Subject: greeks and love (was RE: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo - new proposals featuring XOhA an...)

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:03:32 -0400

>As a side-note, though not completely off the point the claim that Greeks
had
>three clearly distinct words for love (sexual, friendly, and charitable,
say)
>ranks with "Eskimos have 100 words for snow" and the ever-popular }Latin
has
>two different words for "or," one inclusive, the other exclusive." Read
the
>Symposium, a discussion of love which -- using the same stem throughout --
>ranges from genital sex through the amor intellectus dei and back to
>butt-fucking. Similar ranges can be found for the other stems, though not
so
>much in one place (Lord Byron's feelings for the Maid of Athens were
probably
>not exactly what Jesus had in mind when he said "Love one another" but he
>uses the same verb). In the process of all that discussion (it was a
>favorite topic by Greek moralists), I suspect that there are twenty kinds
of
>love sorted out and each can be assigned in some cases by some authors to
any
>of the three stems -- and a couple of others as well sometimes.
>But note that expressing love is not the same as describing it (I thought
we
>were almost through that one) and so saying {iu}, with or without ruffles
and
>flourishes is not saying {mi prami} or {mi broda brode prami} with whatever
>fine points you want to apply (and this is where to apply them).

The greeks had three different roots which meant love. The eskimos actually
speak aglutinative languages in which there can be as many words for snow as
you want, but around five roots that meant snow - but these often referred
to other things as well, as does English (powder might mean snow if
encountered in a poem, for instance.) As for the wisdom terms, sophia and
phronesis, these are also different roots. Lord Byron used the word love
because that is the ONLY word for it in his language (english, which Jesus
did not speak so it wasn't really the same verb). The greek stems varied in
meaning, admittedly, but not as widely as the English word does. Eros was
ALWAYS the sexual kind, for example, while philo was ALWAYS a more 'how you
feel' kind. how you felt varied with philo; in plato and aristotle it was
more like friendship than love. There is actually significance to the fact
that plato was a philosopher and not an erosopher - he enjoyed knowledge,
but he wasn't getting in bed with it and having passionate intercourse.
I think having iu not mean mi prami is good, because it makes lojban the
only language that does not need body language or smileys - the best English
gloss for ui is not happiness but :-), which would never do in a formal
paper. But there is more than one kind of smile. A mischevous grin is happy,
but it is not anything like the face you make while eating your favorite
food. Both are ui in lojban. Whatever happened to total unambiguity?