love

Love, this eminent humane experience, has been explored not only by writers and poets, but also by philosophers, psychologists and even experimental scientists. This paper aims to discuss a novel aspect in phenomenology of love, as the concept of destructive and constructive nature of love, which is to the best of our knowledge, presented for the first time. The fundamental idea of this paper was obtained from verses of Hafiz, then polished by theories of Robert Cloninger and several other thinkers in the field of human emotions. Many verses of Hafiz display love experience as a necessary step towards growth, in a way that could be evinced further by the development of the "self-aware psych" introduced by Cloninger. He introduces the "self-aware psych" as one of the three constituting domains of human mind and personality, the intuitive essence bringing integrity for personality. If self-aware psych flourishes by favorable growth and development, it would prepare the ground for creativity, wisdom and well-being, otherwise, personality disorders would be contingent. The destructive and constructive nature of love, towards development of self-awareness and mental growth, is further determined by re-explaining the proposed theory of "ego as a complex" by Carl Jung, the theory of "network of intentionality" by John Searle, and the theory of "emotional processing" by Edna Foa and Michael Kozak in this context.

One may say that The Open Society and Its Enemies (OS) offered in 1945 the first complete elaboration of the general approach proposed by Karl Popper, namely his ‘critical rationalism’, a bold generalization of the fallibilist falsificationism in the domain of the empirical sciences masterly proposed in Logik der Forschung (1934). The political content of The OS has been critically discussed. Nevertheless, not all people insist on the equally important moral dimension of the book, giving it its unity, I submit. Without morality, no critical discussion, no reason, no open society, let us say in a nutshell. I would argue that according to Popper, a strictly Christian morality of love would not be the appropriate emotional companion of critical rationalism, but that the less demanding moral emotion of sympathy or compassion is perhaps necessary to give it its force against violence. I give some support to this line of argument. In my view, Popper proposed a somewhat unarticulated critical rationalist ‘emotivism’ of sorts. The emotion of compassion is necessary for triggering our moral decisions and values, which are the ultimate basis of the choice for a reason against violence.

SUBJECT & OBJECTIVES : Pleasure motivates humans in pleasant and unpleasant behaviors. Numerous ethical schools have discussed pleasure. Some schools have embraced hedonism. One of these schools is utilitarianism. In the Holy Qur’an, many verses about pleasure are mentioned. These verses are discussed in the form of resurrection, social reform, food and clothing, etc. Since Jeremy Bentham's principles of hedonism have had a great impact on philosophers, thinkers, social laws, and the culture and lifestyle of people, the present article is an explanation of pleasure from Jeremy Bentham's viewpoint and compares it with verses of the Qur’an. METHOD & FINDING : The library data collection and information processing method is descriptive-analytical critical. A finding of this article is to explain the similarities and differences of Jeremy Bentham's view compared to the verses of the Holy Qur’an. CONCLUSION : After the studies, we concluded that in both perspective hedonism and its excitatory aspect in humans with psychological hedonism, there are also points of disagreement: In the verses of the Qur’an, unlike Bentham, the pleasures of the hereafter and its preference over the pleasures of this world have been emphasized and the other that in the Qur’an, hedonism is not accepted in an absolute. Also, some of the blessings of the hereafter are mentioned in the Qur’an

In his book It’s Not about the Gift: From Givenness to Loving, Steinbock advances a new phenomenological analysis of the gift. In this analysis, the gift is not about what is being given, but about the event of a loving relation between two subjects. In this interpersonal relation the gift emerges as each beloved withdraws themselves in order to reveal the other as they are by being loved in humility. In this paper, I undertake to express two main challenges for Steinbock’s account of the gift. The first concerns Steinbock’s attempt to disengage the phenomenon of surprise from the possibility of the gift. The second involves his neglecting the body. This neglect raises serious questions on the kind of love during which the gift is supposed to emerge. In the epilogue, instead of a conclusion, I offer some thoughts on the gift that have not been given much attention in the philosophical discussion of the gift.

