science of human behavior. At the same time, a group of social psychologists were beginning their work to show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

WHAT’S PSYCHOLOGY GOT TO DO WITH LOVE

What is Love?  According to authors, Reis and Aron, love is defined as a desire to enter, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person. Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”).

The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques, examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.  Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment.  Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment, whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity).

In some studies, trust and caring were considred highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and butterflies in the stomach were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptation problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is strenuous, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

Considerably less study has been devoted to understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment; all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.  More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by communal relationship; a relationship built on mutual expectations that oneself and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association among social relatedness, health, and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits. Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life worse.

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appear to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate love and companionate love has profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contraindicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: How this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

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The Meaning of Life

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a life that matters. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last 50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of life has been established in Anglo-American philosophy, and it is only in the last 30 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value, including conceptions of meaning in life, grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not certain or universally shared) judgments of cases, often called “intuitions.” English-speaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct topic that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar ethical categories such as well-being, virtuous character, and right action.

This survey critically discusses approaches to meaning in life that are prominent in contemporary Anglo-American philosophical literature. To provide context, sometimes it mentions other texts, e.g., in Continental philosophy or from before the 20 th century. However, the central aim is to acquaint the reader with recent analytic work on life's meaning and to pose questions about it that are currently worthy of consideration.

When the topic of the meaning of life comes up, people often pose one of two questions: “So, what is the meaning of life?” and “What are you talking about?” The literature can be divided in terms of which question it seeks to answer. This discussion starts off with works that address the latter, abstract question regarding the sense of talk of “life's meaning,” i.e., that aim to clarify what we are asking when we pose the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful. Afterward, it considers texts that provide answers to the more substantive question about the nature of meaning as a property. Some accounts of what make life meaningful provide particular ways to do so, e.g., by making certain achievements (James 2005), developing moral character (Thomas 2005), or learning from relationships with family members (Velleman 2005). However, most recent discussions of meaning in life are attempts to capture in a single principle all the variegated conditions that can confer meaning on life. This survey focuses heavily on the articulation and evaluation of these theories of what would make life meaningful. It concludes by examining nihilist views that the conditions necessary for meaning in life do not obtain for any of us, i.e., that all our lives are meaningless.

1. The Meaning of “Meaning”

• 2.1 God-Centered Views
• 2.2 Soul-Centered Views

3.1 Subjectivism

3.2 objectivism, 4. nihilism, works cited, collections, books for the general reader, other internet resources, related entries.

One part of the field of life's meaning consists of the systematic attempt to clarify what people mean when they ask in virtue of what life has meaning. This section addresses different accounts of the sense of talk of “life's meaning” (and of “significance,” “importance,” and other synonyms). A large majority of those writing on life's meaning deem talk of it centrally to indicate a positive final value that an individual's life can exhibit. That is, comparatively few believe either that a meaningful life is a merely neutral quality, or that what is of key interest is the meaning of the human species or universe as a whole (for discussions focused on the latter, see Edwards 1972; Munitz 1986; Seachris 2009). Most in the field have ultimately wanted to know whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning, a certain property that is desirable for its own sake.

Beyond drawing the distinction between the life of an individual and that of a whole, there has been very little discussion of life as the logical bearer of meaning. For instance, is the individual's life best understood biologically, qua human being, or instead as the existence of a person that may or may not be human (Flanagan 1996)? And if an individual is loved from afar, can it logically affect the meaningfulness of her “life” (Brogaard and Smith 2005, 449)?

Returning to topics on which there is consensus, most writing on meaning believe that it comes in degrees such that some periods of life are more meaningful than others and that some lives as a whole are more meaningful than others (perhaps contra Britton 1969, 192). Note that one can coherently hold the view that some people's lives are less meaningful than others, or even meaningless, and still maintain that people have an equal moral status. Consider a consequentialist view according to which each individual counts for one in virtue of having a capacity for a meaningful life (cf. Railton 1984), or a Kantian view that says that people have an intrinsic worth in virtue of their capacity for autonomous choices, where meaning is a function of the exercise of this capacity (Nozick 1974, ch. 3). On both views, morality could counsel an agent to help people with relatively meaningless lives, at least if the condition is not of their choosing.

Another uncontroversial element of the sense of “meaningfulness” is that it connotes a good that is conceptually distinct from happiness or rightness (something emphasized in Wolf 2010). First, to ask whether someone's life is meaningful is not one and the same as asking whether her life is happy or pleasant. A life in an experience or virtual reality machine could conceivably be happy but very few take it to be a prima facie candidate for meaningfulness (Nozick 1974: 42–45). Indeed, many would say that talk of “meaning” by definition excludes the possibility of it coming from time spent in an experience machine (although there have been a small handful who disagree and contend that a meaningful life just is a pleasant life. Goetz 2012, in particular, bites many bullets.) Furthermore, one's life logically could become meaningful precisely by sacrificing one's happiness, e.g., by helping others at the expense of one's self-interest.

Second, asking whether a person's existence is significant is not identical to considering whether she has been morally upright; there seem to be ways to enhance meaning that have nothing to do with morality, at least impartially conceived, for instance, making a scientific discovery.

Of course, one might argue that a life would be meaningless if (or even because) it were unhappy or immoral, particularly given Aristotelian conceptions of these disvalues. However, that is to posit a synthetic, substantive relationship between the concepts, and is far from indicating that speaking of “meaning in life” is analytically a matter of connoting ideas regarding happiness or rightness, which is what I am denying here. My point is that the question of what makes a life meaningful is conceptually distinct from the question of what makes a life happy or moral, even if it turns out that the best answer to the question of meaning appeals to an answer to one of these other evaluative questions.

If talk about meaning in life is not by definition talk about happiness or rightness, then what is it about? There is as yet no consensus in the field. One answer is that a meaningful life is one that by definition has achieved choice-worthy purposes (Nielsen 1964) or involves satisfaction upon having done so (Hepburn 1965; Wohlgennant 1981). However, for such an analysis to clearly demarcate meaningfulness from happiness, it would be useful to modify it to indicate which purposes are germane to the former. On this score, some suggest that conceptual candidates for grounding meaning are purposes that not only have a positive value, but also render a life coherent (Markus 2003), make it intelligible (Thomson 2003, 8–13), or transcend animal nature (Levy 2005).

Now, it might be that a focus on any kind of purpose is too narrow for ruling out the logical possibility that meaning could inhere in certain actions, experiences, states, or relationships that have not been adopted as ends and willed and that perhaps even could not be, e.g., being an immortal offshoot of an unconscious, spiritual force that grounds the physical universe, as in Hinduism. In addition, the above purpose-based analyses exclude as not being about life's meaning some of the most widely read texts that purport to be about it, namely, Jean-Paul Sartre's (1948) existentialist account of meaning being constituted by whatever one chooses, and Richard Taylor's (1970, ch. 18) discussion of Sisyphus being able to acquire meaning in his life merely by having his strongest desires satisfied. These are prima facie accounts of meaning in life, but do not essentially involve the attainment of purposes that foster coherence, intelligibility or transcendence.

The latter problem also faces the alternative suggestion that talk of “life's meaning” is not necessarily about purposes, but is rather just a matter of referring to goods that are qualitatively superior, worthy of love and devotion, and appropriately awed (Taylor 1989, ch. 1). It is implausible to think that these criteria are satisfied by subjectivist appeals to whatever choices one ends up making or to whichever desires happen to be strongest for a given person.

Although relatively few have addressed the question of whether there exists a single, primary sense of “life's meaning,” the inability to find one so far might suggest that none exists. In that case, it could be that the field is united in virtue of addressing certain overlapping but not equivalent ideas that have family resemblances (Metz 2013, ch. 2). Perhaps when we speak of “meaning in life,” we have in mind one or more of these related ideas: certain conditions that are worthy of great pride or admiration, values that warrant devotion and love, qualities that make a life intelligible, or ends apart from base pleasure that are particularly choice-worthy. Another possibility is that talk of “meaning in life” fails to exhibit even this degree of unity, and is instead a grab-bag of heterogenous ideas (Mawson 2010; Oakley 2010).

As the field reflects more on the sense of “life's meaning,” it should not only try to ascertain in what respect it admits of unity, but also try to differentiate the concept of life's meaning from other, closely related ideas. For instance, the concept of a worthwhile life is probably not identical to that of a meaningful one (Baier 1997, ch. 5; Metz 2012). For instance, one would not be conceptually confused to claim that a meaningless life full of animal pleasures would be worth living. Furthermore, it seems that talk of a “meaningless life” does not simply connote the concept of an absurd (Nagel 1970; Feinberg 1980), unreasonable (Baier 1997, ch. 5), futile (Trisel 2002), or wasted (Kamm 2003, 210–14) life.

Fortunately the field does not need an extremely precise analysis of the concept of life's meaning (or definition of the phrase “life's meaning”) in order to make progress on the substantive question of what life's meaning is. Knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness provides a certain amount of common ground. The rest of this discussion addresses attempts to theoretically capture the nature of this good.

2. Supernaturalism

Most English speaking philosophers writing on meaning in life are trying to develop and evaluate theories, i.e., fundamental and general principles that are meant to capture all the particular ways that a life could obtain meaning. These theories are standardly divided on a metaphysical basis, i.e., in terms of which kinds of properties are held to constitute the meaning. Supernaturalist theories are views that meaning in life must be constituted by a certain relationship with a spiritual realm. If God or a soul does not exist, or if they exist but one fails to have the right relationship with them, then supernaturalism—or the Western version of it (on which I focus)—entails that one's life is meaningless. In contrast, naturalist theories are views that meaning can obtain in a world as known solely by science. Here, although meaning could accrue from a divine realm, certain ways of living in a purely physical universe would be sufficient for it. Note that there is logical space for a non-naturalist theory that meaning is a function of abstract properties that are neither spiritual nor physical. However, only scant attention has been paid to this possibility in the Anglo-American literature (Williams 1999; Audi 2005).

Supernaturalist thinkers in the monotheistic tradition are usefully divided into those with God-centered views and soul-centered views. The former take some kind of connection with God (understood to be a spiritual person who is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful and who is the ground of the physical universe) to constitute meaning in life, even if one lacks a soul (construed as an immortal, spiritual substance). The latter deem having a soul and putting it into a certain state to be what makes life meaningful, even if God does not exist. Of course, many supernaturalists believe that certain relationships with God and a soul are jointly necessary and sufficient for a significant existence. However, the simpler view is common, and often arguments proffered for the more complex view fail to support it any more than the simpler view.

