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Love

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What is Love?
A Conceptual Analysis of "Love", focusing on the Love Theories of Plato, St. Augustine and Freud
Nico Nuyens

GRIPh Working Papers No. 0901

This paper can be downloaded without charge from the GRIPh Working Paper Series website: http//www.rug.nl/filosofie/GRIPh/workingpapers

What is love?
A Conceptual Analysis of “Love”, focusing on the Love Theories of Plato, St. Augustine and Freud

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 1. FORMAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE............................................................................... 3 2. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF LOVE........................................................................... 6 3. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE....................................................................... 9 3.1 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO ..................................................................... 11 3.2 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: SAINT AUGUSTINE............................................................ 18 3.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FREUD ................................................................................. 27 4. COMPARATIVE EVALUATION............................................................................ 37 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................. 40 REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 43

Introduction The starting point of this paper is the question: “What is love?”, or, in other words, how can we understand or even define the concept of love? To clarify this question we have to approach the problem systematically. Love is no natural kind, nor is it a substance of an abstract kind. It seems to be an empirical phenomenon, since

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