• Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.9k
    ...baby don't hurt me, no more.

    (I'll put that up front so no one else feels tempted.)

    Interestingly, this topic has not been a priority among philosophers. In comparison to the amount of ink spilled on "what is God" or even "what are essences" it gets short shrift. This, despite Saint John's admission that "God is love" (I John 4:8).

    In all my reading, only in the Medieval theological philosophers, Plato's Phaedrus, and some of Hegel's work does love seem to come up. I suppose Scruton briefly takes it on. Perhaps this has to do with almost all major philosophers being life-long bachelors?

    I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority? The arts are filled with references to love.

    I assume that part of the deficit stems from the 19th century tendency to equate love and faith with the romantic side of human being - the side that can only be approached through emotion and art, not by reason (e.g. Jacobi). And yet aesthetics and mysticism, seemingly equally hard to approach, seem to get more attention.

    Moreover, because love is often ignored, the idea of the "family" is as well. And yet the family seems like it should play a more central role in political thought since it is the cornerstone of economic organization.

    Second, what is a good answer? What is Love?

    I'll throw out a few theories I am familiar with to get the ball rolling.

    Hegel: The idea of love as a "union," which is broadly popular, seems to make sense to me. I like Hegel's "recognition of the self in the other." In love, there is a mutual recognition of the other as a subject, and a recognition of their deeper, "inner self." That is, we are no longer objects to one another. Further, our desires become harmonized, such that we identify with the other and prefer what is best for them. Hegel's fairly utopian vision is for entire peoples to reach this state, a sort of social love, but he allows that it happens first and most fully within the context of the family.

    Pope John Paul II:I think the "union interpretation" makes more sense when paired with personalism, the idea that "persons" are ontologically fundamental. The broader merits and deficits of personalism aside, the fact the persons are basic would seem to ward of the contemporary critiques of "love as union" -- that it in some ways robs the lovers of their autonomy by making them into a single entity. In personalism, this would not be the case; we always have discrete persons, and union is a process they engage in. John Paul II's Theology of the Body would be an example of this sort of thesis (an interesting blend of Thomism and Husserl).

    Augustine: Augustine thinks we can never perfectly communicate our feelings and ideas to one another through material signs, but only through our shared connection to (and love of) the Logos (Christ, the inner teacher). Unlike Locke, Augustine doesn't think we are fully "locked into our own heads," but rather that we can transcend this inner isolation through love. However, Augustine's zeal for traditional romantic love is tempered by the fear of concupiscence, lusting after the mutable things of the flesh, rather than the higher things of the spirit (the immutable and eternal). Thus, a pure love loves the other purely on account of the ways in which they instantiate the divine. I like parts of this theory, but it seems too sterile.

    Plato: And this brings us full circle to Plato's account of love as the desire to "give birth in beauty." In Plato, it seems like we love another because we want to somehow possess and steward the good in them. However, we don't love the person as a whole, but rather "what is good in them." Plato has Socrates contrast the "lower" form of (mere) biological reproduction with a higher "reproduction in others of what we think is good in us." This latter form of reproduction is accomplished through mentoring others and leading by example. Love has a transcendent character here, in that we want to possess the good of others but also to spread our good into others.

    It seems to me that we might love someone, but not love everything about them. So, to some extent, Plato and Augustine seem to get something right. At the same time, we love people for who they are, in spite of their flaws, and so it seems like the personalist account also gets something right as well. To me, love seems to be about wanting the best for a person, but also a sharing in that goodness through a transcendent union.
  • Leontiskos
    3.2k
    For Aristotle and Aquinas, love (of friendship) involves 1) Willing another's good, for their own sake, and 2) Being in union with the other, via concrete affections and circumstances, such that (1) exists in a reciprocal manner.

