Philosophy of love

The philosophy of love is a field of social philosophy and ethics that attempts to explain the nature of love. The philosophical investigation of love includes the tasks of distinguishing between the various kinds of personal love, asking if and how love is or can be justified, asking what the value of love is, and what impact love has on the autonomy of both the lover and the beloved.

Many different theories attempt to explain the nature and function of love. Explaining love to a hypothetical person who had not himself or herself experienced love or being loved would be very difficult because to such a person love would appear to be quite strange if not outright irrational behavior. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of love are: psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider love to be very healthy behavior; evolutionary theories which hold that love is part of the process of natural selection; spiritual theories which may, for instance consider love to be a gift from a god; and theories that consider love to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience.

There were many attempts to find the equation of love. One such attempt was by Christian Rudder, a mathematician and co-founder of online dating website OKCupid, one of the largest online dating site. The mathematical approach was through the collection of large data from the dating site. Another interesting equation of love is found by in the philosophical blog 'In the Quest of Truth'.
Love is defined as a measure of selfless give and take, and the author attempted to draw a graph that shows the equation of love