“Love inspires even a mediocre person toward excellence, so that he is similar to the best in nature,” according to one ancient Greek Philosopher.
The playwright Sophocles warned of Love “unconquered in battle,” Love who sleeps on maidens’ cheeks and roams in savage places, whom neither man nor immortals can flee, who introduces madness and forcibly turns the minds of just men to injustice and their own disgrace. The ancient philosopher Empedocles thought that Love and Strife were the forces that moved the universe. Freud talked of Eros and Thanatos, Love and Death, as the basic human instincts.
Nowadays love is more talked about on the psychiatrist’s couch than in the philosopher’s seminar, but still it’s an essential human question. What’s love got to do with it?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law, Philosophy, and Classics at the University of Chicago