Posted: Dec 17, 2007, 3:56 PM CST
Courtly love – a late medieval conventionalized code prescribing certain conduct and emotions for ladies and their lovers.
Erotic love – desire characterized by sexual desires.
Familial love – affection brokered through kinship connections, intertwined with concepts of attachment and bonding.
Free love – sexual relations according to choice and unrestricted by marriage.
Platonic love – a close relationship in which sexual desire is
nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated.
Puppy love – romantic affection felt between or as though between adolescents.
Religious love – devotion to one’s deity or theology.
Romantic love – affection characterized by a mix of emotional and sexual desire.
Unrequited love – affection and desire not reciprocated or returned
Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. See the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, ectetera. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept, easier to experience than to explain. Many believe, as stated originally by Virgil, that "Love conquers all", or as stated by The Beatles, "all you need is love". Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of 'absolute value', as opposed to 'relative value'.
Love has several different meanings in the English language, from something that gives a little pleasure ("I loved that meal") to something that one would die for (patriotism, pair-bonding). And in contrast to the definition at the top, frequently people use the verb "love" to indicate want or desire for themselves as opposed to for another. For example: "I love ice cream," does not refer to desiring wellness for ice cream, but rather to the desire for ice cream. The word also frequently indicates elevated appreciation or admiration: "I love that artist."
The concept of love, however, is subject to debate. Some deny the existence of love, calling it a recently invented abstraction. Moreover, approximately 13 percent of cultures reportedly have no word for love. Others maintain that love exists but is indefinable; being a quantity which is spiritual, metaphysical, or philosophical in nature. Love is one of the most common themes in art. An unfinished debate about the authenticity of love as other-regard began with Friedrich Nietzsche's charge that love is merely an ideology constructed by the weak to mask "resentment" about their lack of power. Critics of Nietzsche's view find gratuitous his assumptions that self-interest and the "will to power" overshadow all other concerns.