miscellany (1): on Love
“Love” is at the same time the simplest and the most difficult term to grasp...
on the perception of objective love:
One thing I hope that a reflection on this theme can do for us is to awaken our minds to the love that weaves through the world and surrounds and envelops us in its invisible filaments. Perception is a function of conception; we will not see that for which we do not know how to look. If I can recognize this love, even if I first see it only as it is shared between others and not me, it can dawn on me that love exists regardless of whether I happen to be experiencing it as an emotion in any given moment. Then I can live in such a way that fosters the conditions in which I may come to more fully participate this love that I know exists.
some principles and characteristics of love:
“Love” is at the same time the simplest and the most difficult term to grasp. We might take the approach of vatic silence and say only “you know it when you encounter it.” At the same time, however, we must concede that it is not a “brute fact” but a “moral fact,” in Anscombe’s terminology. This means that the depth of our own souls and the fullness of the love that is possible for us are cut by the same measure. It is also difficult because, to paraphrase Aristotle and C. S. Lewis together, “love is said in many ways.” Storge, eros, philia, and agape are the Greek words that Lewis famously appeals to to aid in limning nuances that a single word might tend to gloss over. Charis probably deserves mention as well.
I have, at times, thought of love as gradients of willingness that strives at once in two directions: towards union with the other and which simultaneously stands guard over her uniqueness and therefore to preserve individual difference. The greater the love, the more fully this integration of union and individuality is achieved. “Communion” is a very expressive phrase in this respect. Differences alone provide for no relation and are thus not love, and identity alone also provides for no relation and is thus not love either. Abolition of differences to the point of similarity but without respect for individuality as such almost inevitably turns to evil because it initiates the impulse of mimetic desire that Girard so lucidly exposed as the origin of all collective violence. Indeed, Girard defines violence as “the annihilation of difference.”
In some mysterious manner, love manages to wed these apparent contrarieties and sublimate the annihilation of difference into a spiritual communion. Aristotelian logic is the logic of this world and its “brute,” material facts. To comprehend the workings of love demands a higher logic that transcends the Law of Non-contradiction without negating it. It is a sort of “sublation” or Aufhebung, to employ the terminology of high German philosophy. As I said, I believe that this conjugation is accomplished because love exalts the differences just as it might seem to nullify them through union. I believe this characterizes our relation to the great authors of the past: we become at once united in spirit with them while also keenly aware of their difference from us and the distinctness of their vision from our own.
I have also thought of love as a force of willingness to change on behalf of the beloved. We will not allow ourselves to be transformed for that which we do not love. Aristotle famously observed that
There is a mover which, not being moved, moves, being eternal and reality and actuality. The desirable and the intelligible move without being moved. The primaries of these are the same … It moves as loved.1
This represents Aristotle’s mature formulation of his concept of God. For all of his erudition, the noble Stagirite was not provided the revelation of the Trinity, and thus he failed to grasp that Christ was this mover. Love, therefore, is not merely a feeling but a principle, which is capable of being felt and which is the basis for this eventual feeling. Put another way, we could not feel love subjectively if we did not first partake in love objectively. Considered comprehensively, the realization of love must be seen as the energy that drives human evolution2 as its telos or final cause: “it [God] moves as loved.” We can think of “it,” in Aristotle’s conception, as that towards which we are drawn because we intimate (though only dimly, because it lies in the future) its goodness (i.e. we would never be drawn towards something we thought was bad). And, of course, it is our love for the Good which draws in toward it. In this way, love can be seen as the fire and animates our every move, and the formal, final, and efficient cause of the universe. I think it was Novalis who wrote that “Love is the ‘Amen’ of the universe.”
on the Ladder of Love:
One reason that I appreciate Plato’s Symposium3 is because it describes how we may become “philosophers” in the sense of “ones who seek wisdom into love.” It encourages us to start with the manifestations of love that are most familiar to us and then strive to expand our comprehension hence to greater forms so that we can ascend, by degrees, to greater vision. Diotima’s “ladder of love” describes this ascent. She observes that a powerful way to expand the scope of our participation in love is to recognize that, for all of the manifestations of love that I experience, there are also ones that I do not but which those around me do and thus which nevertheless exist despite that I am initially blind to them. Through this recognition, I can awaken to the fact that I “live and move and have [my] being”4 in a great atmosphere of love that consists in all the invisible connections that draws beings together in the universe.
