Richard Freund Lecture

While at first it didn’t seem that Richard Freund’s lecture on archeology would relate to our class or love and desire in general, this is actually wasn’t the case.  Freund started the lecture with the definition of love, passionate love, and desire.  Love is defined as an emotion of a strong affection and is personal.  Passionate love is defined as it is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love.  Desire is then defined as being like “love” and it is and intellectual and physical concept.  One thing that Freund mentioned is that it is very easy to take an artifact and come up with some ideas and concepts that it represents, but it is much harder to start with a concept such as love and desire and translate them into artifacts.  Something that stuck out to me was when Freund said that in ancient time, people were not supposed to make an image of anything because it was in the commandments and it would be a sin.  I find this interesting because people clearly went against this.  This then leads me to the question: was religion really followed in ancient times or did the religious figure make it appear that it was followed so that we (in current times) would think that it was?  Therefore, should we take religion so seriously if it really wasn’t in the ancient times?  All those questions aside, one thing I find ironic is that desire is so prevalent in ancient artifacts.  The little naked statue of the woman who was put in homes because she represented fertility was a very full and curvaceous woman who had to cover her hair in order to be modest.  I find it ironic that in today’s society it’s a complete and total flip in terms of what we consider to be desirable than what it was in ancient times.  Today a woman must be skinny, have beautiful long hair, and must cover up so that she does not get the reputation of being a “slut”.  Thus, Freund’s statement that “love and desire is in the eye of the beholder” holds very true.  Desire has completely changed from ancient times to now.

Lecture #1

     When I signed up for this course, I had expected to discuss erotic and romantic love as the title of the course is "Love and Desire".  Therefore, it had never really occurred to me and I did not expect to discuss the topic of friendship and how it ties into love.  When you think about it in depth, friendship is a type of love that is just as important as erotic and romantic love, even though it is less touched upon.  I'm sorry, I do not remember the lecturer's name, but the professor who gave us her opinions on love and friendship mentioned that Aristotle said that "friendship is most important to life".  This particular quote stuck out to me because it ties into some of the material that we have discussed in class.  The very first class we had in the beginning in September, we watched an episode of Sex and the City.  Sex and the City was a popular show in the late 1990's and early 2000's.  The show follows four adult women who live in New York City, and it shows how they del with love, sex and friendship.  While sex and love play a big role in that show, it is really friendship that makes that show so popular among young women.  Friendship is just as important if not more important for humans to have than romantic love.  When girls break up with their boyfriend that they were in love with and they're heartbroken, it is always their friends that they turn to.  The love of friendship tends to be more genuine and stabile because unlike romantic and sexual love, it does not take physical attraction into account; it's based on personality more than anything.  Another thing that the lecturer said was that "when we name an enemy, we name something like us."  This reminded me of young women once again.  Most of the time, when young women do not like someone, it is often because they are similar and people do not want to be friends with someone who is too similar to them.  Ultimately, I thought that this lecture was very interesting and different.  The topic is a unique angle, that does relate to this course in many ways.