Why do we love? We love for the sake of happiness. This was the common mentality in the pre-modern worldview since the times of ancient Greece. The ideas present in Plato's Symposium have, however, been replaced with a more contemporary vision, particularly in Western societies. Allan Bloom describes this transition in detail in his work Love and Friendship. Bloom argues that the idea of ​​“eros” has lost its true meaning; it has been transformed into a selfish, selfless act of mere sex: “Eros, in its Freudian version, is really just selfishness and provides no basis for intimate human connection” (Bloom 24). Sex is no longer a form of strong, intimate connection, but rather our contemporaries have allowed sex to become “no different from a description of eating habits” (Bloom 20). Today's society sees sex everywhere, it is forced on us by the media, but there is no beauty in it. Once upon a time, love relationships had the purpose of exchanging knowledge, today it is a label used frequently and incorrectly. In the premodern view, romantic relationships were considered necessary for society to flourish. In the Symposium, love relationships had a general progression. We must love only one body. So, realize that all bodies are beautiful. Finally, we must love the other for one's soul, and not only for one's body; As we age, this physical beauty of the body fades away. The love of the soul would last for a lifetime. Loving your soul leads to a beautiful speech. This beautiful speech allows us to experience beauty itself, the ideal goal sought by Plato. Nor was love simply an emotion, but rather an inner spirit that connected beings; it was the compulsion to do good in another. Now, like sex, it is everywhere, in our romantic comedies... middle of paper... by Nietzsche and Sarte, we then realize that there is no God to follow, no core to turn to A. We must take actions to develop ourselves. We have a standard vision, developed by society. We are born with a clean slate and it is our responsibility to avoid alienation. To avoid alienation, we must be actively creative with the help of another, especially an intimate other. The only way we can live in rejection of the standard view is through a loving relationship with this intimate other. Our intimate other allows us to achieve the ultimate goal first set by the ancient Greeks: happiness. Works Cited Bloom, Allan. "Introduction: The Fall of Eros." Love and friendship. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. 13-35. Print.Guignon, Charles. On being authentic. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.Plato and R. E. Allen. The Symposium. vol. 2. Yale UP, 1991. Print.