    I think love is tricky because it is so ambiguous. Aquinas distinguishes love in the sensitive appetite versus love in the intellect/will, and natural love versus supernatural love. For the Greeks you had eros, agape, philia, and perhaps storge. So I think it is easy to talk past one another on this topic, and maybe that is one reason it is often avoided.
  • mcdoodle
    1.1k
    For the Greeks you had eros, agape, philia, and perhaps storge.Leontiskos

    Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics placed love at the core of his view of the virtuous life: love as philia, intense fellowship between lovers, or friends, or family-members, that was itself one of the foundation stones of the polis.

    That's not how the world is for us, however. There is a modern 'philosophy of emotions' which has a vast literature, but which is more of an enquiry into the nature of emotions than the 'What is love?' question that we rather leave to songs and literature. But Martha Nussbaum has written insightfully about the interaction of her feelings of love with her philosophy, ever since her early volume 'Love's knowledge'.

    I think the Greeks' different words for what we have subsumed into 'love' made some kind of sense, though. There is storge towards Ma and Pa; philia for the like-minded; eros for individual fierce attachments (though Plato had Diotima make this the fulcrum of everything) and agape for spiritual love. It would be an interesting enquiry as to how we have come to merge these different strands of feeling into the one word, which seems to me to burst at its seams to contain them all.
  • Leontiskos
    3.2k
    - Yes, indeed. Good points. :up:
  • Tom Storm
    9.2k
    I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority? The arts are filled with references to love.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Good question. The arts are filled with heightened emotionality, so an emphasis on the theme of love is not surprising. That said, in my experince people often denigrate or question the notion of love and find ways to annul it. I suspect that if you have felt it, is is harder to dismiss.

    It seems to me that we might love someone, but not love everything about them. So, to some extent, Plato and Augustine seem to get something right. At the same time, we love people for who they are, in spite of their flaws, and so it seems like the personalist account also gets something right as well. To me, love seems to be about wanting the best for a person, but also a sharing in that goodness through a transcendent union.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Nice paragraph. For me the attribute which is often left out is how love makes you feel. Ineffable, subjective, a bit of a qualia problem and therefore for some people, intangible or BS.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    For me the attribute which is often left out is how love makes you feel. Ineffable, subjective, a bit of a qualia problem and therefore for some people, intangible or BS.Tom Storm

    That is a good point. The ineffability makes it problematic to try to encompass it with language.

    There is also variation in people's capacity to feel love. I've dealt with psychopathic people who just didn't get love, and like all of us, interpreted others from the context of their own subjective experience.
  • Vera Mont
    4.4k
    I suspect most philosophers wouldn't touch the subject, because it's so closely associated with *pth! pth!* icky girls. Beyond sexual attraction, one of the strongest human bonds is between mated pairs, and one of the fiercest kinds of love is maternal. I think they just didn't want to sully their grand theories with the feelings of and toward women.
  • wonderer1
    2.2k
    I suspect most philosophers wouldn't touch the subject, because it's so closely associated with *pth! pth!* icky girls. Beyond sexual attraction, one of the strongest human bonds is between mated pairs, and one of the fiercest kinds of love is maternal. I think they just didn't want to sully their grand theories with the feelings of and toward women.Vera Mont

    :lol:
  • frank
    16k
    Love is the recognition of yourself in the other.
  • Agree-to-Disagree
    473
    Love is the recognition of yourself in the other.frank

    I thought that opposites attract. :cool: + :nerd: = :heart:
  • Vera Mont
    4.4k

    That may be so as infatuation, but I've never known it to be true in a lasting relationship.
  • Bella fekete
    135
    Guess going back to a flick, that left audiences in. vail of tears, ‘Love Story’

    True love meets a test of both, popular and iconic measures of authentic truth;

    Love is present when you can never need to say you’re sorry.
  • Vera Mont
    4.4k
    Love is present when you can never need to say you’re sorry.Bella fekete

    So, you've never been in a relationship?
  • Wayfarer
    22.8k
    It seems to me that we might love someone, but not love everything about them. So, to some extent, Plato and Augustine seem to get something right. At the same time, we love people for who they are, in spite of their flaws, and so it seems like the personalist account also gets something right as well. To me, love seems to be about wanting the best for a person, but also a sharing in that goodness through a transcendent union.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Something that comes to mind is that list, very popular at weddings, of the seven kinds of love in the Greek language (as mentioned above) -

    Platonic/Philia Love. ...
    Pragma/Enduring Love. ...
    Familial Love/Storge. ...
    Romantic Love/Eros. ...
    Playful Love/Ludus. ...
    Self Love/Philautia. ...
    Selfless Love/Agape...

