Session 02: Worldviews, values and other contexts—general comments, some Western ideals regarding love

Topics for this session

❖ Defining "worldview" "values"
❖ "Low love / high love"
❖ Layering & blending
❖ Greek positions: Plato's allegory of the chariot, Aristotle's four types of love
❖ Some Western European ideals relevant to our class: love as extension of God's love, high valuation of object of love (troubadours), high value placed on passion, romanticism / revolution / individual freedom / Magna Carta

Thoughts*

General comments.

We settle early on a definition confusion between "worldview" and "values", as used in this class. Otherwise, this can continue to subvert discussion and negatively affect a student's grade.

I briefly describe my view on the boundaries of "love" as we consider it, locating it as both a visceral / chemical / non-discursive experience and a narrative that is deeply involved in worldviews and values. This helps point the analysis for this class in the right direction.

I briefly set out two related concepts: layering & blending. These will be relevant in nearly every aspect of our analysis, and in a large variety of ways.

A quick journey through some key Western concepts relevant to getting our bearing for analysis done in this class. Our primary goal is to compare China, Japan and Korea. However, I have found that those comparisons have greater clarity when the student is self-aware of the multitude of preconceptions about love that are embedded in Western culture.

Plato: the truth-good-beauty complex of ideas, the high valuation placed on will-power

Aristotle: eros (erotic attraction), philia (brotherly love), agape (compassionate, benefactive love), nomos (submission to laws)

Christianity: love as divine (empowering, healing, powerful)

Troubadours: stylistic adoration of the feminine object of love and desire, Cult of Mary

Rise of individualism on various fronts: Romanticism, French revolution, Magna Carta

Pagan positions: macho

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ You do not need to prepare for this day. However, the material presented is complex and there are a variety of resources on bSpace used in this class period that should be reviewed to help clarify things and should definitely be reviewed for tests, if in bold font.

• Aristotle — eros, philia, agape, nomos (bSpace, PPT). A schema for thinking about different types of love, different from Confucian principles (as presented by Isaac Singer in The Nature of Love) [4th c. BCE, Greece]
• Brain layers (bSpace, PPT)
• Karen, 17 personalities (bSpace, JPEG). An example of layering.
• Toreador's Song with lyrics (bSpace, M4V). An example of pagan (extra-Christendom) love. Macho. And the exuberance here contrasts with Asian restraint in expression emotion.
• Jessey Norman's performance of Isolde's Liebestod (YouTube). An example of transcendent love, faith, truth=good=beautiful
• Barenboin's vision of Isolde's Liebestod (YouTube). A contrast to Norman's performance. Here modern sensibilities subverts the faith (the blood running down her fait makes her look crazy, not transcendent)
• "City of the Dead" (bSpace, M4V, as "Gluck, das mir verblieb). An example of high valuation placed on love in Christian-influenced narratives. The German title is "Die tote stadt" (segment directed by Bruce Beresford in the 1987 film Aria) that is based on Eric Wolfgang Korngold's 1920 opera City of the Dead which itself is based on the 1892 novel Bruges-la-morte which tells the story of a man who has lost his love and finds in another woman such a resemblance to her that he moves to her decaying city to be close to her. The name of the song is "Gluck, das mir verblieb" also called "Marietta's Song" (City of the Dead, Act 1, Scene 5).

Details on material covered (or not, changes with the semester)

Plato's argument regarding the good-beauty-truth is pervasive in his works; for the chariot allegory see Phaedrus (sections 246a - 254) The notion of "soul mates" also comes from Plato (The Symposium, Arestophanes dialog). [5th-4th c. BCE., Greece]

Aristotle — eros, philia, agape, nomos. For a good discussion of Aristotle's view of love (eros, philia, agape, nomos) see Isaac Singer, The Nature of Love (vol. 1). This is an excellent three volume set that will be useful to some of you. (Students are required, for their paper, to use at least one strong academic source on the topic of love.) Another "classic" on Western love, despite its shortcomings, is Denis de Rougement's Love in the Western World.

Troubadours" (medieval Europe) who sung in praise of women, among other things. Mention less for them as a group — though they are very interesting — but rather for the cultural notion of "putting a woman on a pedestal".

Introduced a Western cultural romantic value that is fairly widespread but not historically a part of Christendom: macho. I speak briefly about "macho" traits and Flamenco dance that is formulated within those notions of hyper-masculine identity and bluster. I mention the proscription that women are to support their errant husbands through nurturing and forgiveness in the image of the Virgin Mary. This is an interesting coupling of non-Christian values for the men and Christian values for the women. We consider the "bad" woman presenting within the stereotype of the gypsy (non-Christian) seductress, endowed with a passion and self-love similar to the macho male figure. In this context we listen to the masculine display (and celebration of those values) in the aria from Bizet's "Carmen" (synopsis, lyrics and a note about "black eye") commonly titled "Toreador's Song". We then look at the traits as interpreted within Flamenco and film in Carlos Saura's 1983 "Carmen" (primary dancer is Antonio Gades, very famous for his flamenco). The original "Carmen" is a novella by Prosper Mérimée (19th c. French writer), 1845.

Christian mystic discussed: Theresa of Avila (16th c. Spanish nun)

Troubadour cantos by Bernart de Ventadorn (fl. 1145-1175) of southern France, titled "Can par la flors josta.l vert folh" (When flowers are in the leaves green) with recording excerpt from "Amor de Lonh — The Distant Love of the Troubadours" (Nimbus Records, 2000)

*UNDER CONSTRUCTION: If this has not been erased it means something on this page is incomplete. Perhaps I want to recheck information or perhaps I haven't converted the page from the version of the previous class. It is available but should be taken dubiously.

*THOUGHTS: My hope is that you look at this portion BEFORE a session. If there is content here it might help you focus on the main points of the day. However, I add various things here at various times. When I feel I haven't succeeded in class stating something clearly, I might restate it here. Of if it is a difficult concept in might be given in written form here. I will assume that you have read and rechecked for changes this session in preparation for any midterm or other quiz or test.