Understanding the thoughts of Bertrand Russell“To fear love is to fear life and those who fear life are already three parts dead”Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Russell focuses on this line of thought to define love through his analytical philosophy that provides a logical and more complete meaning of love. This chapter aims to provide a brief overview of Bertrand Russell's philosophy of love.Concept of LoveThe concept of love is formulated since man was thinking. Since ancient times, Socrates, a great philosopher, said that love was a perpetual possession of good. In the notion of 'perpetual possession' of the Good, which in the Symposium Socrates modifies his previous definition: to love beauty is to want to generate in beauty. To possess it perpetually would mean recreating it infinitely. Consequently, love must by its very nature be the love of immortality as well as that of Beauty. This explains why love is associated with the reproduction of the species. Love flows into the desire to procreate because procreation is our closest approach to perpetuity. We care about our children because through them we can take part in the future. Even the sacrifices of heroes arise from the love of fame, which is nothing other than the love of immortality. Yet the philosopher's love brings him as close as possible to immortality. When we contemplate absolute beauty with a free soul, we are in touch with the eternal in a way that ensures perpetuity. We could never have children, or create works of art, or perform an act of great importance. However, the philosopher's achievement will be supreme: "he will have the privilege of being loved by God and of becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself." (Plato, 1951, p. 95) In the Republic it is described as follows: Contemplate a world of immutable and harmonious order, where reason governs and nothing can do or suffer evil; and like someone who imitates an admired companion, he cannot help but model himself in his likeness. Thus the philosopher, in constant company with the divine order of the world, will reproduce that order in his soul and, as far as man can, become like God; although here, as elsewhere, there will be room for deductions. (Plato, 1941, p. 208) Also in the Phaedrus the search for absolute good or beauty is considered in terms of the problems the soul faces in becoming immortal. According to Plato's dualistic vision of human nature, the soul is immaterial and indestructible, therefore immortal in itself. But once he descends into the world of nature, he is enclosed in the material sheath of a material body. In its original state the soul lived among the gods, enjoying the true being of the eternal Forms. When they become human beings, most souls forget their divine origin. Immersion in matter clouds awareness of one's spiritual source. However, that past remains as a state of integrity to which all men secretly aspire. Although it may act confusedly, the soul desires to be reunited with the realm of essences, particularly with that absolute good or beauty which shines through the world of the senses but which can only be adequately enjoyed in its own domain. the human being is double, an unstable composition of body and soul, each governed by contrary impulses. Each side struggles to move the human being in its own direction, both driven by the dictates of love, but by love of different kinds of objects. The body allows itself to be dragged by carnal temptations into the mud of sensuality. The soul wants to rise towards its home among the eternal Forms. The latter is only interested in achieving excellence, through a pure relationship,noble, spiritual that allows both the lover and the beloved to improve in the pursuit of virtue. Yet human nature finds it easier to follow the call of the flesh. In the Symposium love generally appears calm and serene, like the character of Socrates and like the orderly progression towards absolute beauty. In the Phaedrus it is turbulent and overwhelming enough to deserve to be called 'divine madness'. Madness can be pathological, resulting from human infirmity. Or it can be, as all creative inspiration is, "a divine liberation of the soul from the yoke of customs and conventions". True love is a madness of the latter kind and is highly desirable. When the enlightened spirit finally frees itself from the degrading but pervasive influence of the body, it seems to lose all sense of balance. In reality it is just a matter of regaining the freedom and true sanity of man. The sight of beauty, which the soul encountered in its previous state but soon forgot, awakens the spirit every time it appears before the lover. Plato describes very vividly the excitement of the lover who sees in another person an expression of divine beauty: At first a shudder passes through him, and again the ancient awe invades him; then, looking at the face of his beloved as if he were a god, he reveres him, and if he were not afraid of being considered a real fool, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then as he looks at it there is a kind of reaction, and the shiver turns into an unusual heat and sweat. (Plato, 1937, p. 225) We can interpret the reaction as a sexual response, but this is not what Plato has in mind. It explains through the language of emotions how the soul grows wings. For Platonism such adoration is the beginning of love. Climbing the ladder of love, the true lover possesses the good by allowing the Good to take possession of him. When this happens, the lover achieves knowledge of reality.Concept of LifeIn Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study (Metz 2013), my overall goals are to articulate a new theory about what would make a human person's life meaningful and to advocate that it is more justified than the competitors that can be found in the analytical philosophical literature of the last 100 years or so. This project inherently brings with it some limitations. In focusing on the meaning of an individual's life, I set aside the question of what, if anything, might confer meaning on the human race at large. In evaluating theories of meaning in a person's life, I turn to the fundamental principles that supposedly capture what all meaningful conditions have in common, and therefore do not explore particularistic, phenomenological, strictly first-person, or other philosophical approaches that one might adopt. In considering primarily analytic texts, that is, those of the English-speaking Anglo-American philosophical tradition, I will not discuss in depth those of other traditions such as the Continental or East Asian. Finally, reflecting primarily on philosophical works, I bracket considerations about how research in other fields such as psychology or religion might be revealing. Given that focus, I found more than enough authors, works, and ideas to grapple with in Meaning of Life. . About half of the contributions to this special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life have chosen to stay within the parameters of my project; they use the same type of lens that I use, but they see something different than what I see. I think of articles by Peter Baumann, David Matheson, Jason Poettcker, Yu Urata, Hasko von