The basic need for companionship flows potently through the veins of all as a beat is skipped in the heart. This skip is known to most as love, but what is love? To some love is a meaningful spiritual connection and to others nothing more than a physical attraction. Plato said, “Pleasure is the bait of sin.” Love is pleasurable, so is it sin? Love can be painful, so is it a disease? Love has many descriptions and connotations, which all exhibit truth in their own right. The philosophical examination of love conducted by Robert Solomon in his book Love depicts the different foundations of love in order to exhibit the various manners and reasons for why a person loves another.

In order to understand the basis of love, one must first realize that love is only an emotion. Solomon writes, “ Love is not a biological drive, not a “need,” not a gift from God. It is neither natural nor necessary not necessarily healthy, helpful or human. Neither is it “divine,” and it is certainly no “mystery,” unless of course, we refuse even to look at it. Love is an emotion, nothing else” (34). Western Philosophy views emotions as the “lower parts of the human soul.” (3

“Love,” writes the poet Rilke, “is two solitudes reaching out to greet each other” (23). The basic state of people is one of individualism and aloneness, so it is not awkward that one would wish for relation with another person. “Love, then, is a refuge from an otherwise intolerable existence”(23). Love is the escape from aloneness. However, by viewing love as an escape from aloneness, the “result is to make love itself seem like something of a cure for a disease, rather than a positive experience …” (24). The truth is one may say they are alone even though they have an abundance of friends and family, but the desire for love expressed by society leaves a person feeling inadequate and alone without romantic love. The problem, however, is that people turn love not into an emotional experience that will happen, but a need that must happen. So love is only perceived as a need to be fulfilled. In opposition to this perspective is the metaphysical model. Others believe that people are meant to be together, and they will be together. Such as, the “matches made in heaven” and the idea of a person being one’s “better half” (24). The proponents of this perspective view love as “the realization of bonds that are already formed, even before one meets one’s other half”(24). It is presumed that one will meet the person that they are meant to be with simply because that is how it is suppose to be. The problem with this perspective is that there is “no room for the development of relationships” (25). Love is growing in a relationship, and how can one grow if the love is and has always been there?

Solomon’s interpretation of love is one of complex contradicting reasons and human ideas and thoughts. However, in reality what is love other than a combination of giving one’s self in the mercy of the unknown. Yes, people choose to love, but once chosen love controls not the people. The foundations of love depend upon the person. Each person has different reasons why, who, and how they love, but no matter what the difference is it is still love. So why choose to love at all? Why put one’s self in the position to get hurt when love might not last forever? People seem to view love as irrational, but it’s not love that is irrational it is people who are irrational. It is our emotions, decisions, and changing ideas that influence our love. Solomon views love as an unessential emotion “surrounded by myths and metaphors, motivated by false hopes and the desire for a guarantee that, somehow, a miserable life can be turned into happiness at a single stroke, that love once found will last, even “forever,” that one will be loved, “no matter what” (Intro. 25). It is only human nature to wish for such things as happiness and a love that will last forever.

5). Love is continually tried to be turned into something other than an emotion, which Solomon views as the primary dilemma. People do not want to accept that love is only an emotion because we have been taught that emotions are primitive. Solomon expresses how humans think that they can’t control emotions. For instance, people experience shaky knees and a queasy stomach and “see emotions happening to [them], and so [they] “fall in love”(36). Emotions are always viewed as happening, as intrusions in our lives, which are to be “gotten over.” Solomon remarks to this statement that “Love is no different in this regard, and it is to save this savored emotion from the degradation due most of our passions that love is transformed into something else – something impersonal, selfless, abstract and emasculated”(39). Solomon expresses how humans do not wish to v

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