2.1 God-centered Views

The most widely held and influential God-based account of meaning in life is that one's existence is more significant, the better one fulfills a purpose God has assigned. The familiar idea is that God has a plan for the universe and that one's life is meaningful to the degree that one helps God realize this plan, perhaps in the particular way God wants one to do so (Affolter 2007). Fulfilling God's purpose by choice is the sole source of meaning, with the existence of an afterlife not necessary for it (Brown 1971; Levine 1987; Cottingham 2003). If a person failed to do what God intends him to do with his life, then, on the current view, his life would be meaningless.

What I call “purpose theorists” differ over what it is about God's purpose that makes it uniquely able to confer meaning on human lives. Some argue that God's purpose could be the sole source of invariant moral rules, where a lack of such would render our lives nonsensical (Craig 1994; Cottingham 2003). However, Euthyphro problems arguably plague this rationale; God's purpose for us must be of a particular sort for our lives to obtain meaning by fulfilling it (as is often pointed out, serving as food for intergalactic travelers won't do), which suggests that there is a standard external to God's purpose that determines what the content of God's purpose ought to be (but see Cottingham 2005, ch. 3). In addition, some critics argue that a universally applicable and binding moral code is not necessary for meaning in life, even if the act of helping others is (Ellin 1995, 327).

Other purpose theorists contend that having been created by God for a reason would be the only way that our lives could avoid being contingent (Craig 1994; cf. Haber 1997). But it is unclear whether God's arbitrary will would avoid contingency, or whether his non-arbitrary will would avoid contingency anymore than a deterministic physical world. Furthermore, the literature is still unclear what contingency is and why it is a deep problem. Still other purpose theorists maintain that our lives would have meaning only insofar as they were intentionally fashioned by a creator, thereby obtaining meaning of the sort that an art-object has (Gordon 1983). Here, though, freely choosing to do any particular thing would not be necessary for meaning, and everyone's life would have an equal degree of meaning, which are both counterintuitive implications (see Trisel 2012 for additional criticisms). Are all these objections sound? Is there a promising reason for thinking that fulfilling God's (as opposed to any human's) purpose is what constitutes meaning in life?

Not only does each of these versions of the purpose theory have specific problems, but they all face this shared objection: if God assigned us a purpose, then God would degrade us and thereby undercut the possibility of us obtaining meaning from fulfilling the purpose (Baier 1957, 118–20; Murphy 1982, 14–15; Singer 1996, 29). This objection goes back at least to Jean-Paul Sartre (1948, 45), and there are many replies to it in the literature that have yet to be assessed (e.g., Hepburn 1965, 271–73; Brown 1971, 20–21; Davis 1986, 155–56; Hanfling 1987, 45–46; Moreland 1987, 129; Walker 1989; Jacquette 2001, 20–21).

Robert Nozick presents a God-centered theory that focuses less on God as purposive and more on God as infinite (Nozick 1981, ch. 6, 1989, chs. 15–16; see also Cooper 2005). The basic idea is that for a finite condition to be meaningful, it must obtain its meaning from another condition that has meaning. So, if one's life is meaningful, it might be so in virtue of being married to a person, who is important. And, being finite, the spouse must obtain his or her importance from elsewhere, perhaps from the sort of work he or she does. And this work must obtain its meaning by being related to something else that is meaningful, and so on. A regress on meaningful finite conditions is present, and the suggestion is that the regress can terminate only in something infinite, a being so all-encompassing that it need not (indeed, cannot) go beyond itself to obtain meaning from anything else. And that is God.

The standard objection to this rationale is that a finite condition could be meaningful without obtaining its meaning from another meaningful condition; perhaps it could be meaningful in itself, or obtain its meaning by being related to something beautiful, autonomous or otherwise valuable for its own sake but not meaningful (Thomson 2003, 25–26, 48).

The purpose- and infinity-based rationales are the two most common instances of God-centered theory in the literature, and the naturalist can point out that they arguably face a common problem: a purely physical world seems able to do the job for which God is purportedly necessary. Nature seems able to ground a universal morality and the sort of final value from which meaning might spring. And other God-based views seem to suffer from this same problem. For two examples, some claim that God must exist in order for there to be a just world, where a world in which the bad do well and the good fare poorly would render our lives senseless (Craig 1994; cf. Cottingham 2003, pt. 3), and others maintain that God's remembering all of us with love is alone what would confer significance on our lives (Hartshorne 1984). However, the naturalist will point out that an impersonal, Karmic-like force of nature conceivably could justly distribute penalties and rewards in the way a retributive personal judge would, and that actually living together in loving relationships would seem to confer much more meaning on life than a loving fond remembrance.

A second problem facing all God-based views is the existence of apparent counterexamples. If we think of the stereotypical lives of Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, and Pablo Picasso, they seem meaningful even if we suppose there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good spiritual person who is the ground of the physical world. Even religiously inclined philosophers find this hard to deny (Quinn 2000, 58; Audi 2005), though some of them suggest that a supernatural realm is necessary for a “deep” or “ultimate” meaning (Nozick 1981, 618; Craig 1994, 42). What is the difference between a deep meaning and a shallow one? And why think a spiritual realm is necessary for the former?

At this point, the supernaturalist could usefully step back and reflect on what it might be about God that would make Him uniquely able to confer meaning in life, perhaps as follows from the perfect being theological tradition. For God to be solely responsible for any significance in our lives, God must have certain qualities that cannot be found in the natural world, these qualities must be qualitatively superior to any goods possible in a physical universe, and they must be what ground meaning in it. Here, the supernaturalist could argue that meaning depends on the existence of a perfect being, where perfection requires properties such as atemporality, simplicity, and immutability that are possible only in a spiritual realm (Metz 2013, chs. 6–7; cf. Morris 1992; contra Brown 1971 and Hartshorne 1996). Meaning might come from loving a perfect being or orienting one's life toward it in other ways such as imitating it or even fulfilling its purpose, perhaps a purpose tailor-made for each individual (as per Affolter 2007).

Although this might be a promising strategy for a God-centered theory, it faces a serious dilemma. On the one hand, in order for God to be the sole source of meaning, God must be utterly unlike us; for the more God were like us, the more reason there would be to think we could obtain meaning from ourselves, absent God. On the other hand, the more God is utterly unlike us, the less clear it is how we could obtain meaning by relating to Him. How can one love a being that cannot change? How can one imitate such a being? Could an immutable, atemporal, simple being even have purposes? Could it truly be a person? And why think an utterly perfect being is necessary for meaning? Why would not a very good but imperfect being confer some meaning?

2.2 Soul-centered Views

A soul-centered theory is the view that meaning in life comes from relating in a certain way to an immortal, spiritual substance that supervenes on one's body when it is alive and that will forever outlive its death. If one lacks a soul, or if one has a soul but relates to it in the wrong way, then one's life is meaningless. There are two prominent arguments for a soul-based perspective.

The first one is often expressed by laypeople and is suggested by the work of Leo Tolstoy (1884; see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Morris 1992, 26; Craig 1994). Tolstoy argues that for life to be meaningful something must be worth doing, that nothing is worth doing if nothing one does will make a permanent difference to the world, and that doing so requires having an immortal, spiritual self. Many of course question whether having an infinite effect is necessary for meaning (e.g., Schmidtz 2001; Audi 2005, 354–55). Others point out that one need not be immortal in order to have an infinite effect (Levine 1987, 462), for God's eternal remembrance of one's mortal existence would be sufficient for that.

The other major rationale for a soul-based theory of life's meaning is that a soul is necessary for perfect justice, which, in turn, is necessary for a meaningful life. Life seems nonsensical when the wicked flourish and the righteous suffer, at least supposing there is no other world in which these injustices will be rectified, whether by God or by Karma. Something like this argument can be found in the Biblical chapter Ecclesiastes , and it continues to be defended (Davis 1987; Craig 1994). However, like the previous rationale, the inferential structure of this one seems weak; even if an afterlife were required for just outcomes, it is not obvious why an eternal afterlife should be thought necessary (Perrett 1986, 220).

Work has been done to try to make the inferences of these two arguments stronger, and the basic strategy has been to appeal to the value of perfection (Metz 2013, ch. 7). Perhaps the Tolstoian reason why one must live forever in order to make the relevant permanent difference is an agent-relative need for one to honor an infinite value, something qualitatively higher than the worth of, say, pleasure. And maybe the reason why immortality is required in order to mete out just deserts is that rewarding the virtuous requires satisfying their highest free and informed desires, one of which would be for eternal flourishing of some kind (Goetz 2012). While far from obviously sound, these arguments at least provide some reason for thinking that immortality is necessary to satisfy the major premise about what is required for meaning.

However, both arguments are still plagued by a problem facing the original versions; even if they show that meaning depends on immortality, they do not yet show that it depends on having a soul . By definition, if one has a soul, then one is immortal, but it is not clearly true that if one is immortal, then one has a soul. Perhaps being able to upload one's consciousness into an infinite succession of different bodies in an everlasting universe would count as an instance of immortality without a soul. Such a possibility would not require an individual to have an immortal spiritual substance (imagine that when in between bodies, the information constitutive of one's consciousness were temporarily stored in a computer). What reason is there to think that one must have a soul in particular for life to be significant?

The most promising reason seems to be one that takes us beyond the simple version of soul-centered theory to the more complex view that both God and a soul constitute meaning. The best justification for thinking that one must have a soul in order for one's life to be significant seems to be that significance comes from uniting with God in a spiritual realm such as Heaven, a view espoused by Thomas Aquinas, Leo Tolstoy (1884), and contemporary religious thinkers (e.g., Craig 1994). Another possibility is that meaning comes from honoring what is divine within oneself, i.e., a soul (Swenson 1949).