    They all have different qualities, and also different kinds of objects. I would have though connubial relations would be best thought of in terms of a combination of pragma and eros with a dash of philia. The love of divine union you mention I would categorise with agape. I had the idea that in Plato's symposium Eros symbolises the love of the soul for the forms so was rather less erotic that what we take Eros to mean (although I don't know if I'm correct in that.)

    But also consider there are many feelings one has for one's partner other than love - maybe irritation, annoyance, admiration, approbation, and all kinds of other feelings. I suppose 'enduring love' is something that is not always felt as an emotion at all but is more like an underlying condition or conviction. But I think it is worth careful reflection because not everything that goes on in the name of love has much to do with love, actually.
  • javi2541997
    5.9k
    I think the Greeks' different words for what we have subsumed into 'love' made some kind of sense, though. There is storge towards Ma and Pa; philia for the like-minded; eros for individual fierce attachments (though Plato had Diotima make this the fulcrum of everything) and agape for spiritual love. It would be an interesting enquiry as to how we have come to merge these different strands of feeling into the one word, which seems to me to burst at its seams to contain them all.mcdoodle

    Good post, and interesting points.

    When I attended college, I remember that I had a debate regarding paedophilia. It is quite obvious that in most of the legal regulations of each nation, a paedophile is a criminal of sex offence.

    But, I wanted to go beyond the punishment, and I did research on why some adults are in 'love' with minors. It turns out that the concept of 'minor' and 'adult' was blurred in the Roman Empire, and there was the possibility of being an adult at only 12 years old. In this context, a person who felt attracted to a boy or a girl during this life span was considered a paedophile, but not in a punitive way.

    What I attempt to say is that the 'love' on children was not punitive, but a sex offence. So, it was permitted a consensual relationship between a girl of 12 years old and a man of 30, if they loved each other.

    But nowadays, this is impossible. Our modern legislation understands that in most cases the elder person abuses on the younger. Furthermore, some analysts consider 'love' in kids as a psychological disorder.

    Interesting how the concept of loving can change with the passage of time...
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    It's rarely a good idea to explore words, for the meaning of words is always changing based on context and perspective. Rather than love being anything, instead, we negotiate what is love based on our intentions and ideas.

    See comparisons such as infatuation vs love, or fascination vs love, or like vs love,

    See pre-requisites of love, or what one does, for example, one may say that one does not abuse those they love, one does not use those they love or that one has a particular view towards those they love.

    Compare how love might be understood differently within a polyamorous setting, or comparing polygamy to monogamy.

    If we compare the love of a partner, and of a God, and of something spiritual, and towards one's country, and one's favourite food, and one's children, and one's friends and so on, where would that leave us? It should only demonstrate that the word "love", just like most, is changed by context, and the commonalities are uninteresting.

    In terms of the word itself, I view love as strong, positive discrimination or preference. It irks me to hear someone telling a complete stranger that they "love" them. Impersonal, non-preferential, no discrimination, that's not love. That positive discrimination can be general, so long as in the context it's preferred over something else that's general. Despite those feelings of mine, the term is often just used as "strong-like" or "intense positive feelings".
  • frank
    16k
    I thought that opposites attractAgree-to-Disagree

    I guess it's you and your shadow.
  • baker
    5.7k
    Perhaps this has to do with almost all major philosophers being life-long bachelors?

    I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority?
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    A philosophically inclined person is more likely to be disenchanted with the ways of the world.
  • BC
    13.6k
    Romantic love is a combination of lust and trust.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.9k


    Ha, but how much of philosophy is just that! :rofl:

    Perhaps you're right. However, in my experience, there seems to be a strong similarity in the way I love my parents, my son, my wife, my friends, God, and even my country that doesn't apply to most things that I like.