waiting on the Pentecost:
It is virtually axiomatic within Darwinian metaphysics that the only basis for action is the propagation of an organism’s genetic material. Neither selfishness nor altruism is a strictly scientific concept but the tenets of evolutionary biology establish in a straightforward manner that, by its own logic, higher and more noble motives for human action have no place in an objective evaluation of “life.” But “life” is said in many ways, and if bios is taken to designate the aspect of life to which biology addresses itself, then it will be clear that other approaches are necessary if we are to have any hope of achieving an adequate concept of life. I treated this topic more thoroughly here but suffice it to designate, in keeping with the precedent that bios set, two further dimensions of life by the Greek terms psyche and zoë. These designations refer to soul life and spiritual life, respectively. As a rule, selfishness pertains to the first and altruism to the second. Hence, when thinkers like Ayn Rand and the philosophical tradition that she draws from argue for the virtue of selfishness, they evince by this position only that they have failed to awaken to the spiritual dimension of life. From a purely psychological vantage, not only would egoism appear to be the only objective approach to life, but the only rational one as well. The law of psyche is enjoyment. Hence, the moral maxim of psychological life is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Hence, by its own logic, the psychological perspective establishes self interest as the coin of the realm. Pretenses to the contrary are in fact strategic bids to increase personal pleasure and when they are interpreted literally, represent an act of self-deception and bad faith.
But just as biological life gestured towards its own transcendence by failing to incorporate subjective experience into its concept of life, so psychological life, by its inherent selfishness, implies something beyond it. Egoists argue that selfless love is impossible in principle and represents a mere pretense meant to dissemble the fact that to act with kindness towards another being is serving as a mere means to increase the personal enjoyment of the subject. But thinkers of this bent should consider the question of how someone could derive positive feelings from acting kindly towards someone that he did not already love for her own sake. In this way, the primary argument for ultimate selfishness seems to presuppose the very thing it is attempting to disprove.
Arguing against the possibility of selfless love, someone described a hypothetical scenario concerning a pair of lovers in which one party loved in a selfless fashion but the other did not reciprocate. But I failed to grasp how this scenario alone could cast doubt on the possibility for selfless love. If anything, it affirms it through the selfless disposition of one party in this relationship. I could construe an argument against selfless love along the following lines, however: the lover who seemed to be loving selflessly was in fact subject to an unconscious desire for the pleasure that being in love is wont to bring. In this way, the love would masquerade under the pretense of selflessness but it would, in actual fact, have been impelled by the ulterior motive of personal enjoyment. This, indeed, in a nutshell, is the argument of anyone who has failed to transcend the psychological dimension of existence. One problem I see with the argument is that it relies entirely on evidence that is purely speculative. To say “she says she is in love for the other’s sake but in fact she is subject to unconscious motives” shunts any evidence for that claim away from where it can be verified since it is outside of anyone’s experience. As a rule, I think it is much better to take people at their word rather than incessantly psychoanalyzing their motives, but perhaps I am naïve. In any case, to adequately adjudicate the question, it will do no good to rely on inferences that lack evidentiary support. Hence, pace thinkers like Rand, who would wish to claim the mantle of objectivity for their camp, it must be concluded that the boot may be on the other leg. Nobody, however, can be obliged by reason to abandon a position they do not hold out of reason. Just as biological facts can be adduced without any appeal to experience or consciousness and therefore must remain silent in respect to these things, so psychological facts cannot support arguments that wish to go beyond their purview. The soul can only speak to what it knows. Only the soul inspired by the spirit may give voice to what is beyond it. We are waiting on the Pentecost.5
Metaphysics, Λ.7, 1072a26–27, b3–4
Cf. Acts 17:28
1And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. 3And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.