As with God-based views, naturalist critics offer counterexamples to the claim that a soul or immortality of any kind is necessary for meaning. Great works, whether they be moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, would seem to confer meaning on one's life regardless of whether one will live forever. Critics maintain that soul-centered theorists are seeking too high a standard for appraising the meaning of people's lives (Baier 1957, 124–29; Baier 1997, chs. 4–5; Trisel 2002; Trisel 2004). Appeals to a soul require perfection, whether it be, as above, a perfect object to honor, a perfectly just reward to enjoy, or a perfect being with which to commune. However, if indeed soul-centered theory ultimately relies on claims about meaning turning on perfection, such a view is attractive at least for being simple, and rival views have yet to specify in a principled and thoroughly defended way where to draw the line at less than perfection (perhaps a start is Metz 2013, ch. 8). What less than ideal amount of value is sufficient for a life to count as meaningful?

Critics of soul-based views maintain not merely that immortality is not necessary for meaning in life, but also that it is sufficient for a meaningless life. One influential argument is that an immortal life, whether spiritual or physical, could not avoid becoming boring, rendering life pointless (Williams 1973; Ellin 1995, 311–12; Belshaw 2005, 82–91; Smuts 2011). The most common reply is that immortality need not get boring (Fischer 1994; Wisnewski 2005; Bortolotti and Nagasawa 2009; Chappell 2009; Quigley and Harris 2009, 75–78). However, it might also be worth questioning whether boredom is truly sufficient for meaninglessness. Suppose, for instance, that one volunteers to be bored so that many others will not be bored; perhaps this would be a meaningful sacrifice to make.

Another argument that being immortal would be sufficient to make our lives insignificant is that persons who cannot die could not exhibit certain virtues (Nussbaum 1989; Kass 2001). For instance, they could not promote justice of any important sort, be benevolent to any significant degree, or exhibit courage of any kind that matters, since life and death issues would not be at stake. Critics reply that even if these virtues would not be possible, there are other virtues that could be. And of course it is not obvious that meaning-conferring justice, benevolence and courage would not be possible if we were immortal, perhaps if we were not always aware that we could not die or if our indestructible souls could still be harmed by virtue of intense pain, frustrated ends, and repetitive lives.

There are other, related arguments maintaining that awareness of immortality would have the effect of removing meaning from life, say, because our lives would lack a sense of preciousness and urgency (Lenman 1995; Kass 2001; James 2009) or because external rather than internal factors would then dictate their course (Wollheim 1984, 266). Note that the target here is belief in an eternal afterlife, and not immortality itself, and so I merely mention these rationales (for additional, revealing criticism, see Bortolotti 2010).

3. Naturalism

I now address views that even if there is no spiritual realm, meaning in life is possible, at least for many people. Among those who believe that a significant existence can be had in a purely physical world as known by science, there is debate about two things: the extent to which the human mind constitutes meaning and whether there are conditions of meaning that are invariant among human beings.

Subjectivists believe that there are no invariant standards of meaning because meaning is relative to the subject, i.e., depends on an individual's pro-attitudes such as desires, ends, and choices. Roughly, something is meaningful for a person if she believes it to be or seeks it out. Objectivists maintain, in contrast, that there are some invariant standards for meaning because meaning is (at least partly) mind-independent, i.e., is a real property that exists regardless of being the object of anyone's mental states. Here, something is meaningful (to some degree) in virtue of its intrinsic nature, independent of whether it is believed to be meaningful or sought.

There is logical space for an intersubjective theory according to which there are invariant standards of meaning for human beings that are constituted by what they would all agree upon from a certain communal standpoint (Darwall 1983, chs. 11–12). However, this orthogonal approach is not much of a player in the field and so I set it aside in what follows.

According to this view, meaning in life varies from person to person, depending on each one's variable mental states. Common instances are views that one's life is more meaningful, the more one gets what one happens to want strongly, the more one achieves one's highly ranked goals, or the more one does what one believes to be really important (Trisel 2002; Hooker 2008; Alexis 2011). Lately, one influential subjectivist has maintained that the relevant mental state is caring or loving, so that life is meaningful just to the extent that one cares about or loves something (Frankfurt 1982, 2002, 2004).

Subjectivism was dominant for much of the 20 th century when pragmatism, positivism, existentialism, noncognitivism, and Humeanism were quite influential (James 1900; Ayer 1947; Sartre 1948; Barnes 1967; Taylor 1970; Hare 1972; Williams 1976; Klemke 1981). However, in the last quarter of the 20 th century, “reflective equilibrium” became a widely accepted argumentative procedure, whereby more controversial normative claims are justified by virtue of entailing and explaining less controversial normative claims that do not command universal acceptance. Such a method has been used to defend the existence of objective value, and, as a result, subjectivism about meaning has lost its dominance.

Those who continue to hold subjectivism often are suspicious of attempts to justify beliefs about objective value (e.g., Frankfurt 2002, 250; Trisel 2002, 73, 79, 2004, 378–79). Theorists are primarily moved to accept subjectivism because the alternatives are unpalatable; they are sure that value in general and meaning in particular exists, but do not see how it could be grounded in something independent of the mind, whether it be the natural, the non-natural, or the supernatural. In contrast to these possibilities, it appears straightforward to account for what is meaningful in terms of what people find meaningful or what people want out of life. Wide-ranging meta-ethical debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language are necessary to address this rationale for subjectivism.

There are two other, more circumscribed arguments for subjectivism. One is that subjectivism is plausible since it is reasonable to think that a meaningful life is an authentic one (Frankfurt 1982). If a person's life is significant insofar as she is true to herself or her deepest nature, then we have some reason to believe that meaning simply is a function of satisfying certain desires held by the individual or realizing certain ends of hers. Another argument is that meaning intuitively comes from losing oneself, i.e., in becoming absorbed in an activity or experience (Frankfurt 1982). Work that concentrates the mind and relationships that are engrossing seem central to meaning and to be so because of the subjective element involved, that is, because of the concentration and engrossment.

However, critics maintain that both of these arguments are vulnerable to a common objection: they neglect the role of objective value both in realizing oneself and in losing oneself (Taylor 1992, esp. ch. 4). One is not really being true to oneself if one intentionally harms others (Dahl 1987, 12), successfully maintains 3,732 hairs on one's head (Taylor 1992, 36), or, well, eats one's own excrement (Wielenberg 2005, 22), and one is also not losing oneself in a meaning-conferring way if one is consumed by these activities. There seem to be certain actions, relationships, states, and experiences that one ought to concentrate on or be engrossed in, if meaning is to accrue.

So says the objectivist, but many subjectivists also feel the pull of the point. Paralleling replies in the literature on well-being, subjectivists often respond by contending that no or very few individuals would desire to do such intuitively trivial things, at least after a certain idealized process of reflection (e.g., Griffin 1981). More promising, perhaps, is the attempt to ground value not in the responses of an individual valuer, but in those of a particular group (Brogaard and Smith 2005; Wong 2008). Would such an intersubjective move avoid the counterexamples? If so, would it do so more plausibly than an objective theory?

Objective naturalists believe that meaning is constituted (at least in part) by something physical independent of the mind about which we can have correct or incorrect beliefs. Obtaining the object of some variable pro-attitude is not sufficient for meaning, on this view. Instead, there are certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable conditions that confer meaning for anyone, neither merely because they are wanted, chosen, or believed to be meaningful, nor because they somehow are grounded in God.

Morality and creativity are widely held instances of actions that confer meaning on life, while trimming toenails and eating snow (and the other counterexamples to subjectivism above) are not. Objectivism is thought to be the best explanation for these respective kinds of judgments: the former are actions that are meaningful regardless of whether any arbitrary agent (whether it be an individual,her society, or even God) judges them to be meaningful or seeks to engage in them, while the latter actions simply lack significance and cannot obtain it if someone believes them to have it or engages in them. To obtain meaning in one's life, one ought to pursue the former actions and avoid the latter ones. Of course, meta-ethical debates about the nature of value are again relevant here.

A “pure” objectivist thinks that being the object of a person's mental states plays no role in making that person's life meaningful. Relatively few objectivists are pure, so construed. That is, a large majority of them believe that a life is more meaningful not merely because of objective factors, but also in part because of subjective ones such as cognition, affection, and emotion. Most commonly held is the hybrid view captured by Susan Wolf's pithy slogan: “Meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness” (Wolf 1997a, 211; see also Hepburn 1965; Kekes 1986, 2000; Wiggins 1988; Wolf 1997b, 2002, 2010; Dworkin 2000, ch. 6; Raz 2001, ch. 1; Schmidtz 2001; Starkey 2006; Mintoff 2008). This theory implies that no meaning accrues to one's life if one believes in, is satisfied by, or cares about a project that is not worthwhile, or if one takes up a worthwhile project but fails to judge it important, be satisfied by it, care about it or otherwise identify with it. Different versions of this theory will have different accounts of the appropriate mental states and of worthwhileness.

Pure objectivists deny that subjective attraction plays any constitutive role in conferring meaning on life. For instance, utilitarians with respect to meaning (as opposed to morality) are pure objectivists, for they claim that certain actions confer meaning on life regardless of the agent's reactions to them. On this view, the more one benefits others, the more meaningful one's life, regardless of whether one enjoys benefiting them, believes they should be aided, etc. (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 1995, chs. 10–11; Singer 1996, ch. 4). Midway between pure objectivism and the hybrid theory is the view that having certain propositional attitudes toward finally good activities would enhance the meaning of life without being necessary for it (Audi 2005, 344). For instance, might a Mother Teresa who is bored by her substantial charity work have a significant existence because of it, even if she would have an even more significant existence if she were excited by it?

There have been several attempts to theoretically capture what all objectively attractive, inherently worthwhile, or finally valuable conditions have in common insofar as they bear on meaning. Some believe that they can all be captured as actions that are creative (Taylor 1987), while others maintain that they are exhibit rightness or virtue and perhaps also involve reward proportionate to morality (Kant 1791, pt. 2; cf. Pogge 1997). Most objectivists, however, deem these respective aesthetic and ethical theories to be too narrow, even if living a moral life is necessary for a meaningful one (Landau 2011). It seems to most in the field not only that creativity and morality are independent sources of meaning, but also that there are sources in addition to these two. For just a few examples, consider making an intellectual discovery, rearing children with love, playing music, and developing superior athletic ability.

So, in the literature one finds a variety of principles that aim to capture all these and other (apparent) objective grounds of meaning. One can read the perfectionist tradition as proffering objective theories of what a significant existence is, even if their proponents do not frequently use contemporary terminology to express this. Consider Aristotle's account of the good life for a human being as one that fulfills its natural purpose qua rational, Marx's vision of a distinctly human history characterized by less alienation and more autonomy, culture, and community, and Nietzsche's ideal of a being with a superlative degree of power, creativity, and complexity.