    To be sure, they are different in some aspects. With my wife there is eros, with the rest of my family... :vomit: But I've definitely experienced eros without the "love" that I find common to my love for my wife, family, friends, etc.

    So the idea of "love" being tied to union or identity speaks to me. It seems like I would be giving up part of myself to no longer have certain feelings.
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    Ha, but how much of philosophy is just that!Count Timothy von Icarus

    It'd instead be far easier to have a deep and meaningful discussion about love within a singular, specific context. The commonalities of love throughout all of its contexts are comparatively shallow and superficial. Love is just a word and how similarly it's being used in different contexts isn't necessarily indicative of anything. What does it say if certain aspects of love between parent and child weren't present in how one loves food? Surely, the answer is close to nothing. Is the love felt towards one's parents only truly what you can also say about how one loves music and food?

    If we treat love as one thing in this way and try to analyse it down to having just a single set of characteristics regardless of context, it's impossible not to have a very superficial analysis.
  • Angelo Cannata
    354
    I think most philosophers failed in dealing with the topic of love, either by ignoring it or by dealing with it in a wrong way, like the examples you referred to, because they have been, and still are, conditioned by an idea of doing philosophy that is meant as power over concepts, grasping, defining, mastering, controlling, dominating. This mentality contradicts radically the topic it wants to deal with: an essential aspect of love is vulnerability, that is, you choose to lower many of your protective defenses, walls, barriers, screens, you choose to expose yourself to the other person to help contact, communication, understanding, as much as possible, as directly as possible, you accept to be deeply questioned.

    In this context we should try to avoid falling exactly in the same mistake in this very discussion, wanting to get a strong understanding, a mastering definition, of what love is.

    Once we have realized this, the question becomes: why do we want to define love? Why do we want to understand it? Are our reasons equal to the topic we dare to deal with? Is the very concept of “understanding” equal enough to the topic of “love”?

    That said, it seems to me that all definitions referring to the concept of “union” fail to say anything meaningful about love. They are just metaphysical stratagems used by metaphysical mentalities who want to dominate love, which is an hypocritical oxymoron, hiding our lack of humility. You can easily realize that you can love without union and you can be united with somebody without love. Union is nothing about love, it is just an abstract metaphysical concept that winks at some emotional involvement.

    Once we have made clear that metaphysics (that is wanting to understand what, how, why, things are) is irrelevant about the topic of love, we need an alternative ground to start from.

    My alternative ground is the mentality of becoming, that is connected to relativism, postmodernism, subjectivity, self-criticism.

    This makes me define love as a set of three essential elements, each of them necessary for love to exist, and all of them suffient, that is, if all of them are there, then love is there for sure. They are:

    1) growing
    2) helping to grow
    3) emotional involvement.

    “Growing” means that you want to improve, question, self-criticize yourself for all of your life, about any aspect of you; you never take for granted that you are right, that you have got the truth. This guides you to expose, to a certain degree, your vulnerability to the other person, depending on the different situations.

    Helping to grow means that you want to be active to do the best you can to help the other person to grow; in this context you need to consider both what growing means to the other person and what it means to you. Both perspectives might be right or wrong, what is important and overcomes any problem is doing it in the context of point 1: I want to help you to grow in a context of questioning what growing means to you and what it means to me.

    All of this work about growing would be not so human, not so fully involving, if it doesn’t involve emotions. This has an important role in making the different kinds of love: the different kinds of emotional and bodily involvement make an essential difference between love for your children, love for you partner, love for your preferred hobby and so on.

    Once you make clear these three points, you can easily realize that you don’t need metaphysics of what “union” or “person” is; such metaphysics are useless and totally exposed to criticism.

