The Ideas Of Love: Critique Of Romantic Love

969 Words4 Pages

Critique of Romantic Love
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Critique of Romantic Love
To love someone includes idealizing the person and perceiving uniqueness of the person. In fact, the desire associated with romantic love is often a function of the perceived uniqueness of the loved person. For example, romantic love includes exclusive dating and copulation, these activities increase the utility of romantic love to a person and often heighten their desire to be with the loved ones. Here, the concept of uniqueness is an interesting area of philosophical study.
The validity of the perception if uniqueness is interesting because in a society, most people have similar traits. They have the same physical features, only subject to individual differences such as height, intelligence and weight(Gottschall & Nordlund, 2006). The propositions of romantic love that all people are fundamentally different are therefore flawed because they do not exist. They are merely mental constructions in the mind of the parties involved in romantic love. Interestingly, romantic love is not present in all cultures. In fact, it is attributed to western cultures and its rise is traced to France in the 12th century. All societies in the world are often based on families. However, the bonds holding the families are not romantic love, though they are often characterized with physical attractions.
Romantic love is also a feature of cultural construction. For example, in the

Open Document