More recently, some have maintained that objectively meaningful conditions are just those that involve: transcending the limits of the self to connect with organic unity (Nozick 1981, ch. 6, 1989, chs. 15–16); realizing human excellence in oneself (Bond 1983, chs. 6, 8); maximally promoting non-hedonist goods such as friendship, beauty, and knowledge (Railton 1984); exercising or promoting rational nature in exceptional ways (Hurka 1993; Smith 1997, 179–221; Gewirth 1998, ch. 5); substantially improving the quality of life of people and animals (Singer 1993, ch. 12, 1995, chs. 10–11; Singer 1996, ch. 4); overcoming challenges that one recognizes to be important at one's stage of history (Dworkin 2000, ch. 6); constituting rewarding experiences in the life of the agent or the lives of others the agent affects (Audi 2005); making progress toward ends that in principle can never be completely realized because one's knowledge of them changes as one approaches them (Levy 2005); realizing goals that are transcendent for being long-lasting in duration and broad in scope (Mintoff 2008); or contouring intelligence toward fundamental conditions of human life (Metz 2013).

One major test of these theories is whether they capture all experiences, states, relationships, and actions that intuitively make life meaningful. The more counterexamples of apparently meaningful conditions that a principle entails lack meaning, the less justified the principle. There is as yet no convergence in the field on any one principle or even cluster as accounting for commonsensical judgments about meaning to an adequate, convincing degree. Indeed, some believe the search for such a principle to be pointless (Wolf 1997b, 12–13; Kekes 2000; Schmidtz 2001). Are these pluralists correct, or does the field have a good chance of discovering a single, basic property that grounds all the particular ways to acquire meaning in life?

Another important way to criticize these theories is more comprehensive: for all that has been said so far, the objective theories are aggregative or additive, objectionably reducing life to a “container” of meaningful conditions (Brännmark 2003, 330). As with the growth of “organic unity” views in the context of debates about intrinsic value, it is becoming common to think that life as a whole (or at least long stretches of it) can substantially affect its meaning apart from the amount of meaning in its parts.

For instance, a life that has lots of beneficent and otherwise intuitively meaning-conferring conditions but that is also extremely repetitive (à la the movie Groundhog Day ) is less than maximally meaningful (Taylor 1987). Furthermore, a life that not only avoids repetition but also ends with a substantial amount of meaningful parts seems to have more meaning overall than one that has the same amount of meaningful parts but ends with few or none of them (Kamm 2003, 210–14). And a life in which its meaningless parts cause its meaningful parts to come about through a process of personal growth seems meaningful in virtue of this causal pattern or being a “good life-story” (Velleman 1991; Fischer 2005).

Extreme versions of holism are also present in the literature. For example, some maintain that the only bearer of final value is life as a whole, which entails that there are strictly speaking no parts or segments of a life that can be meaningful in themselves (Tabensky 2003; Levinson 2004). For another example, some accept that both parts of a life and a life as a whole can be independent bearers of meaning, but maintain that the latter has something like a lexical priority over the former when it comes to what to pursue or otherwise to prize (Blumenfeld 2009).

What are the ultimate bearers of meaning? What are all the fundamentally different ways (if any) that holism can affect meaning? Are they all a function of narrativity, life-stories, and artistic self-expression (as per Kauppinen 2012), or are there holistic facets of life's meaning that are not a matter of such literary concepts? How much importance should they be accorded by an agent seeking meaning in her life?

So far, I have addressed theoretical accounts that have been naturally understood to be about what confers meaning on life, which obviously assumes that some lives are in fact meaningful. However, there are nihilistic perspectives that question this assumption. According to nihilism (or pessimism), what would make a life meaningful either cannot obtain or as a matter of fact simply never does.

One straightforward rationale for nihilism is the combination of supernaturalism about what makes life meaningful and atheism about whether God exists. If you believe that God or a soul is necessary for meaning in life, and if you believe that neither exists, then you are a nihilist, someone who denies that life has meaning. Albert Camus is famous for expressing this kind of perspective, suggesting that the lack of an afterlife and of a rational, divinely ordered universe undercuts the possibility of meaning (Camus 1955; cf. Ecclesiastes ).

Interestingly, the most common rationales for nihilism these days do not appeal to supernaturalism. The idea shared among many contemporary nihilists is that there is something inherent to the human condition that prevents meaning from arising, even granting that God exists. For instance, some nihilists make the Schopenhauerian claim that our lives lack meaning because we are invariably dissatisfied; either we have not yet obtained what we seek, or we have obtained it and are bored (Martin 1993). Critics tend to reply that at least a number of human lives do have the requisite amount of satisfaction required for meaning, supposing that some is (Blackburn 2001, 74–77).

Other nihilists claim that life would be meaningless if there were no invariant moral rules that could be fully justified—the world would be nonsensical if, in (allegedly) Dostoyevskian terms, “everything were permitted”—and that such rules cannot exist for persons who can always reasonably question a given claim (Murphy 1982, ch. 1). While a number of philosophers agree that a universally binding and warranted morality is necessary for meaning in life (Kant 1791; Tännsjö 1988; Jacquette 2001, ch. 1; Cottingham 2003, 2005, ch. 3), some do not (Margolis 1990; Ellin 1995, 325–27). Furthermore, contemporary rationalist and realist work in meta-ethics has led many to believe that such a moral system exists.

In the past 10 years, some interesting new defences of nihilism have arisen that merit careful consideration. According to one rationale, for our lives to matter, we must in a position to add value to the world, which we are not since the value of the world is already infinite (Smith 2003). The key premises for this view are that every bit of space-time (or at least the stars in the physical universe) have some positive value, that these values can be added up, and that space is infinite. If the physical world at present contains an infinite degree of value, nothing we do can make a difference in terms of meaning, for infinity plus any amount of value must be infinity.

One way to question this argument is to suggest that even if one cannot add to the value of the universe, meaning plausibly obtains merely by being the source of value. Consider that one does not merely want one's child to be reared with love, but wants to be the one who rears one's child with love. And this desire remains even knowing that others would have reared one's child with love in one's absence, so that one's actions are not increasing the goodness of the state of the universe relative to what it would have had without them. Similar remarks might apply to cases of meaning more generally (for additional, and technical, discussion of whether an infinite universe entails nihilism, see Almeida 2010; Vohánka and Vohánková n.d.).

Another fresh argument for nihilism is forthcoming from certain defenses of anti-natalism, the view that it is immoral to bring new people into existence because doing so would be a harm to them. There are now a variety of rationales for anti-natalism, but most relevant to debates about whether life is meaningful is probably the following argument from David Benatar (2006, 18–59). According to him, the bads of existing (e.g., pains) are real disadvantages relative to not existing, while the goods of existing (pleasures) are not real advantages relative to not existing, since there is in the latter state no one to be deprived of them. If indeed the state of not existing is no worse than that of experiencing the benefits of existence, then, since existing invariably brings harm in its wake, existing is always a net harm compared to not existing. Although this argument is about goods such as pleasures in the first instance, it seems generalizable to non-experiential goods, including that of meaning in life.

The criticisms of Benatar that promise to cut most deep are those that question his rationale for the above judgments of good and bad. He maintains that these appraisals best explain, e.g., why it would be wrong for one to create someone whom one knows would suffer a torturous existence, and why it would not be wrong for one not to create someone whom one knows would enjoy a wonderful existence. The former would be wrong and the latter would not be wrong, for Benatar, because no pain in non-existence is better than pain in existence, and because no pleasure in non-existence is no worse than pleasure in existence. Critics usually grant the judgments of wrongness, but provide explanations of them that do not invoke Benatar's judgments of good and bad that apparently lead to anti-natalism (e.g., Boonin 2012; Weinberg 2012).

This survey closes by discussing the most well-known rationale for nihilism, namely, Thomas Nagel's (1986) invocation of the external standpoint that purportedly reveals our lives to be unimportant (see also Hanfling 1987, 22–24; Benatar 2006, 60–92; cf. Dworkin 2000, ch. 6). According to Nagel, we are capable of comprehending the world from a variety of standpoints that are either internal or external. The most internal perspective would be a particular human being's desire at a given instant, with a somewhat less internal perspective being one's interests over a life-time, and an even less internal perspective being the interests of one's family or community. In contrast, the most external perspective, an encompassing standpoint utterly independent of one's particularity, would be, to use Henry Sidgwick's phrase, the “point of view of the universe,” that is, the standpoint that considers the interests of all sentient beings at all times and in all places. When one takes up this most external standpoint and views one's finite—and even downright puny—impact on the world, little of one's life appears to matter. What one does in a certain society on Earth over an approximately 75 years just does not amount to much, when considering the billions of years and likely trillions of beings that are a part of space-time.

Very few accept the authority of the (most) external standpoint (Ellin 1995, 316–17; Blackburn 2001, 79–80; Schmidtz 2001) or the implications that Nagel believes it has for the meaning of our lives (Quinn 2000, 65–66; Singer 1993, 333–34; Wolf 1997b, 19–21). However, the field could use much more discussion of this rationale, given its persistence in human thought. It is plausible to think, with Nagel, that part of what it is to be a person is to be able to take up an external standpoint. However, what precisely is a standpoint? Must we invariably adopt one standpoint or the other, or is it possible not to take one up at all? Is there a reliable way to ascertain which standpoint is normatively more authoritative than others? These and the other questions posed in this survey still lack conclusive answers, another respect in which the field of life's meaning is tantalizingly open for substantial contributions.

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• Westphal, J. and Levenson, C. A. (eds.), 1993, Life and Death , Indianapolis: Hackett.
• Baggini, J., 2004, What's It All About?: Philosophy and the Meaning of Life , London: Granta Books.
• Belliotti, R., 2001, What Is the Meaning of Life? , Amsterdam: Rodopi.
• Eagleton, T., 2007, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Ford, D., 2007, The Search for Meaning: A Short History , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Martin, M., 2002, Atheism, Morality, and Meaning , Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
• Messerly, J., 2012, The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Transhumanist, and Scientific Approaches , Seattle: Darwin and Hume Publishers.
• Young, J., 2003, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life , New York: Routledge.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up this entry topic at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Seachris, J., 2011, “ Meaning of Life: The Analytic Perspective ”, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , J. Fieser and B. Dowden (eds.)
• Vohánka, V. and Vohánková, P., n.d., “ On Nihilism Driven by the Magnitude of the Universe ”.

afterlife | death | ethics: ancient | existentialism | friendship | love | perfectionism, in moral and political philosophy | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic | well-being

Copyright © 2013 by Thaddeus Metz < tmetz @ uj . ac . za >

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What Is Love? Great Definitions from 400 Years of Great Literature

By maria popova.