    If you are practicing the three things I said, you are loving already and you are already on a path of growing and improving your love. You don’t need anything else, you don’t need to wonder if there is union between you and the other person, you don’t need to have clear metaphysical, philosophical concepts. I think this can help people to grow in their ability to love, rather than reflecting about their union with other people, with the world or with other things.
  • Moliere
    4.8k
    One missed in your opening is Erich Fromm's notion of love as an art: Rather than an emotion Fromm thinks the various forms of love are actions we perform, and just as we can become better piano players so we can also become better lovers -- in all capacities of loving.

    I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority? The arts are filled with references to love.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Naturally I'd say it's because of individualism :D -- it's considered a topic for an individual to "figure out", and it's generally thought to be understood so people don't believe there's a need to think about love. Rather than thinking about love many prefer to simply feel it and that's enough to count as an understanding.

    Which, to be fair, sentiment is important in loving. Or at least emotion if not sentiment if we want to emphasize the active components of love.

    But I do like that Fromm puts forward a notion of love as a practice that can be improved upon or diminished -- it makes a lot of sense of people who have no capacity for love, and how some people have a deep capacity for love. Rather than a character trait it's just something you learn how to do (or don't learn).
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.9k


    Know what's so ripe here? You just admitted to never reading Nietzsche, yet your profile picture is of Guts from Berserk and yet Berserk is a story that heavily borrows from Nietzsche's philosophy and psychology.

    Did I? I think I've read just about everything Nietzsche ever published. However, I don't recall a "theory of love," that is easy to pull out from the rest of his thinking. Feel free to add if you'd like.

    I guess I'm guilty of hyperbole. Of course love is mentioned in other philosophers. One of my key examples is someone from the 21st century. There is a recent "Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Love," etc.

    My point was merely that it has not been a major focus on a level with other topics and has generally not occupied a place of significance in systematic philosophy. Now that philosophy is less systematic, people turn their attention to it, I mentioned Scruton, Nozik does too, etc., but it's still an ancillary topic. I would imagine less is published on love as a whole than just Gettier Problems. This stands in contrast to love's central role in the arts.







    I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I can see the arguments for a sort of ontological nominalism, but I don't see a case for generally preferencing specifics over general principles. It seems to me that philosophy about general principles can be plenty deep, and that, in general, philosophy is precisely about discovering the most general principles at work in the world.

    We should be afraid of being over broad of course, but the payoff of analysis is often in tying disconnected things together.

    The maximally specific description of some phenomena would seem in danger of being just a list of events and traits. The "meaning" comes out relationally, in how an event interacts with the whole of existence. E.g., we could discuss a single baseball game in detail, but the larger meaning (do they need to win to make the playoffs?) will depend on what is going on across the broader "world of baseball."



    :up: I will have to think about that one. It's an interesting way of putting it. Interestingly, I've heard mysticism also described in the same sort of way, a both "union," but also as "developed art."
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.9k


    I didn't say Nietzsche didn't have a theory of love, I said I didn't recall one that stood on its own (without having to be tied to the rest of his thought). I didn't really intend for my four examples to be exhaustive, they're just examples of thinkers who focused a lot on love.

    Feel free to add what you think Nietzsche's theory of love is. No need to "pull every aphorism on love from every book Nietzsche writes," that doesn't seem particularly helpful.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    2.9k


    So what's the theory of "what love is here?" I'd be interested to hear a take on Nietzsche where love is a critical element of our overcoming ourselves

    But, the biggest thing I remember from him (and it has been a while since I've read anything except BG&E) was that men and women's love are actually two different things and that romantic love itself is actually reducible into "baser," things, e.g. jealousy and the desire to possess. But, against him being fully eliminitivist against love, he also has some pretty sentimental things to say about it at times, particularly re friendship. That and "the drive to possess" that love reveals itself to be also ends up transformed in Nietzsche's telling into something "less base," than we might initially find it to be.

    However, I fail to see a commonality between all the quotes you've listed, except that they have the word "love" in the translation.

    For example:

    413. Lovers As Short-sighted People.—A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love; and whoever has had sufficient imagination to represent a face or form twenty years older, has probably gone through life not much disturbed.

    This seems to make love fleeting physical attraction.

