Essential Tips On Writing A Research Paper On Love

The process of creating a research paper on love does not differ from writing on any other topic and the following steps should be followed:

• understand your topic as it is an extremely broad and old one dating its roots to the Ancient Greeks and especially Plato.
• narrow your topic down
• study literature
• decide what type of essay you want to write: informative, descriptive, contrast/comparison, argument, etc. and formulate your question accordingly

Although the feeling of love is as old as humanity itself, the first study, or “dissection” of love was carried out by the Ancient Greeks as far as we know. Contrary to popular belief that the heart is the seat of love, the Greeks, being great rationalists and believers in the power of the mind, asserted that love, like other emotions, resides in the brain. They taught that there are four types of love which they called Agape, Phileo, Storge, and Eros.

• Agape is an unconditional love which means that it accepts another person with all his/her flaws and faults. Its foundation is the belief that a person should be loved because he/she is a human being, and you love expecting nothing in return, similar to a sacrifice. It is easy to see the development of this concept in religion.
• Phileo refers to a pure and non-sexual platonic love for a particular person. As you can see, while it is necessary to feel “agape” even for your enemies, “phileo” is reserved for people you choose.
• Storge is family and friendship love which is unconditional and you yourself know how it feels just think of your family and close friends.
• Eros is a passionate love that presupposes sexual desire. There are abundant examples of this kind in the world literature: Tristran and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet.

This was further developed by Plato in his famous dialogue “Symposium” in which Plato asserts that the highest kind is non-sexual love which offers a way to the contemplation of the divine and from which the term “platonic love” derives. In other words, Plato distinguished two types: vulgar Eros and divine Eros. This concept was further developed in medieval times, especially the idea of Beauty, one of the examples being the love for the Fair Lady.

Summing up: writing a paper on classical love follows the same steps as in any other research. The most important thing is to understand the topic.