After those collections of notable definitions of art , science , and philosophy , here comes a selection of poetic definitions of a peculiar phenomenon that is at once more amorphous than art, more single-minded than science, and more philosophical than philosophy itself. Gathered here are some of the most memorable and timeless insights on love , culled from several hundred years of literary history — enjoy.

Kurt Vonnegut , who was in some ways an extremist about love but also had a healthy dose of irreverence about it , in The Sirens of Titan :

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Anaïs Nin , whose wisdom on love knew no bounds, in A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953 :

What is love but acceptance of the other, whatever he is.

Stendhal in his fantastic 1822 treatise on love :

Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. … there are no age limits for love.

C. S. Lewis , who was a very wise man , in The Four Loves :

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Lemony Snicket in Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid :

Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby — awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.

Susan Sontag , whose illustrated insights on love were among last year’s most read and shared articles , in As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 :

Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.

Charles Bukowski , who also famously deemed love “a dog from hell,” in this archival video interview :

Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.

Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream :

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

Ambrose Bierce , with the characteristic wryness of The Devil’s Dictionary :

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Katharine Hepburn in Me : Stories of My Life :

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything.

Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell , he of great wisdom , in The Conquest of Happiness :

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky puts it even more forcefully in The Brothers Karamazov :

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a letter to his ten-year-old daughter explaining the importance of evidence in science and in life:

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Paulo Coelho in The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession :

Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.

James Baldwin in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985 :

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Haruki Murakami in Kafka on the Shore :

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Airman’s Odyssey: Night Flight / Wind Sand & Stars / Flight to Arras :

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Honoré de Balzac , who knew a thing or two about all-consuming love , in Physiologie Du Mariage :

The more one judges, the less one loves.

Louis de Bernières in Corelli’s Mandolin :

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

E. M. Forster in A Room with a View :

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

English novelist Iris Murdoch , in Existentialists and Mystics :

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

But perhaps the truest, if humblest, of them all comes from Agatha Christie , who echoes Anaïs Nin above in her autobiography :

It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.

Archival postcards courtesy the New York Public Library

— Published January 1, 2013 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/01/what-is-love/ —

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What is love essay sample, example.

The word “love” has gone through various dictionary definitions throughout the eons. According to the Harvard Crimson, “The roots of the word “love” can be traced back to the Indo-European root leubh, meaning “to care” or “to desire,” approximated from words including the Latin lubet, “it pleases” and the Sanskrit lubhyati, “he desires.” Along with “love,” related English words like “libido” and “belief” also descend from *lebuh. According to The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Words, while the word “love” initially meant “find pleasing,” it later took on associations with “praise,” “trust” and “belief”’ (Cocola, Jim). This follows a common pattern in romantic relationships that begins with pleasure, progresses to admiration, and finally becomes about trust. We can look at history to see that humanity has considered love to be, in essence, a variety of virtues and feelings. To say one sentence about love is seemingly impossible. That is why is important to differentiate between the types of love we humans experience.

What constitutes “pure love” is highly debatable. Religious or spiritual people will say “pure love” is that love which is divinely inspired or related to the divine. Other people will say friendship is the truest love of all. While others will say unconditional love is the only pure form of love. There is no consensus on what constitutes “pure love,” however there are similarities between the definitions. Most ideas about what “pure love” is circles around the concept of something transcendent. This variety of love is commonly above attachment, hate, codependency, and other forms of limitations.

Perhaps the most famous depictions of love in the western world are discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and other historical sources. We can say there are seven flavors of love: romantic love, friendship, familial love, universal love, uncommitted love, practical love, and self-love. Romantic love is marked by passion and sometimes lust between people to create a bond. Love based on friendship, on the other hand, can be said to be shared goodwill, companionship, trust, and more. In a similar vein, familial love is carved out of dependency and familiarity, and is almost automatic. Another type of love that is commonly inbuilt is universal love. This slice of love is based on feeling care for God, strangers, nature, and other encompassing factors. It can also relate to altruism, where we want to help others in need, even if we do not know them well, or do not expect something in return. A more baser type of love is uncommitted love, which involves teasing, flirting, seducing, and sex without attachments. The opposite comes in the form of shared interests and duties with practical love. Often, people are drawn towards each other based on activities, hobbies, professions, and other factors. This can form a strong bond between two or more people at a time. Lastly, self-love is controversial. It can be said to be healthy with self-affirmation and self-confidence, but unhealthy with narcissism and vanity (“These Are the 7 Types of Love”).

All of these types of loves intermix in our lives. It is difficult to find someone who does not have all these flavors of love present in his or her experience of reality. However, it is up to us to determine the most significant type of love and to search for it. Commonly, figuring out what this most important flavor of love is will indicate what we need to do with our lives, how we need to act, and how we want to construct our family and work lives. Therefore, knowing what love is to you is not only a philosophical pursuit but also a practical one.

A definition essay sometimes can get confused with a description writing. That’s why it’s essential to check out some samples before starting your work. Some best assignment writer sites can provide you with a whole collection of similar examples.

Works Cited

Cocola, Jim. “Redefining Love.” The Harvard Crimson, www.thecrimson.com/article/1998/2/9/redefining-love-pi-adore-you-i/.

“These Are the 7 Types of Love.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201606/these-are-the-7-types-love.

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Definition Essay: Love

Love is something that means very different things to different people. For some, love can be purely romantic, or even purely sexual. For others, real love is utterly unconditional and only truly exists between family members, or between people and a deity. And for some people, love is fluid, ever changing, and everywhere, and is felt for family, friends, partners, pets, and even inanimate objects, dead artists, and fictional characters. None of these people would be right or wrong, but one thing is certain: love is the most powerful force in the entire universe.

Between partners of any description, be they married or cohabiting, boyfriend and girlfriend, straight or gay, young or old, love is a relationship of mutual understanding and respect. Marriages and partnerships are often built on common ground that people find when they first meet; this can be as deep as sharing religious, philosophical or religious beliefs, or as simple as finding that you love the same film, book, or band.

This kind of love is often reliant on some kind of ‘chemistry’: that strange feeling that they give you in the pit of your stomach, and the feeling that nothing in the world is more important to you than enjoying the moment you’re in together. Some people feel that they experience love at first sight, where they know from the minute they set eyes on each other that they want to to be with that person, but something built on common interests and understanding must be stronger.

A parent’s love for a child can also often be described as love at first sight, but this is very strong because it comes from a natural instinct to protect our offspring. This love can often start before the baby is even born: you only have to look at the pride and excitement of many parents-to-be when they have their scans and feel their baby kick for the very first time. This kind of love is also felt by a child for its mother; it is unconditional for at least the first few years of life, and can also be felt between siblings.

It is the strength of this feeling that makes love the most powerful emotion that most of us will ever experience. People can do some dreadful things out of hate and fear, but love can push us to do much, much worse. And it is often love that can cause us to hate, whether it’s out of jealousy, or anger because our loved one has been hurt. Love, ultimately, is a sacrifice, whatever the relationship, and it must be the most powerful force in the universe because as human beings, we make true sacrifices for nothing less.

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Essay on Love for Students and Children

500+ words essay on love.

Love is the most significant thing in human’s life. Each science and every single literature masterwork will tell you about it. Humans are also social animals. We lived for centuries with this way of life, we were depended on one another to tell us how our clothes fit us, how our body is whether healthy or emaciated. All these we get the honest opinions of those who love us, those who care for us and makes our happiness paramount.

What is Love?

Love is a set of emotions, behaviors, and beliefs with strong feelings of affection. So, for example, a person might say he or she loves his or her dog, loves freedom, or loves God. The concept of love may become an unimaginable thing and also it may happen to each person in a particular way.

Love has a variety of feelings, emotions, and attitude. For someone love is more than just being interested physically in another one, rather it is an emotional attachment. We can say love is more of a feeling that a person feels for another person. Therefore, the basic meaning of love is to feel more than liking towards someone.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Need of Love

We know that the desire to love and care for others is a hard-wired and deep-hearted because the fulfillment of this wish increases the happiness level. Expressing love for others benefits not just the recipient of affection, but also the person who delivers it. The need to be loved can be considered as one of our most basic and fundamental needs.

One of the forms that this need can take is contact comfort. It is the desire to be held and touched. So there are many experiments showing that babies who are not having contact comfort, especially during the first six months, grow up to be psychologically damaged.

Significance of Love

Love is as critical for the mind and body of a human being as oxygen. Therefore, the more connected you are, the healthier you will be physically as well as emotionally. It is also true that the less love you have, the level of depression will be more in your life. So, we can say that love is probably the best antidepressant.

It is also a fact that the most depressed people don’t love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also become self-focused and hence making themselves less attractive to others.

Society and Love

It is a scientific fact that society functions better when there is a certain sense of community. Compassion and love are the glue for society. Hence without it, there is no feeling of togetherness for further evolution and progress. Love , compassion, trust and caring we can say that these are the building blocks of relationships and society.

Relationship and Love

A relationship is comprised of many things such as friendship , sexual attraction , intellectual compatibility, and finally love. Love is the binding element that keeps a relationship strong and solid. But how do you know if you are in love in true sense? Here are some symptoms that the emotion you are feeling is healthy, life-enhancing love.

Love is the Greatest Wealth in Life

Love is the greatest wealth in life because we buy things we love for our happiness. For example, we build our dream house and purchase a favorite car to attract love. Being loved in a remote environment is a better experience than been hated even in the most advanced environment.

Love or Money

Love should be given more importance than money as love is always everlasting. Money is important to live, but having a true companion you can always trust should come before that. If you love each other, you will both work hard to help each other live an amazing life together.

