PHILOSOPHY

The word “philosophy” literally means “love of wisdom.” LOVE as (philo in Greek) and WISDOM
as (sophia).

WISDOM
But what is wisdom? In an everyday sense, we often have a good idea of what wisdom means.
Perhaps you have a friend whom you consider particularly wise, whom you regularly go to for
advice. Or perhaps you have a friend who is spectacularly unwise, when you go together to the zoo,
leaps over the barrier to give the lions a cuddle. We are quite happy to call our 1st friend wise and
our 2nd friend unwise. But what do we actually mean by this?

To be wise, it seems that you need to satisfy at least 2 requirements. You need to
have knowledge (you need to know that lions are dangerous animals). But you also need to act
wisely in the light of this knowledge. In other words, knowing what you know about lions, you still
need to resist the mad impulse to cuddle them when you are overwhelmed by their cuteness.

Whatever else wisdom might be, it involves both what we know and what we do.

LOVE
In love, we fall. We're struck, we're crushed, we swoon. We burn with passion. Love makes us crazy
and makes us sick. Our hearts-ache, and then they break. Talking about love in this way
fundamentally shapes how we experience it, says writer Mandy Len Catron. In this talk for anyone
who's ever felt crazy in love, Catron highlights a different metaphor for love that may help us find
more joy -- and less suffering -- in it.

3 KINDS OF LOVE

1. Eros

Eros is the type of love that most closely resembles what Western cultures now view as romantic love.
The word stems from the Greek word erotas, which translates to “intimate love.” It also represented
sexual chemistry and desire. Many Greeks viewed eros as dangerous due to the loss of control that occurs
when someone is struck by this kind of love. And yes, I said struck because Eros is found in Greek
Mythology as being brought on by cupid’s arrow.

For example, Paris falling in love with Helen and leading to the downfall of Troy.

Plato, on the other hand, looked at eros more abstractly, believing it to be our natural desire to seek true
beauty. He wrote that, “He who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it.”
2. Philia
Philia viewed as the ideal love. It is about showing loyalty, giving sacrifice, showing appreciation, and
other more “noble” forms of love not involving sex. According to Aristotle, a person can feel philia
towards someone for one of three reasons: their utility, their pleasantness, and their goodness. Aristotle
also theorized that one must feel love for themselves before being able to feel love for others—something
I think we’ve all heard from well-meaning friends when asking them for relationship advice. Plato’s
theory was that the best kind of philia is the philia that blossoms out of eros, which isn’t all that different
from the many people today who consider their spouse to be their best friend.

3. Agape
Agape is sometimes referred to in modern times as universal love, charity, or even altruism. Essentially,
it’s the love inside us that we give freely to others—regardless of our relationship to them. The whole
idea of agape love is that we don’t need to even have met the other person before, but we still want to
help them, cooperate with them, or do good deeds towards them. While we may not expect anything in
return for our selfless good deeds, studies show that they can actually benefit us—negating the effects of
stress and having an overall positive affect on our mental health.

There’s no right or wrong way to love, but there is a beauty and a fullness when you fill your life with
multiple types of love. Sometimes it seems that the reason we may feel unfulfilled with our love life is
because we’re putting so much into our romantic relationships that we’ve neglected our friendships and
sometimes even our family members.

It can be pretty powerful to give love and expect nothing in return.