Love Illness

Yuriy Lozynskyy

Eng 100

04.11.2012

Love illness

There is no precise definition for word “Love”. This majestic feeling has been always part of our life. No culture, no nation or no religion had been existed without love. Love is always around. Ether it is love to your parents, your girlfriend or simply love to things you like to do. Love does not have to be concrete to one object. Sometimes, person might love just a part of an object, like a smile of a girl or laughter of a child and dislike all the rest. Love does not fall into any boundaries and any definitions. Every person feels love in a different way. Some people feel love as a wonderful feeling that overcomes them and makes the feeling of butterflies flying inside the stomach to appear. Others feel love as a need for something. This need can get very strong. Does it mean that the person is strongly in love with something or someone? People are born with a desire for pleasure. They always try to get what they are “in love” with. The desire for love can fulfill person’s mind with positive filings as well as with negatives. In fact love can cause a mental disorder for some people. In other words love is an illness. Plato, in the Phaedrus, is very useful in evaluating the idea of love and its impact on human beings. The ideas of Plato, in the Phaedrus have some useful opinions that can challenge Ruth Rothaus Caston an author of “Love as illness”. In his work Rothaus challenges famous philosophers and their opinion regardless love as an illness. He believes that love is a disease that needs to be cured. Taking into consideration ideas of Rothaus with Plato’s, love does not have a precise definition, thought it can be considered as an illness.

Caston has deferent opinion about love than it is described in Plato. Caston believes that love is divided into three stages when it is described in the poem (p.272). The same can be considering in the light of human mind. The first stage is more...