    401. To Love and to Possess.—As a rule women love a distinguished man to the extent that they wish to possess him exclusively. They would gladly keep him under lock and key, if their vanity did not forbid, but vanity demands that he should also appear distinguished before others.

    Love is, to a degree, about possession and our own vanity. But it's worth noting that in other places Nietzsche says that "love as the desire to possess" is only true for men. Women want to "be possessed."

    The Gay Science 363

    ... I will never admit that we should speak of equal rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,—and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does not presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In this absence of conditions her love is precisely a faith: woman has no other.—Man, when he loves a woman, wants precisely this love from her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not unfamiliar,—well, they are really—not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave; a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a more perfect woman. ... The passion of woman in its unconditional renunciation of its own rights presupposes in fact that there does not exist on the other side an equal pathos, an equal desire for renunciation: for if both renounced themselves out of love, there would result—well, I don't know what, perhaps a horror vacui? Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently she wants one who takes, who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"—by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him.

    Quite the broad assertion, which maybe gets to 's point. This differentiation goes in some regrettable directions, e.g. the famous:


    "Everything about woman is a riddle, and everything about woman has one solution: it is called pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child."

    The two above pronouncements seem to contradict each other. Are children always the purpose of romantic relationships for women, or is it the desire to be possessed?

    I don't think we're supposed to come to a dogmatic answer here. These aren't supposed to be a systemic treatment such that everything needs to be ironed out. And in any event, the value of Nietzsche's work is decidedly not in his regrettable attempts to summarize "female psychology" in such ways.

    But to be fair, yes, Nietzsche does directly answer the question "what is love?" Yet we get different answers in different places. Plus, even when "love" is reduced to greed, greed ends up being part of the larger story re the Will to Power. This is what I mean by it not being a very "stand alone " theory of love. If you just take his dismissal of love as "actually these baser" things at face value, you lose a lot. But you can't get to the wider view without embracing the entire system.


    The Gay Science 14


    What is called Love.—The lust of property, and love: what different associations each of these ideas evoke!—and yet it might be the same impulse twice named: on the one occasion disparaged from the standpoint of those already possessing (in whom the impulse has attained something of repose,—who are now apprehensive for the safety of their "possession"); on the other occasion viewed from the standpoint of the unsatisfied and thirsty, and therefore glorified as "good." Our love of our neighbour,—is it not a striving after new property? And similarly our love of knowledge, of truth; and in general all the striving after novelties? We gradually become satiated with the old and securely possessed, and again stretch out our hands; even the finest landscape in which we live for three months is no longer certain of our love, and any kind of more distant coast excites our covetousness: the possession for the most part becomes smaller through possessing. Our pleasure in ourselves seeks to maintain itself by always transforming something new into ourselves,—that is just possessing. To become satiated with a possession, that is to become satiated with ourselves. (One can also suffer from excess,—even the desire to cast away, to share out, may assume the honourable name of "love.") When we see any one suffering, we willingly utilise the opportunity then afforded to take possession of him; the beneficent and sympathetic man, for example, does this; he also calls the desire for new possession awakened in him, by the name of "love," and has enjoyment in it, as in a new acquisition suggesting itself to him. The love of the sexes, however, betrays itself most plainly as the striving after possession: the lover wants the unconditioned, sole possession of the person longed for by him; he wants just as absolute power over her soul as over her body; he wants to be loved solely, and to dwell and rule in the other soul as what is highest and most to be desired.


    But, Nietzsche ends this passage with a view of what seems to be a better kind of love — friendship — which he could be quite sentimental about. This is not far off the love as union view IMO:

    There is, of course, here and there on this terrestrial sphere a kind of sequel to love, in which that covetous longing of two persons for one another has yielded to a new desire and covetousness, to a common, higher thirst for a superior ideal standing above them: but who knows this love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship.

