Chapter 17 Exercises: Love and Relationships

Comprehension Exercises

Exercise 17.1 — The Symposium's Multiple Voices

Briefly describe the view of love offered by each of the following speakers in Plato's Symposium:

a. Aristophanes b. Diotima (as reported by Socrates)

For each, write one sentence identifying what the view gets right and one sentence identifying what it gets wrong or leaves out.

Exercise 17.2 — Aristotle's Three Types

Aristotle distinguishes friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue.

a. Define each type in your own words. b. Explain Aristotle's claim that virtue friendship is the "highest" form. Do you agree? Why or why not? c. What does Aristotle mean when he says a close friend is allos autos — another self? Give an example of what this might look like in practice.

Exercise 17.3 — The Love-as-Practice Distinction

bell hooks distinguishes between love as a feeling and love as a practice.

a. What are the six components she identifies as constituting genuine love? b. Why does she argue that honesty is essential to love? c. Give a concrete example of a situation where treating love as a feeling (rather than a practice) would lead to a different — and worse — outcome than treating it as a practice.

Application Exercises

Exercise 17.4 — Mapping Your Relationships

Think about five significant relationships in your life (include a mix: family, friends, romantic if applicable). For each:

a. Which Aristotelian type does it most closely resemble? b. Is that the type you want it to be, or do you wish it were a different type? c. What would it take to move it toward the type you want?

Do not write this down anywhere you'd be uncomfortable with. This is a private reflection. But take it seriously.

Exercise 17.5 — The Freedom Problem

Simone de Beauvoir argues that genuine love requires both people to remain genuinely free — to have their own projects, their own identities, their own existence that is not entirely defined by the relationship.

Think about a relationship you know of (could be your own, a friend's, a family member's, or a fictional relationship) in which this condition has been violated — where one person has subordinated themselves too completely.

a. Describe the situation in general terms (no names needed). b. What went wrong, using de Beauvoir's framework? c. What would genuine love-between-free-people look like in this case?

Exercise 17.6 — Ubuntu and Loss

The Ubuntu framework holds that your self is partly constituted by your relationships. Apply this idea to the experience of losing an important relationship — through a breakup, estrangement, death, or a friendship that simply ended.

a. How does Ubuntu explain why such losses can feel like more than just "losing something you had"? b. Does this explanation ring true to your experience or to an experience you have observed? c. What does Ubuntu suggest about how to understand the process of rebuilding a sense of self after such a loss?

Analytical Exercises

Exercise 17.7 — Diotima's Problem

A critic of Diotima's ascent argues: "If love of a particular person is just the first rung of a ladder that leads away from them toward abstract beauty, then the person is ultimately replaceable and the love is selfish."

Write a response to this criticism as if you were defending Diotima. Then write a response from Diotima's critic. Whose side do you find more convincing, and why?

Exercise 17.8 — Comparing Traditions

The chapter presents six philosophical frameworks: Platonic ascent, Aristotelian philia, existentialist love (de Beauvoir), love as practice (bell hooks), Confucian relational roles, and Ubuntu constitutive relationships.

Which two of these frameworks do you find most complementary — that is, which two illuminate different aspects of the same phenomenon in ways that could work together? Explain the combination you've chosen and what a unified account drawing on both would look like.

Exercise 17.9 — Attachment Theory and Philosophy

The chapter suggests that Aristotle's virtue friendship resembles secure attachment, and that Diotima's ascent might be understood as an avoidant strategy.

a. Do you find these analogies illuminating? What do they help explain? b. Can you extend the analogy? What would anxious attachment look like in philosophical terms — which framework captures its dynamics? c. What are the limits of using psychological categories to interpret philosophical positions?

Synthesis Exercise

Exercise 17.10 — A Letter About Love

Write a short letter (approximately 300–400 words) to a close friend or family member who has just started a new relationship and asked for your genuine thoughts about what makes relationships work.

Draw on at least three of the philosophical frameworks from this chapter. Do not write a philosophy lecture — write as if you actually care about this person and are trying to give them something genuinely useful.

After writing the letter, add a brief paragraph reflecting on which frameworks you chose and why, and what that choice reveals about your own view of love.