Love has been a vital reason we do most things in our life. Before we could know ourselves, we got showered by it from our close relatives like mothers , fathers , siblings, etc. Thus love is a unique gift for shaping us and our life. Therefore, we can say that love is a basic need of life. It plays a vital role in our life, society, and relation. It gives us energy and motivation in a difficult time. Finally, we can say that it is greater than any other thing in life.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Love — The Many Faces of Love

The Many Faces of Love

• Categories: Love Types of Love

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Words: 533 |

Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 533 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

The beginning of love, early stages of love, obstacles and challenges, the power of love, the dark side of love, different forms of love.

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Meaning of Life: What’s the Point?

Author: Matthew Pianalto Categories: Ethics , Phenomenology and Existentialism , Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 1000

Editors’ note: this essay and its companion essay, Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? both explore the concept of meaning in relation to human life. This essay focuses on the meaning of life as a whole, whereas the other addresses meaning in individual human lives.

At the height of his literary fame, the novelist Leo Tolstoy was gripped by suicidal despair. [1] He felt that life is meaningless because, in the long run, we’ll all be dead and forgotten. Tolstoy later rejected this pessimism in exchange for religious faith in life’s eternal, divine significance.

Tolstoy’s outlook—both before and after his conversion—raises many questions:

• Does life’s having meaning depend on a supernatural reality?
• Is death a threat to life’s meaning?
• Is life the sort of thing that can have a “meaning”? In what sense?

Here we will consider some approaches to questions about the meaning of life. [2]

1. Questioning the Question

Many philosophers begin thinking about the meaning of life by asking what the question itself means. [3] Life could refer to all lifeforms or to human life specifically. This essay focuses on human life, but it is worth considering how other things might have or lack meaning, too. [4] This can help illuminate the different meanings of meaning .

Sometimes, we use “meaning” to refer to the origin or cause of something’s existence. If I come home to a trashed house, I might wonder, “What is the meaning of this?” Similarly, we might wonder where life comes from or how it began; our origins may tell us something about other meanings, like our value or purpose.

We also use “meaning” to refer to something’s significance or value . Something can be valuable in various ways, such as by being useful, pleasing, or informative. We might call something meaningless if it is trivial or unimportant.

“Meaning” can also refer to something’s point or purpose . [5] Life could have some overarching purpose as part of a divine plan, or it might have no such purpose. Perhaps we can give our lives purpose that they did not previously possess.

Notice that even divine purposes may not always satisfy our desire for meaning: suppose our creator made us to serve as livestock for hyper-intelligent aliens who will soon arrive and begin to farm us. [6] We might protest that this is not the most meaningful use of our human potential! We may not want our life-story to end as a people-burger.

Indeed, a thing’s meaning can also be its story . The meaning of life might be the true story of life’s origins and significance. [7] In this sense, life cannot be meaningless, but its meaning might be pleasing or disappointing to us. When people like Tolstoy regard life as meaningless, they seem to be thinking that the truth about life is bad news. [8]

2. Supernaturalism

Supernaturalists hold that life has divine significance. [9] For example, from the perspective of the Abrahamic religions, life is valuable because everything in God’s creation is good . Our purpose is to love and glorify God. We are all part of something very important and enduring : God’s plan.

Much of the contemporary discussion about the meaning of life is provoked by skepticism about traditional religious answers. [10] The phrase “the meaning of life” came into common usage only in the last two centuries, as advances in science, especially evolutionary theory, led many to doubt that life is the product of intelligent, supernatural design. [11] The meaning of life might be an especially perplexing issue for those who reject religious answers.

3. Nihilism

Nihilists think that life, on balance, lacks positive meaning. [12] Nihilism often arises as a pessimistic reaction to religious skepticism: life without a divine origin or purpose has no enduring significance.

Although others might counter that life can have enduring significance that doesn’t depend on a supernatural origin, such as our cultural legacy, nihilists are skeptical. From a cosmic perspective, we are tiny specks in a vast universe–and often miserable to boot! Even our most important cultural icons and achievements will likely vanish with the eventual extinction of the species and the collapse of the solar system.

4. Naturalism

Naturalists suggest that the meaning of life is to be found within our earthly lives. Even if life possesses no supernatural meaning, life itself may have inherent significance. [13] Things are not as bad as nihilists claim.

Some naturalists argue that life—at least human life—has objectively valuable features, such as our intellectual, moral, and creative abilities. [14] The meaning of life may be to develop these capacities and put them to good use. [15]

Other naturalists are subjectivists about life’s meaning. [16] Existentialists , for example, argue that life has no meaning until we give it meaning by choosing to live for something that we find important. [17]

Critics (including nihilists and supernaturalists) argue that the naturalists are fooling themselves. What naturalists propose as sources of meaning in life are at best a distraction from life’s lack of ultimate or cosmic significance (if naturalism is true). What is the point of personal development and good works if we’ll all be dead sooner or later?

Naturalists may respond that the point is in how these activities affect our lives and relationships now rather than in some distant, inhuman future. [18] Feeling sad or distressed over our lack of cosmic importance might be a kind of vanity we should overcome. [19] Some also question whether living forever would necessarily add meaning to life; living forever might be boring! [20] Having limited time may be part of what makes some of our activities and experiences so precious. [21]

5. Conclusion

In Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , the supercomputer Deep Thought is prompted to discover “the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.” After 7 ½ million years of computation, Deep Thought determines that the answer is…

forty-two .

Reflecting on this bizarre result, Deep Thought muses, “I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.” [22]

Adams may be wise to offer some comic relief. [23] Furthermore, given the various meanings of “meaning,” perhaps there is no single question to ask and thus no single correct answer.

Tolstoy’s crisis is a reminder that feelings of meaninglessness can be distressing and dangerous. [24] However, continuing to search for meaning in times of doubt may be one of the most meaningful things we can do. [25]

[1] Tolstoy (2005 [1882]). For discussion of Tolstoy’s rediscovery of meaning that extends his ideas beyond the specific religious outlook he adopted, see Preston-Roedder (2022).

[2] For more detailed overviews of the meaning of life, see Metz (2021) and the entries on the meaning of life by Joshua Seachris and Wendell O’Brien in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

[3] Ayer (2008) suspects the question is incoherent. For a response, see Nielsen (2008). For helpful discussion of the meanings of meaning, see Thomas (2019).

[4] For discussion of meaning beyond humans (and agents), see Stevenson (2022).

[5] Notice that purpose appears to be one type of value, as discussed in the preceding paragraph.

[6] Nozick (1981) develops this point about purpose; Nozick (2008) offers the key points, too. In a different spirit, the ancient Daoist philosophy of Zhuangzi (2013) provides some perspective on the advantages of being “useless” (having no purpose) and the dangers of being “useful.”

[7] On this proposal of the meaning of life as narrative, see Seachris (2009). A similar approach that emphasizes the notion of interpretation rather than story or narrative is proposed in Prinzing (2021).

[8] A starter list of life’s features that might lead one to tell such a story about life: war, poverty, physical and mental illness, natural disasters, addiction, labor exploitation and other injustices, and pollution. For more, see Benatar (2017).

[9] Some, like Craig (2013), argue vigorously that life can have meaning only if supernaturalism is true. For further discussion and examples, see discussions of supernaturalism in Seachris, “The Meaning of Life: Contemporary Analytic Perspectives” and Metz (2021).

[10] See Landau (1997) and Setiya (2022), Ch. 6, for discussion of the origin of the phrase.

[11] Nietzsche’s discussion of the “death of God” in The Gay Science (2001 [1882]) reflects these sorts of concerns.

[12] For recent defenses of this view, see Benatar (2017) and Weinberg (2021).

[13] See I. Singer (2009) for a wide-ranging naturalist approach. Wolf’s (2010, 2014) approach to meaning in life is one of the most widely accepted views amongst contemporary philosophers.

[14] For a helpful discussion of the idea that some things might be objectively valuable, see Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf.

[15] Metz (2013) and P. Singer (1993) defend this sort of view of meaning in life. Transhumanists would argue that the best uses of our abilities will be those that help us overcome the problems, like disease and mortality, that beset humans and may transform us in substantial ways: perhaps we can achieve a natural form of immortality through technology! On transhumanism, see Messerly (2022).

[16] Representative subjectivists include Taylor (2000) and Calhoun (2015). Susan Wolf’s works (2010 and 2014) develop a “hybrid” account of meaning that combines objective and subjective elements.

[17] For classic expressions of this existentialist view, see Sartre (2021 [1943]) and Beauvoir (2018 [1947]). For a brief overview of existentialist philosophy, see Existentialism by Addison Ellis. For a more detailed, contemporary overview, see Gosetti-Ferencei (2020).

[18] On this point, see Nagel (1971), Nagel (1989), and “The Meanings of Lives” in Wolf (2014). For further discussion see Kahane (2014).

[19] Marquard (1991); see Hosseini (2015) for additional discussion. Albert Camus makes a similar point, invoking the notion of “moderation,” at the end of The Rebel (1992 [1951]).

[20] Williams (1973) gives the classic expression of this idea. For a brief overview of Williams’ argument, see Is Immortality Desirable? , by Felipe Pereira.

[21] Of course, this outlook does mean that death can sometimes rob people of potential meaning, since death can be untimely. But death would not erase the meaningfulness of whatever one had already experienced or achieved. For arguments concerning whether death harms the individual who dies, see Is Death Bad? Epicurus and Lucretius on the Fear of Death by Frederik Kaufman.

[22] Adams (2017), Chapters 27-28. Asking a computer to give us the answer might also be a problem.

[23] For additional comic relief, see the film Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983). Such playfulness may seem irreverent of these “deep” philosophical questions, but Schlick (2017 [1927]) argued that the meaning of life is to be found in play!

[24] For discussion of crises of meaning and an introduction to psychological research on meaning in life, see Smith (2017).

[25] William Winsdale relates that the existential psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was once asked to “express in one sentence the meaning of his own life” (in Frankl (2006), 164-5). After writing his answer, he asked his students to guess what he wrote. A student said, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.” Frankl responded, “That is it exactly. Those are the very words I had written.”

Adams, Douglas (2017). The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . Del Rey. Originally published in 1979.

Ayer, A.J. (2008). “The Claims of Philosophy.” In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 199-202.

Beauvoir, Simone de (2018). The Ethics of Ambiguity . Open Road Media. Originally published in French in 1947.

Benatar, David (2017). The Human Predicament . Oxford University Press.

Calhoun, Cheshire (2015). “Geographies of Meaningful Living,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 32(1): 15-34.