    But does this make friendship a sort of "true[er] love." IDK, because sometimes Nietzsche also has not so flattering things to say about our motivations for friendship, pity, etc. Like the pithy:

    "We should not talk about our friends: otherwise we will talk away the feeling of friendship."
  • javra
    2.6k
    To me, love seems to be about wanting the best for a person, but also a sharing in that goodness through a transcendent union.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Love is just a word and how similarly it's being used in different contexts isn't necessarily indicative of anything. What does it say if certain aspects of love between parent and child weren't present in how one loves food? Surely, the answer is close to nothing. Is the love felt towards one's parents only truly what you can also say about how one loves music and food?Judaka

    It’s often been said that “love is nothin’ more than chemicals in the brain”. But then, what of anything cognitive—percepts, convictions, thoughts, disdains, etc.—that relies upon the brain’s operations doesn’t consist of neurotransmitters? So then why do so many out there want to downplay love by insisting on a difference that makes absolutely no difference whatsoever?

    Not that frivolous a question to me. Since antiquity love has been deemed by some to be “supra-physical”, so to speak, and far more important than a mere emotion to add to the collection. One form of this which is relatively commonly known to moderners being that of “God = Love (this rather than an omnipotent and omniscient male psyche somewhere up in the skies)”. No one doubts that imbalanced, or unharmonious, interpersonal love typically results in psychological pain to one party if not to all. Yet, in so affirming, the implicit issue becomes that of what a perfectly balanced, or perfectly harmonious, love would be—and it is the latter which idealistic youngsters (to name a few) typically aim for. All the same, the notion of a non-physicalist interpretation of love can get exceedingly complex even when only addressing the animate world of agents and our interactions. So, I won’t further pursue this ontological issue.

    I for one fully agree with (authentic) love being a drive to maintain and increase unity of being, a "transcendent unity" so to speak.

    I here mention the qualifier “authentic” because love as extreme liking is readily discernable as, well, intense liking but not as authentic love (regardless of form the latter might take): When one loves another sentient agent, aspects of the other’s being become an integral part of oneself for as long as the love persists, and, in due measure to the love experienced, one will be readily willing to risk personal suffering and corporeal death so as to aim at preserving the love which is, if such risk is required. When one loves raspberry ice-cream, however—this contextual expression here conveying “strong liking” and not “authentic love”—one does not intimately experience an emotive union with the raspberry ice-cream’s being. An English speaker can even state that the ice-cream is "to die for", but one would in all likelihood be pathologically disturbed to hold authentic love for the ice-cream cone which one is about to eat—such that one feels the death of a part of oneself with the eating of the “loved” ice-cream, or such that one will be readily willing to die in a conflict/war for the wellbeing of the love, the unity of being, between yourself and the ice-cream cone.

    Mainly want to make the point that there is a substantial ontological difference between love as unity of being and love as strong liking of. The two are distinct.

    Doubtless to me that the equivocation in semantics which many hold between the two senses of the word, despite the different contexts of use, is in large part resultant of an ongoing materialistic/physicalist worldview.

    -------

    Ps. As long as I’m at it, here’s an affirmative stance irrespective of one’s views regarding the ontological nature of love:

    Love (in the strict sense of: an either conscious or unconscious drive to maintain if not also increase unity of being) is perpetually present and inescapable for any lifeform which perpetuates its own life, this minimally in the form of self-love (although one need not also like oneself for this self-love to be). In contrast, its opposite of hatred need not be experienced in order for love (at minimum, self-love) to occur and, furthermore, will always be contingent on the presence of self-love (for oneself or one’s cohort, of which one is a member) when experienced.

    Due to this, there is therefore no necessary dyad between love and hatred: while the later will always be dependent on the former, the former can well occur in the complete absence of the latter.
  • javra
    2.6k
    Very much appreciate the Nietzsche quotes. Its been a very long time since I read him with zeal, and I've forgotten much of the details, but reading these aphorisms is heartwarming to me.
  • Mikie
    6.7k
    .baby don't hurt me, no more.

    (I'll put that up front so no one else feels tempted.)
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    I was thinking it.

    My working definition is caring about someone’s well being, and wanting to see them flourish.
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