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Ah, romantic love - beautiful and intoxicating, heartbreaking and soul-crushing, often all at the same time.
啊...浪漫的愛情啊，美好又令人癡醉，傷心又斷魂，通常所有的感覺會同時匯集在一起。
Why do we choose to put ourselves through its emotional wringer?
我們為什么總是用它來折磨自己呢？
Does love make our lives meaningful, or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering?
愛會讓我們的生命有意義嗎？亦或它使我們從孤寂和痛苦中解脫？
Is love a disguise for our sexual desire, or a trick of biology to make us procreate?
還是用來掩飾我們對性的欲望嗎？還是說它是身體戲弄我們去繁衍后代的一個手段？
Is it all we need? Do we need it at all?
愛是一切嗎？我們真的需要愛嗎？
If romantic love has a purpose, neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet.
如果說愛情是有目的，自然科學和心理學上至今卻對此都沒什么發展。
But over the course of history, some of our most respected philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories.
但在歷史的長河中，一些我們敬佩的哲學家曾推出過一些有趣的理論。
Love makes us whole, again.
愛情使我們再一次變得完整。
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato explored the idea that we love in order to become complete.
古希臘哲學家柏拉圖探索了“愛讓我們變得完整”這一理念。
In his "Symposium", he wrote about a dinner party, at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright, regales the guests with the following story: humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces.
在《會飲篇》中，他描述了一個晚餐派對，派對上，一位喜劇作家，阿里斯托芬，講了如下這個故事來娛樂在場的賓客：人類曾是擁有四個臂膀，四條腿和兩張臉的生物。
One day, they angered the gods, and Zeus sliced them all in two.
有一天，他們惹到了眾神，于是宙斯就把他們都一劈兩半。
Since then, every person has been missing half of him or herself.
從此以后，每個人都缺失著自己的另一半。
Love is the longing to find a soulmate who'll make us feel whole again, or, at least, that's what Plato believed a drunken comedian would say at a party.
愛是渴望找到一個能讓我們再次感到完整的靈魂伴侶。至少，這是柏拉圖所相信的一個喝醉的喜劇演員在派對上講的話。
Love tricks us into having babies.
愛哄騙著我們有了小寶寶。
Much, much later, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer maintained that love based in sexual desire was a voluptuous illusion.
很久很久以后，德國的哲學家亞瑟·叔本華堅稱愛是基于性欲的，它是一種撩人的幻想。
He suggested that we love because our desires lead us to believe that another person will make us happy, but we are sorely mistaken.
他提出我們相愛是因為我們的欲望引導，我們相信另外一個人能讓我們快樂，但我們其實錯了。
Nature is tricking us into procreating, and the loving fusion we seek is consummated in our children.
我們的本性在誘使著我們繁衍后代，我們所尋找的愛的融合生出我們的兒女。
When our sexual desires are satisfied, we are thrown back into our tormented existences, and we succeed only in maintaining the species and perpetuating the cycle of human drudgery.
當我們的性欲得到滿足時，我們會重返我們痛苦焦灼的存在，我們繁衍只是為了延續我們的種族，然后持續循環著這人生的痛苦。
Sounds like somebody needs a hug.
聽著好像有人需要抱抱了呢。
Love is escape from our loneliness.
愛是從孤單中的解脫。
According to the Nobel Prize-winning British philosopher Bertrand Russell, we love in order to quench our physical and psychological desires.
根據諾貝爾獲獎者，英國哲學家，博特蘭·羅素所言，我們用愛來慰藉我們身體和心理上的欲望。
Humans are designed to procreate, but without the ecstasy of passionate love, sex is unsatisfying.
人類生來就是為了繁衍的，但沒有充滿激情的愛來做迷幻劑的話，性也是無法令人滿足的。
Our fear of the cold, cruel world tempts us to build hard shells to protect and isolate ourselves.
我們對冰冷又殘酷的恐懼促使我們修煉出堅硬的外殼來保護并隔絕我們自己。
