Courtly love

The argument

The idea of courtly love began as a literary convention, in which an unattainable woman was wooed by a noble knight proving his devotion and selflessness. These stories were commonly spread by troubadours in poems, and became wildly popular. The stories depicted in these works then heavily influenced ideas about love in wider society. This is credited with bringing ideas about romantic passion to the Christian world, which largely saw marriage as a passionless institution. Courtly love is an integral part of how the cultural understanding of love shifted across Europe.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that courtly love shows culture shaping the expression of love, not that love itself is culturally invented. Cross-cultural anthropological surveys find romantic, passionate attachment in the large majority of human societies, suggesting a universal emotional capacity that different cultures channel and ritualise in their own ways. That a medieval convention reshaped European ideals is fully consistent with a pre-existing universal drive taking a culturally specific form — so the example underdetermines the strong conclusion that notions of love are culture-specific rather than universal.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That courtly love began as a literary convention shows a culture elaborating the forms of love, not that the emotion itself was invented by that culture. [Rejecting P2] Introducing new ideals of romantic passion to European society is compatible with a pre-existing universal capacity for love being reshaped rather than created. [Rejecting P3] Anthropological surveys find romantic love in the great majority of human cultures, which cuts against the claim that notions of love are fundamentally culture-specific. [Rejecting C] Cultural variation in the expression of love does not establish that love is not universal.