LOVE AND REASON
1. Antiquity: love as madness… or ascent In ancient Greece, love already sits in tension with reason. In Symposium , Plato presents two sides of love: one as madness (irrational, destabilizing) another as a path upward—from desire for bodies to contemplation of pure Beauty So here, love is not simply opposed to reason. It begins as disorder, but can become a ladder toward truth. 2. Medieval courtly love: distance and impossibility In medieval Europe , especially in troubadour poetry, love becomes something else: distant often unattainable structured by longing rather than fulfillment Think of Francesco Petrarch and his love for Laura. Here, love is not irrational chaos—it is disciplined suffering. Reason doesn’t disappear; it organizes desire into ritual, poetry, and idealization. But there’s a twist: love intensifies precisely because it cannot be resolved rationally. 3. Early modern philosophy: reason tries to explain love With thinkers like Baruch Spinoza , love becomes something ...