Kriegstein, Nicholas Waghorn, Mark Wells, and Fumitake Yoshizawa. However, one of the main motivations behind thisspecial issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life was to encourage the thoughtful exploration of questions of meaning through an entirely different lens. A similar approach characterizes the contributions of Christopher Ketcham, Minao Kukita, Masahiro Morioka, James Tartaglia, and Sho Yamaguchi, all of whom, except Tartaglia, work within the East Asian philosophical tradition. iii Usually these latter critics argue not only that their lens is different and deserves to be used in conjunction with mine, but also that it is better and should be used instead. In my response to these contributors, I argue that this stronger view is implausible and that, at best, they offer a lens that could usefully complement, but should not supplant, the one I use. I do not defend the claim which is the mirror image of the one advanced by these critics, i.e. only my theoretical-analytic way of addressing questions of meaning is appropriate. At this stage of my thinking, I am pluralist about methodology, arguing that it would be helpful to see meaning through a variety of lenses. In the remainder of this overview, I will provide a sketch of the three main parts of Meaning in Life, reviewing enough to make sense of the rich debates that follow. This special issue of the Journal has advanced thinking about meaning, and done so in truly profound and interesting ways. I am honored and heartened that my book was the occasion for such additions to the body of knowledge. In the first major part of Meaning in Life I analyze the category of meaningfulness in a way that is intended to be largely neutral with respect to competing theories about what meaningfulness essentially is insofar as it manifests itself to some extent in the life of a human person. Specifically, I define what most Anglo-American philosophy means by the phrase “meaning in life” and related terms, indicate what the bearer of this value is, and differentiate meaningfulness from happiness, interpreted subjectively. As for questions of definition, I ultimately argue that a pluralist, family resemblance model is more defensible at this point. According to this view, talking about “meaning in life” concerns ideas such as purpose, transcendence, and the appropriateness of emotions such as admiration. and esteem, and narrative properties. While each of these ideas covers a wide range of theoretical work in the relevant literature, none of them captures everything on its own. I will then consider what is the bearer of meaning in life, that is, what can be significant or meaningless in a life. Is it just life as a modeled whole, simply the parts of a life considered in themselves, or both? I conclude in favor of this last contrasting view; I believe that there are two independent dimensions of meaning in life, that is, some parts of a person's life at a certain time, such as a particular action, project or phase (e.g. adolescence) and then also the person's life considered in its entirety. entirety. A complete judgment of the degree of meaning in a person's life, which can base a comparison with the lives of others, must weigh both dimensions and add them in some way. In the remainder of Part One, I compare and contrast the goods of pleasure and meaning, focusing more on highlighting important differences between them. I compare pleasure and meaning against six value-theoretic factors, including: what the logical sources of these values ​​are as opposed to their bearers, how luck may play a role in their value realization, and what attitudes are appropriate in response to them.I conclude by suggesting that a pleasant life can plausibly be equated with a happy life, meaning that happiness and meaningfulness are two distinct goods that can each independently contribute to making a life choice worthwhile. In the next two major parts of the book, I will focus on expounding and evaluating a wide range of theories of the meaning of life, basic accounts of what all the meaningful conditions of a life have in common. I evaluate theories largely in terms of the extent to which they implicate and plausibly explain salient intuitions in the Anglo-American philosophical literature, particularly regarding the meaning of good (morality, beneficence), truth (knowledge, wisdom), and of beauty (art, creativity). Specifically, in the second part, I criticize supernaturalist theories of the meaning of life, according to which neither God or a soul (or both), as typically conceived in the monotheistic tradition, is necessary for life to have meaning. I spend a lot of time focusing on the most influential version of supernaturalism, which holds that meaning in a person's life consists in fulfilling God's purpose. I provide reasons to doubt the arguments for the purpose theory and also purport to offer a new reason for doubt the vision itself. According to this last argument, for God to be necessary to bring meaning to our lives, God would have to be qualitatively different and superior to anything that could exist in natural work he would have to be a person who has properties such as simplicity and timelessness, properties that are difficult to reconcile with intentional action, which appears essentially complex and temporal. I also offer arguments against any supernaturalism, not just the intentional version of it. The most original objection is that many of those who embrace the supernatural have conflicting views. On the one hand they claim to know that some lives have meaning in them, but on the other hand they do not claim to know that something supernatural, such as God or a soul, actually exists. Supernaturals might have faith in the latter, but this is obviously not conclusive proof of their existence, which they implicitly claim to have about the presence of meaning in people's lives. In the third part of Meaning in Life, I present a new naturalist theory. what I argue improves on existing versions of naturalism, the broad view that a life in a purely physical world could be meaningful. I will first provide counterexamples to a wide range of existing naturalist views, including theories that a life is meaningful only to the extent that it is creative, promotes long-term welfarist or perfectionist consequences, or connects with organic unities beyond itself itself. I then propose my favorite view at this stage, the theory of fundamentality, which is more or less the idea that a life is (particularly) meaningful to the extent that it exercises reason in a robust and sophisticated way and orients it towards fundamental conditions of human existence, those that are largely responsible or explain much else about it. Just as H2O is fundamental to water, and being a CEO is fundamental to a company's operations (on which see Metz 2015), so there are some properties of human life that are fundamental to (i.e., gross way, they represent a large part of) various dimensions of the same. For example, space-time, gravity and light are fundamental to the environment in which humans live; communication, socialization and work are fundamental for the development of the human species; Practical reasoning and community are central to the course,.