Faramir
Posts: 1043
Joined: 2/12/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Grlwithboy I think there's a real lack around language when it comes to love. I definitely love my slave, but when I say "it's platonic" the cultural understanding of that word is watered down to mean someone you have lunch with and kiss on the cheek. I think there is very much a sematic and linguistic issue at hand here. English uses one word, "love" to indicate multiple denotations of various types, states and degress of mutuality, also depending on context and prepositional phrasing. For example, if I understand Taggard correctly, he's using a standard prepositional phrase ("in love") to distinguish between eros (romantic) love and other forms of mutuality. If we were Attic Greeks, then in this case language would be an aid to us. We could much more easily distinguish between the storge love (affection) we have for those close to us, familiar to us, that we love like sister/brother, pet, servant, hometown, etc., or eros love, the head over heels romance love that poets such as Neruda speak of, the love of Eros and Psyche, the "But I'm in love!" love. Or indeed between philia and agape love, between the friendship love that Henry referred to in his "We happy few" speech and the love Plato was so found of writing of in The Republic. I can't speak for Taggard, but my guess from his comments is that the love he has for his wife is eros love, and the love he has for his slave is some combination of storge love and agape. I think there is value in understanding that English uses prepositional phrasing and context to mark multiple denotations or meanings, whereas many other languages use different words to mark out those different signifieds. I love the incredible flexibility/error-transmission of English, but in a discussion like this it can be confusing.
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True masters, true subs and slaves, X many years in the lifestyle, Old Guard this and High Protocol that--it's like a convention of D&D nerds were allowed to have sex once, and they decided to make a religion out of it.
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