Thesis advisor: Micah Lott / It has been commonly agreed by people that happiness is the ultimate end of human life and it is the only thing we pursue for the sake of itself. Yet, the path towards which we could attain real happiness has been under constant dispute. Some philosophers like Aristotle think the answer lies in contemplative activities while others like the stoics believe in the activities in accordance with virtue. This thesis aims to demonstrate that love is the path that could lead us to attain real happiness. By first exploring what love, specifically interpersonal love, is, the thesis will examine a loving stoic and how the stoic ideals of love are incompatible with real love, which involves taking on a shared identity with the beloved ones. Lastly, it will show that through loving selflessly and wholeheartedly, one could eventually attain true happiness. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy. / Discipline: Departmental Honors.

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This thesis explores the relationship between love and critical social work, with the intent of inserting the concept of 'love as ernancipatorypraxis' into the literature of critical social work, and in order to incite dialogue with other practitioners. This thesis draws on reconstructionist notions of research, and involves dialogues with a group of practitioners - diverse across gender, race, age, sexuality, and class background. Central to the discussions were notions of spirituality as interconnection, and intersubjectivity grounded in critical analysis. Participants in the dialogues felt that love was not onlythe context of their practice, but was in fact essential to all their ways of perceiving, being and doing. From these dialogical discussions, a critical, emancipatory conceptualization of love emerged as a possibility existing between a constellation of elements including: deep presence and engagement; recognition of intrinsic value, sacredness and interconnection; openheartedness; compassionate challenge; and a willingness not to know.

The concept “love” can refer to different types of relationships. We use it when talking about our family, friends, romantic partners, pets, god(s), pieces of art, ideas, etc. and refer to love as if it happens to us, like a feeling, or as an action or behavior that we conduct, like an emotion or special deed, or even as a type of relationship that is had between two things. No matter what manifestation that love takes on or how it is described, the phenomenon that occurs is always the same. Of course we express love in different ways with different objects, like romantically with romantic partners and familially with family members, but the process for giving our husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, pets and everything else a special importance is the phenomenon of love. My aim in this thesis is to explain the phenomenon of love. I will argue that love is a way of responding to an object through a process of appraising it for its subjective, intrinsic value and then bestowing the experience of that appraisal back onto the object as an extrinsic quality whereby the object becomes valuable and irreplaceably important. This way of looking at the phenomenon of love, through a value theory, is taken up as a compromise of the two popular value theories, The Appraisal View and The Bestowal View. Irving Singer makes arguments for uniting these actions of appraising and bestowing value into a theory of love however leaves much unexplained and thus comes under fire from his critics. My take on love will aim at explaining how a value theory that is a compromise between Appraisal and Bestowal can avoid the problems that are suggested by Singer’s critics and describe how love occurs.

This thesis looks at Dostoevsky's conception of love as demonstrated in his novels.

This thesis discusses the women in the life of Edwin Arlington Robinson and the happiness and unhappiness in love in his poems.

One of the main purposes of the Symposium is to describe the best and truest expression of Eros|epwg {the godSaiuwv and at the same time the affective disposition): Eros is an intermediary Saijucou between our mortal condition and what is divine and immortal. As such he malces us spontaneously feel attracted to beauty and through our procreating in it helps us to attain in this life 'a sort of immmortality by leaving behind our productions and, together with it, a certain ownership of the good, which is universally desired. Most people only attain a second grade of vicarious immortality, either through biological procreation or, in the best case, through cultural procreation. However, those who are able to follow a philosophical way of life might be able to contemplate Beauty itself and by procreating in it produce authentic virtue, in this way attaining ownership of the good as far as is possible for a human being in this life. But at the same time, it is hinted that a more permanent, god-lilce, existence might be available for the philosopher after death. In the light of the Republic some issues which remain unclear in the Symposium find an articulate explanation: a) The tripartite theory of the soul explains why, although everybody desires the good, different individuals focus their love and desire in different ways (even in a destructive way as is the case of the tyrant or of Alcibiades in the Symposium), b) The programme of earlier and higher education malces clear what the levels of the erotic ascent consist in. c) The nature of the Good helps us to understand the status of Beauty itself d) The myth of Er describes what a 'god-like', post mortem existence for the philosopher would be like, while also simultaneously, allowing for a different sort of 'immortality', along the lines suggested by the Symposium.

Thesis advisor: Daniel J. Harrington / Thesis advisor: Christopher R. Matthews / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Orientador: Leonardo Lemos de Souza / Banca: Ivone Tambelli Schmidt / Banca: Rita Melissa Lepre / Banca: Mário Sérgio Vasconcelos / Banca: Rodirlei Silva Assis / Resumo: O presente trabalho buscou investigar a compreensão do amor da perspectiva de mulheres na meia-idade, considerando o significado atribuído às experiências amorosas vivenciadas desde o período da juventude até o momento atual (maturidade), tendo como referência para a análise das experiências vividas a Teoria dos Modelos Organizadores do Pensamento proposta por Moreno, Sastre e colaboradores (1999, 2010, 2012). Foram realizadas dez entrevistas semiestruturadas com mulheres vivenciando o período da maturidade, enfocando a percepção que cada participante tem acerca do amor, os elementos que se destacam e o significado atribuído às suas vivências e as modificações ocorridas quanto a isso ao longo do tempo, da juventude à maturidade. Das análises realizadas a partir dos dados coletados foram identificados a prevalência do amor romântico como modelo organizador das participantes da pesquisa, enfatizando-se a idealização quanto ao parceiro, a busca da reciprocidade na relação amorosa, a idealização de complementariedade de si pelo outro na relação amorosa ideal e a transição que as participantes fazem em relação ao amor da juventude para o amor na maturidade / Abstract: This research was aimed to investigate the comprehension of love from the perspective of half aged women, taking into consideration the meaning attributed to loving experiences lived since youth up to the present-day (maturity), based upon the theory of thought organizing models proposed by Moreno, Sastre and collaborators (1999, 2010, 2012). A series of ten semi-structured interviews were realized with women living the maturity period, focusing the perception that each participant has about love, the elements that points out and the meaning attributed to their experiencies and the modifications occurred because of these from youth to maturity. In the analysis made in the collected data there were identified the preponderance of the romantic love as the organizing model of the participants of the research, pointing out the idealization as to the partner, the search for reciprocity in the love relationship, the idealization of the complementarity of herself for the other in the ideal love relationship and the transition that the participants experiences in relation to youth love to mature love / Doutor

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-168)