Modern Man, engaging the predicament of “identity” and “self”, seeks “love” as a redeeming power to reach affirmation of life and reconciliation. To discuss the issue, the concept of “becoming” as an innate motion and transformation in the process of love has been scrutinized from Gilles Deleuze and Molla Sadra Shirazi”s perspective. The concept of “becoming” in Deleuze corresponds with Molla Sadra”s “substantial motion” in the notion of “love”, both carrying out the phenomenon of perception and transformation. The concept of “love” in Deleuze”s theory appears as a rhizomatic experience of “expression of the other” and different possibilities with no message and centrality, just to reach a kind of individual and unique “affect”, and this singular affect is sufficient to generate transformation. Sadra, on the other hand, presents love as the seed corn of all being, leading to a hierarchical motion through “systematic ambiguity of existence” towards a kind of cosmic unity and reconciliation. The theories of Deleuzian “becoming in love” and Sadraian “substantial motion and love” have been applied to scrutinize the practicality and confrontation of the notions in the case of redeeming modern man from nihilism, sense of alienation, distress, and bewilderment.

Kant is usually considered a cold moralist who does not give any importance to feeling and emotions. In this paper I show that Kant has a place for love although he uses this word in different meanings through his work. I will analyze the use and meaning of five different uses of the term love: self-love, practical love, love as affect, love as passion, and sexual love. I show that Kant has a place for love in his theory, in a plurality of shades and meanings, going from the practical love to romantic love. Some of their expressions are meaningful for the moral life, such as practical love, some are not. Kant portrait romantic love as a silly affect, sometimes as a dangerous passion who can even call for medication. And about sex, he claims that it is nothing but the use of the other as a means, which may obtain a higher juridical status if this use is reciprocal, in the case of marriage.

The experience of our conscience belongs in the same category as feeling, thinking and wanting. However, it has a special aspect, namely the presence of other human beings as absolute entities. The process of experience is concerned with the way to best promote your own interests, with how far you will go in actualising your essential characteristics as an absolute entity. The discussion of our urge for survival shows that we can go quite far in that respect, and that to actualise that urge, there are in fact no boundaries; everything is permitted. The same can be said about actualising our other essential characteristics, but the difference is that our need to do so is perhaps less cogently present; it is not our life, or at least not our continued material existence, that is at stake. Nonetheless, we can and may even choose to go to extremes in this respect and thus to give ourselves priority over others. Respect for the interests of others is based on self-respect, which may lead you to decide to subject your dealings with other people to a set of standards for yourself. Here we enter the area of morals and ethics, to which we can attach a complete moral philosophy and on the basis of a belief, a moral theology. At the end of this road is total love of yourself and others, because you have come to realise that it is the only way that can lead to the fourth essential characteristic of human beings as absolute entities, namely self-fulfilment. You will then have developed in a way that allows you to give yourself and others the scope we need as absolute entities (compassion, solidarity). Self-fulfilment is achieved through self-development, i.e. discovering and honing our gifts and talents and thus finding our own identity (development), a process by which the lives of human beings as absolute entities acquire purpose (the search for meaning). Self-fulfilment is self-actualisation, the state that results from the realisation of the essential characteristics of human beings as absolute entities, and it leads to satisfaction derived from ourselves or our activities, a sense of being satisfied with what we have accomplished.

Lacanian Beauty in his ethics is encapsulated as making decisions and “act[ing] in conformity with one’s desires”. This idea is thought while reading Munro’s short stories to argue humans reconfigure their life through decision, transgression, act and love. Munro’s characters are confined in the condition that contextualizes them through one limited interpretation, detaching them from their individuality. To get out of this condition they detach from the Other via acting on their Real desire. So the Real opens the space for the decision that postulates the possibility for transgression. Thus, it is claimed making decisions leads to transgression that necessitates act whereby love is experienced. This study through analyzing decision, transgression, act, love and their relation introduces neutrality as a novel idea about a stance in which Beauty in Lacanian ethics is founded. It demonstrates neutrality is a pure communication area not polluted by Symbolic Order, a singularity, a power stance, a varietal stance in which love is the law. In this neutral singularity, humans succeed in living a life in its full. Lacanian ethics and sociology are interconnected to demonstrate the new context of life human can live so as to bring forth new outlooks on ethics including Beauty.