Camus, Albert (1992). The Rebel . Vintage. Originally published in French in 1951.

Craig, William Lane (2013). “The Absurdity of Life Without God.” In: Jason Seachris, ed. Exploring the Meaning of Life . Wiley-Blackwell: 153-172.

Frankl, Viktor E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning . Beacon Press.

Gosetti-Ferencei, Jennifer Anna (2020). On Being and Becoming: An Existentialist Approach to Life . Oxford University Press.

Hosseini, Reza (2015). Wittgenstein and Meaning in Life . Palgrave Macmillan.

Kahane, Guy (2014). “Our Cosmic Insignificance.” Noûs 48(4): 745–772.

Landau, Iddo (2017). Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World . Oxford University Press.

— (1997). “Why Has the Question of the Meaning of Life Arisen in the Last Two and a Half Centuries?” Philosophy Today 41(2): 263-269.

Marquard, Odo (1991). “On the Dietetics of the Expectation of Meaning.” In: In Defense of the Accidental . Translated by Robert M. Wallace. Oxford University Press: 29-49.

Messerly, John (2022). Short Essays on Life, Death, Meaning, and the Far Future .

Metz, Thaddeus (2013). Meaning in Life . Oxford University Press .

— (2021). “The Meaning of Life.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.).

Nagel, Thomas (1971). “The Absurd,” Journal of Philosophy 68(20): 716-727.

— (1989). The View From Nowhere . Oxford University Press.

Nielsen, Kai (2008). “Linguistic Philosophy and ‘The Meaning of Life.’” In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 203-219.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2001). The Gay Science . Translated by Josephine Nauckhoff. Cambridge University Press. Originally published in German in 1882.

Nozick, Robert (1981). Philosophical Explanations . Harvard University Press.

— (2018), “Philosophy and the Meaning of Life,” in: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Fourth Edition . Oxford University Press: 197-204.

O’Brien, Wendell. “The Meaning of Life: Early Continental and Analytic Perspectives.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Last Accessed 12/19/2022.

Preston-Roedder, Ryan (2022). “Living with absurdity: A Nobleman’s guide,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Early View) .

Prinzing, Michael M. (2021). “The Meaning of ‘Life’s Meaning,’” Philosopher’s Imprint 21(3).

Sartre, Jean-Paul (2021). Being and Nothingness . Washington Square Press. Originally published in French in 1943.

Schlick, Moritz (2017). “On the Meaning of Life,” in: In: E.D. Klemke and Seven M. Cahn, eds. The Meaning of Life, Third Edition . Oxford University Press: 56-65. Originally published in 1927.

Seachris, Joshua. “The Meaning of Life: Contemporary Analytic Perspectives.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Last Accessed 12/19/2022.

— (2009). “The Meaning of Life as Narrative.” Philo 12(1): 5-23.

Setiya, Kieran (2022). Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way . Riverhead Books.

Singer, Irving (2009). Meaning in Life, Vol. 1: The Creation of Value . MIT Press.

Singer, Peter (1993). How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest . Prometheus.

Smith, Emily E. (2017). The Power of Meaning . Crown.

Stevenson, Chad Mason (2022). “Anything Can Be Meaningful.” Philosophical Papers (forthcoming).

Taylor, Richard (2000). Good and Evil . Prometheus. Originally published in 1970.

Thomas, Joshua Lewis (2019). “Meaningfulness as Sensefulness,” Philosophia 47: 1555-1577.

Tolstoy, Leo (2005). A Confession . Translated by Aylmer Maude. Dover. Originally published in Russian in 1882.

Weinberg, Rivka (2021). “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad,” Journal of Controversial Ideas 1(1), 4.

Williams, Bernard (1973). “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality.” In: Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers, 1956-1972 . Cambridge University Press: 82-100.

Wolf, Susan (2010). Meaning in Life and Why It Matters . Princeton University Press. ( Wolf’s lecture is also available at the Tanner Lecture Series website ).

— (2014). The Variety of Values . Oxford University Press.

Zhuangzi (2013). The Complete Works of Zhuangzi . Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press.

Related Essays

Meaning in Life: What Makes Our Lives Meaningful? by Matthew Pianalto

Existentialism by Addison Ellis

Camus on the Absurd: The Myth of Sisyphus by Erik Van Aken

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Is Death Bad? Epicurus and Lucretius on the Fear of Death by Frederik Kaufman

Ancient Cynicism: Rejecting Civilization and Returning to Nature by G. M. Trujillo, Jr.

The Badness of Death by Duncan Purves

Is Immortality Desirable? by Felipe Pereira

Hope by Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale

Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf

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Matthew Pianalto is a Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of On Patience (2016) and several articles and book chapters on ethics. philosophy.eku.edu/pianalto

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Read our detailed notes below on the essay “Of Love” by Francis Bacon. Our notes cover Of Love by Francis Bacon summary and explanation.

Of Love by Francis Bacon Summary

Bacon opens the essay by claiming that the love or romance shown on the stage, plays, and theatres is highly unrealistic, far from reality. On stage, love is portrayed as a noble trait leading to joy and excitement. It often brings tragedy and sorrow. However, in the real life, love does the real disasters by bringing dark and foreboding. History has a record that all the great, noble, and worthier man who has done something great in the life have refused this week passion and keep themselves and their business away from such things.

Bacon illustrates the example of Marcus Antonius, a member of Roman royalty who was given a chance to rule over 1/3rd of the empire, and Appius Claudius, the second member of royalty who was given the other 1/3rd of empire, to explain the destructing effects of love. The former was the man of ambition and power, however, amorous, impulsive, and restrained. He had little or no control over his heart and wandered in pursuit of love and lust. While Claudius was a sober, sage and wise man of great wisdom. He never brought himself disgrace while rushing towards quixotic desire.

Bacon quotes the Greek philosopher Epicurus who promoted self-control, self-discipline, and restraint in one’s life. He warned his followers against chasing the worldly desires and says that “we are sufficient for one another”. By this, he conveys a message that one must live his life fully, without indulging into conflicts with others. One should not avenge other and must restrain himself from other such misdeeds. He expresses his disproval for a man of great worth who bowed in front of a woman he loves and makes themselves small and miserable.

Bacon, furthermore, talks about the unfettered love that destroys the man. He says that such love devalues the man and make them insignificant in front of others. Moreover, Bacon argues about romantic poetry in which the writer exaggerates the beauty of his beloved unnecessary. To him, such exaggeration is only suitable for romance and writing; they are not applicable in practical life. A paramour who detriments his discriminating influence to transfer flattering words to his woman evidently negotiates with his intellect, and judging power. A proud man will never make his beloved to rule over him by pouring sugarcoated words on her. For Bacon, a wise man must not love as it is impossible to be wise and to love at the same time.

In an unrequited love, the praises and compliment of a man for his beloved woman appear to be a weakness of his character. Moreover, when her woman doesn’t feel responding the paramour, she treats his love as a pitiable weakness of his character. The love of man can result in two things: either the woman will respond to him in the same way or will create an inward feeling of insignificant in a woman for the man. So, Bacon warns, the man before falling in love should understand one thing that it doesn’t harm anything but man’s self-esteem.

Those who see the world as nothing but a place to fulfill their carnal desires destroy themselves. They losses both affluence and wisdom in search or sexual pleasures in the world. Bacon argues that such passions are overwhelmed in the period of prosperity than of adversity. Carnal pleasures get accentuated in the time of both happiness and distress and can be called as “child of folly”. However, these sensual pleasure when are uncontrolled can lead to the destruction of business, wealth, and health.

The army men seem to have a special attraction for love as they have for the wine. Bacon discusses the men’s nature and argues that men have a special inclination towards love for other. He makes his love universal by expanding it towards everyone, no matter such love gentle and kind and people who have some spiritual and religious belonging have this kind of love. In the end, Bacon says that the love that arises from marriage is the root cause of mankind’s creation, while love in friendship makes it perfect but lust corrupts it and embarrass it.

Of Love by Francis Bacon Literary Analysis

The essay “Of Love” is an argumentative essay written by Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon in this essay argues about the various ills of falling in love. He particularly argues about the carnal pleasures and its consequences.

Sir Francis Bacon is a well-known English Essayist and philosopher. He devoted himself to writing along with scientific work and wrote sixty essays. This essay, Of Love, is regarding the love. Love, in today’s world, have influenced a large number of people. The objective of Bacon in this essay is to demonstrate the effect of love on all kinds of people. No matter who you are, you will fall in love with somebody and this love will definitely have an effect on you, and sometimes love makes one do senseless things.

Bacon then talks about the sensual love that drains one’s intelligence. For some people, love is nothing but a source of Carnal pleasure. However, such love if lasted long has hard consequences.

Bacon then talks about the noble and kind love the spiritual people possess. They don’t love a single person or group of people but the entire universe. They are more inclined towards every creation in the universe. Another kind of noble love that Bacon argues about is the love between husband and wife. This love is further dignified with the love of friends.

Conciseness, straightforwardness, wittiness, and compact opinions are the merits that Bacon’s essay cover. The methodical way of inscription makes his essay logical and rational. The subject matter that he argues about is taken from real life experiences and is a hot topic of discussion in every time. The readers find his essay more welcoming and pleasurable. The use of the Latin proverb in his essay shows his high knowledge regarding the Latin language, and it also adds colors to his writing.

More From Francis Bacon

• Of Adversity
• Of Ambition
• Of Discourse
• Of Followers and Friends
• Of Friendship
• Of Great Place
• Of Marriage and Single Life
• Of Nobility
• Of Parents and Children
• Of Simulation and Dissimulation
• Of Superstition
• Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature

The Meaning of Life: Personal Essay Essay

When it comes to the meaning of life, there are two different ways we can look at it. Both of these have their advantages and disadvantages, and ultimately it is up to the individual to decide which sense of the term they use when discussing the meaning of life. In my opinion, life has meaning which comes from the choices, relationships, and experiences that an individual has, so I find personal meaning within myself.

The external meaning of life is something that is imposed upon us from an outside source. This could be anything from a religious belief system to a set of societal norms and expectations. For example, some people may believe that the meaning of life is to serve God, while others may think that the meaning of life is to be successful in their career. The advantage of this type of meaning is that it provides a clear goal and a sense of purpose, which can help people stay focused and motivated (Novosel, 2020). The disadvantage, however, is that it can be limiting and can make it difficult to explore and find meaning in other areas of life.

