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The HMS STFU - What's Love Got to Do With It? Everything!
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| The C.S. Lewis "division" of "love" is, FTR, a profoundly Anglocentric process. It's not so much that the Greek language has "four different meanings for 'love'" so much as Greek having four different words/concepts which, in some cases, may all be translated into the English word "love". The storge/philia/eros/agape meme is popular because it allows "love" to be weasel-worded more freely under the linguistic cover -- and makes the suggestion that there is a "real meaning of 'love'" or that concepts dictate reality less obviously bullshit.
That said, yeah, I think you're quite right about the confusion among HP 'shippers of all sorts over just what sort of "love" is so important in Harry's (extraordinarily normal) saving-the-world story. Given the breadth and depth of relationships and loyalties of all sorts that Harry develops over the course of the series...yeah, I'm not sure why it would be so popular to assume that romantic love would be the key point. (Actually, I have a hypothesis, but I'd need to do a great deal of forum-diving to get a better sense of whether it works and I really don't want to do the amount of drinking that it would take to get me through five years' worth of rabid 'shipper forums.) | | (Reply to this) (Thread) |
| (Anonymous) | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-05-10 11:21 pm (UTC) |
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| The C.S. Lewis "division" of "love" is, FTR, a profoundly Anglocentric process. It's not so much that the Greek language has "four different meanings for 'love'" so much as Greek having four different words/concepts which, in some cases, may all be translated into the English word "love".
Except that the ancient Greeks did in fact use 'philia' in all these contexts; it is a very wide-ranging word, which can cover almost any modern English use of 'love', from loving one's country to loving strawberries. 'Philia' is used of family affection: 'storge', a rather obscure word which means something like 'care', has been straitjacketed into standing for this kind of love by modern theorists who want a word for each category. 'Philia' isn't actually used of sexual passion - that's 'eros' - but one can speak of having philia as well as eros for one's lover. 'Agape' is a post-classical word, and seems to have been deliberately co-opted by early Christians to stand for the kind of love they were interested in, but 'philia' is used in the New Testament as well, at least without any obvious differentiation. So I don't think it's particularly Anglocentric; there's a long history of putting these things together. | | (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
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The HMS STFU - What's Love Got to Do With It? Everything!
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