Plato

3 Pages 706 Words

What are some of the ways that love can help humans to achieve happiness and fulfillment?

There are many ways in which love can help humans to achieve happiness and fulfillment. In Plato’s discussion on love, he explains to us that love offers us a pathway from chaos (25-31 Plato, Aristophanes), the romantic companionship that it offers can lead people out of loneliness. Love also leads us to happiness and fulfillment by leading us too our matching half who we can spend the rest of our lives with. Love can also make us feel different emotions depending on how the love is carried out. Phadreus claims that love gives us a sense of shame for acting badly and a sense of pride for acting well. Another positive aspect of love is that is helps us to overcome selfishness therefore leading to happiness and fulfillment.


What are some of the ways that CERTAIN forms of love can pose an obstacle to human’s achievement of happiness and fulfillment?

There are many ways in which different kinds of love such as sexual love, romantic love, friendship love, love of god, ect… can in turn pose as an obstacle for human’s achievement of happiness and fulfillment. Firstly, if we take sexual love, Augustine believes that his desire for sexual love pushed him away from achieving happiness because sex prevented him from figuring out what he should believe in the area of religion. The focus on sexual love prevented Augustine to form a strong spiritual relationship with God and a healthy relationship with his wife as he mentioned in book VI. Another problem that Augustine was faced with which many of people today are faced with is winning the love of your friends. In the Theft of Pears, Augustine presents a perfect example of one trying to obtain the love of his friends by stealing the pears and gaining praise by doing so. Thus he was trying to imitate God in order to obtain happiness and fulfillment, however, “Happiness doesn’...