The internal meaning of life is something that we find within ourselves. I believe that life is a journey and the meaning of life comes from the choices we make and the relationships we form. Expressing creativity and helping others by making a positive impact on the world are just a few ways to find purpose in life (Novosel, 2020). Nevertheless, it can be challenging to discover the meaning of life, as it requires self-reflection and exploration. The reward of this effort is the sense of freedom it brings, allowing us to define our own sense of purpose.

In conclusion, life is a journey and the meaning of life is a combination of both the internal and external meaning. It is often said that there is no definite answer to the question of the meaning of life. Everyone has their own distinct point of view and it is ultimately the individual’s choice to select which interpretation they would like to embrace. It could be an external interpretation or an internal one; the essential thing is to uncover something that brings pleasure and satisfaction to your life.

Novosel, N. (2020). The meaning of life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose . Nathanael Garrett Novosel.

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The Origin of the Phrase ‘Live, Laugh, Love’

By jake rossen | may 20, 2024.

American décor has gone through a lot of questionable phases over the decades, from the lava lamps and shag carpeting of the 1960s to interior barn doors of the 2000s. More recently, people have taken to brightening up their living areas with motivational signs. The most pervasive might be wall decorations reminding residents to live, laugh, love .

Pessimists and Gen Z will cringe at the platitude, but for a lot of people, the signage helps reinforce positivity. Shoppers prowl home goods stores looking for them. But where did it come from—and how did it turn into a household necessity?

Live, Laugh, Weep Uncontrollably

Sign of the times, live, laugh, meme.

Live, laugh, love actually has dual origins. There’s the phrase itself, which appears to have grown popular thanks to a poem by Bessie Anderson Stanley. Published in 1904, “Success” was submitted to a magazine that solicited essays or other works on the topic of how best to define success. Stanley wrote:

“He achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has left the world better than he found it, whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.”

Strictly speaking, this was not the first time the phrase or one like it appeared in print. The alliteration was used by a columnist in the August 31, 1853 edition of The Aberdeen Journal . In musing about the people of Ireland, the uncredited author wrote, “the Irish must have been destined to do something more than live, laugh, love, weep, and die.”

Later, in 1877, the famous Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher told his congregation that “a family may live, laugh, love and be happy that eats bread and good water in the morning, water and good bread at noon, and good bread and water at night.” The remarks were published in a variety of newspapers.

Still, Stanley’s more poetic assessment resonated with readers, though Stanley didn’t always get her proper due. At various points, “Success” has been erroneously credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson and even Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson. When advice columnist Ann Landers gave Emerson attribution for the poem in 1966, Stanley’s son, Arthur Stanley, wrote in with a correction—and when Abigail Van Buren, Landers’s sister, repeated the mistake in her “Dear Abby” column in 1990, Stanley’s grandson, also named Arthur Stanley, offered another reminder that the poem was his grandmother’s.

The fact that the sentiment was widely circulated in these advice columns in the 20th century probably contributed to its familiarity. So did Hallmark using it—or at least a version of it—for greeting cards in the early 1990s. But the arrival of live, laugh, love as a home goods cliché was right around the corner.

Rae Dunn didn’t conceive of the live, laugh, love phrase, but she may have helped usher it out into the world. Dunn took up pottery in the 1990s and was fond of putting positive, blunt messages on her work, sometimes consisting of just a single word: dream , focus , soup .

Dunn signed a licensing deal in 2003 that gave her work mass exposure. Dunn’s pieces and others like them were known as word art, and the genre grew rapidly. Dinnerware, throw pillows, and wood signs were stamped with dopamine-enhancing motivation. And yes, that included the abbreviated Stanley sentiment of live, laugh, love .

Tom Mirabile, an expert on consumer trends, told The Washington Post in 2023 that he believed live, laugh, love was most popular around 2008, in the midst of a financial crisis that put the squeeze on millions of people who suffered job and home loss.

“It started around the time when we needed to center ourselves on intangibles, on things that delivered value other than monetary value,” Mirabile said.

That crisis eventually abated, but interest in word art did not. By the 2010s, home improvement and home renovation shows were featuring such pieces, which sparked additional interest. But what’s beloved by some can be memed by others.

It did not take long for the internet to reframe live, laugh, love as a banal sentiment, one that was mass-produced to provide inexpensive décor. Memes appeared, including one in which fiery celebrity chef Gordan Ramsay appears to tell anyone with such a sign to “fuck themselves.”

The mantra gained further ironic awareness in 2019, when teenaged TikTok users filmed themselves in stores like Hobby Lobby and reading—with incredible insincerity—from the word art products.

Despite disgruntlement from Gen Z, live, laugh, love endures on a variety of products. In terms of longevity, it’s far outpaced the lava lamps of decades past. If one is so inclined, you can even purchase a bespoke casket with the motto inscribed on the inside—in past tense, naturally.

Discover More Phrase Origins:

Overthought This

14 Different Ways People Define Love

Posted: March 14, 2024 | Last updated: April 30, 2024

How do you define love? With so many interpretations of this complicated, positive, and sometimes painful concept, it’s hard to nail down exactly one definitive meaning encompassing this multifaceted word. There are several different ways people have described the idea of love, so read on to learn about some of the most interesting definitions.

Love Is a Complex Emotion.

Love is a subjective topic, but we can all probably agree that it’s overwhelmingly multidimensional. Not only is the concept of love complex, but it also involves complex brain functions such as chemical reactions, psychological responses, and social beliefs, among others. Layer upon layer of different factors make up what we know as “love.” 

Love Is Not Just Romance.

There are many different types of love defined by psychology, but only one truly embodies romance. There are three philosophical notions of love: Agape, Eros, and Phileo. Agape is known as the “perfect love,” meaning to love one thoroughly and completely for no reason at all. Many religions believe that only God is capable of agape. Eros is the feeling of romantic love, such as the type you would feel toward a partner or spouse. And finally, phileo is the platonic love you may feel for a family member or a close friend.

Love Is A Chemical Reaction In The Brain.

According to the scientific definition, when we feel what’s known as “love,” the brain releases three specific chemicals: dopamine (supports the feeling of reward), serotonin (maintains emotions), and oxytocin (ignites pleasure centers). The reaction between these hormones creates feelings of love. These chemical reactions become intense when we’re very attracted to someone, and that’s what people mistake for true love.

Love Is Blind.

It’s reasonable to say that love can make you see things in others through different eyes. When we are in love, we might choose not to see the whole picture, or we might ignore red flags when we deeply adore someone. Love can be deceptive in a way that blinds us to the truths we don’t want to acknowledge.

Love Is a Verb, Not a Noun.

In order to love, you must not only feel it… you must also actionably embody it. Love is more than an idea or a feeling—it’s an action we take as well. From the first conversation to the first touch, every aspect of partaking in the idea we know as love involves us doing something to intentionally make it happen. Love is a conscious choice we make.

Love Is Patience.

It takes patience to be able to understand or wait for a person you love. You may also find yourself needing patience because love is not always easy or fun. Patience is an important aspect of expressing love, and for many of us, learning to exercise true patience is one of the more difficult parts of love. Yet, we do it because we know that part of the act involves mutual respect for timing, expectations, and imperfections. 

Love Is Sacrifice.

People often search their whole lives for their “soulmate.” Some might even say that a soulmate is someone you give all of yourself to, sacrificing other parts of your life to be with the person you love. You may have to give up on things you want in order to make room for this person in your life. Love is almost always a gamble, and this is why love can often mean sacrifice. 

Love Is Vulnerability.

To open yourself up to love, you must be willing to be vulnerable. Love elicits emotions all across the spectrum, so it’s only natural that at some point in the process of being with a person you love or enjoying platonic love, such as for a child, you will end up in a position of vulnerability. Every day, you weather the potential for losing said person. Part of the beauty of love is trusting the other person with this vulnerability, knowing that they will love you through it and beyond it. 

Love Is a Deep Connection.

Whether it’s romantic, platonic, or otherwise, there’s no argument that love is the epitome of connection. Love exists and flows in a state of constant growing of bonds, a powerful energy felt between two (or more) people that strengthens over time. As humans, we were psychologically built for love because, in essence, we cannot thrive without forging connections with other humans. 

Love Is Empathy.

In order to genuinely give and receive love, you must be able to put yourself in the shoes of that person. Love is empathy because it can only exist when there is a meaningful connection that creates reciprocal emotion from both parties. The ability to love comes with the attempt to unconditionally understand the other person while feeling what they feel. Empathy helps us build trust with others.

Love Is Destructive.

Love is a temporary lapse of a human body’s emotional defense mechanisms. Given that love can build us up, it can also break us down. Love manifests itself wherever there is happiness, and love consumes happiness. Love is a choice. While love is a positive concept, we may also experience fear, anger, and sadness as a result of it. Poets have written of this destruction for centuries, and yet, love is still worth diving into.

Love Is Placing the Needs of Another Person Above Your Own.

Setting one’s self aside for others (or one another) is one of the principal features of love. No selfishness can be found in true love. In this sense, this kind of love is an unattainable ideal for many of us, as some people have only the capacity to practice a facsimile of love—selfishness is simply woven into our DNA. Despite this, we do our best to uplift the ones we love, placing their needs on a pedestal and striving to give them the best.

Love Is Acceptance.

Love is the ability to let someone live their life the way they want to—to be themselves—and accept them for who they are. It’s the act of extending permission to exercise personal freedom toward the one you love, unburdened by jealousy or judgment. Love is the ability to accept the good with the bad, looking through a lens of understanding that, at the core, we are all unique individuals.

Love Cannot Be Truly Defined.

Love may contain a multitude of feelings. Obsession. Understanding. Comfort. Affection. Respect. Intimacy. Dependability. Attraction. Devotion. Excitement. Tranquility. Commitment. Passion. Trust. Loyalty. Selflessness. Protection. Compassion. Unity. Love can embody all of the above and much more. Love transcends time and space, and because there are so many interpretations of love, we cannot stake claim only to one or another.

Wisdom About Love from Couples in Long-term Happy Relationships

People in loving and fulfilling long-term relationships often have wisdom about what’s made their partnership work over the years.

• Here, long-term couples share their keys to relationship success .

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