WEBVTT 00:00:00.370 --> 00:00:06.220 Love is our highest value, what we all crave and what we believe makes us fundamentally 00:00:06.220 --> 00:00:14.080 human, but it is also the source of considerable anxiety. Chiefly, we worry whether we are 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:18.980 entirely normal because it frequently feels as if we are not experiencing love the way 00:00:18.980 --> 00:00:26.500 we should be. Society is subtly highly prescriptive in this regard. It suggests that to be a decent 00:00:26.500 --> 00:00:32.369 person, we should all be within sexual relationships and furthermore, that within these, we should 00:00:32.369 --> 00:00:37.790 ‘love’ in a very particular way: we should be constantly thrilled by our partner’s 00:00:37.790 --> 00:00:42.750 presence, we should long to see them after every absence, we should crave to hold them 00:00:42.750 --> 00:00:47.289 in our arms, to kiss and be kissed by them and – most of all – want to have sex with 00:00:47.289 --> 00:00:53.960 them every day or so. In other words, we should follow the script of Romantic ecstasy throughout 00:00:53.960 --> 00:01:01.050 our lives. This is beautiful in theory and hugely punitive in practice. If we’re going 00:01:01.050 --> 00:01:06.210 to define love like this and peg the idea of normality accordingly, then most of us 00:01:06.210 --> 00:01:12.210 will have to admit to ourselves (with considerable embarrassment) that we don’t know much about 00:01:12.210 --> 00:01:18.870 love – and therefore don’t qualify as decent, sane, or normal people. We’ve created 00:01:18.870 --> 00:01:25.950 a cult of love radically out of line with most of our real experiences of relationships. 00:01:25.950 --> 00:01:31.140 This is where the Ancient Greeks can help. They realised early on that there are many 00:01:31.140 --> 00:01:37.290 kinds of love, each with their respective virtues and seasons – and that a good society 00:01:37.290 --> 00:01:43.160 requires us to append a correct vocabulary to these different states of the heart, lending 00:01:43.160 --> 00:01:49.560 each one legitimacy in the process. The Greeks anointed the powerful physical feelings we 00:01:49.560 --> 00:01:55.031 often experience at the start of a relationship with the word ‘eros’ (ἔρως) . But 00:01:55.031 --> 00:02:00.810 they knew that love is not necessarily over when this sexual intensity wanes, as it almost 00:02:00.810 --> 00:02:07.160 always does after a year or so in a relationship. Our feelings can then evolve into another 00:02:07.160 --> 00:02:12.999 sort of love they captured with the word ‘philia’ (φιλία) normally translated as ‘friendship’ 00:02:12.999 --> 00:02:18.450 though the Greek word is far warmer, more loyal and more touching than its English counterpart; 00:02:18.450 --> 00:02:23.989 one might be willing to die for ‘philia’. Aristotle recommended that we outgrow eros 00:02:23.989 --> 00:02:29.290 in youth, and then base our relationships – especially our marriages – on a philosophy 00:02:29.290 --> 00:02:35.311 of philia. The word adds an important nuance to our understanding of a viable union. It 00:02:35.311 --> 00:02:40.639 allows us to see that we may still love even when we are in a phase that our own, more 00:02:40.639 --> 00:02:49.389 one-sided vocabulary fails to value. The Greeks had a third word for love: agape (ἀγάπη). 00:02:49.389 --> 00:02:54.219 This can be best translated as a charitable love. It’s what we might feel towards someone 00:02:54.219 --> 00:02:59.000 who has behaved rather badly or come to grief through flaws of character – but for whom 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:04.450 we still feel compassion. It’s what a God might feel for his or her people, or what 00:03:04.450 --> 00:03:09.510 an audience might feel for a tragic character in a play. It’s the kind of love that we 00:03:09.510 --> 00:03:15.400 experience in relation to someone’s weakness rather than their strength. It reminds us 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:22.069 that love isn’t just about admiration for virtues, it’s also about sympathy and generosity 00:03:22.069 --> 00:03:29.540 towards what is fragile and imperfect in us. Having these three words to hand – eros, 00:03:29.540 --> 00:03:35.890 philia and agape – powerfully extends our sense of what love really is. The Ancient 00:03:35.890 --> 00:03:43.280 Greeks were wise in dividing the blinding monolith of love into its constituent parts. 00:03:43.280 --> 00:03:48.639 Under their tutelage, we can see that we probably have far more love in our lives than our current 00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:51.920 vocabulary knows how to recognise. 00:03:55.200 --> 00:03:58.160 did you know that The School Of Life is actually a place? 00:03:58.160 --> 00:04:05.520 Ten places in fact. Campus' all over the world from Melbourne to London, Taipie to Istanbul. 00:04:05.520 --> 00:00:00.000 With classes and books and much more. Please click on the link below to explore more.