T.S. Eliot and the Dissociative Sensibility 2
By Steve
- 281 reads
Now there are many definitions of love and love is where our feelings come from. But I think that C.S. Lewis hit it on the tail when he said that love is love for the beloved and not for the life or sexual force. In "Four Loves," he relates love with idolatry... one loves the Other, the Beloved as if she or he were God.
One cannot sleep. One's self-preservative instinct is gone. One is willing to sacrifice oneself for the other. So the romantic love is also religious love, sacrificial love. The relating of religion with love is also in a famous play by Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet." One is literally eating the other spiritually. The synergy is great, but it should be the synergy between God and the person, then the synergy between person to person.
Why do I mention love? Because, in ancient Greek culture, the citizens of the polis were always bestowing upon the gods their love for the gods. If a citizen loved Aphrodite, then she was always loving and therefore, giving her dues to Aphrodite. If a person loved Ares, then he was fighting the best that he could in war, always competing to be the best so that he could deserve the honor of Ares and so on. Feelings were related to the gods, who were often personifications of existent forms within the human psyche. Zeus (Will), Ares (Thanatos), Aphrodite (Eros), Hera (Alterego of Zeus), etc.
With the monastic intellectual concept of God and separation of God from human psychology, there became a radical separation of Greek Humanism and Christian monasticism which is still alive today.
- Log in to post comments