What is love?
...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.
(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.
Comments (85)
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.
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.
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.
Quoting 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.
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.
:lol:
I thought that opposites attract. :cool: + :nerd: = :heart:
That may be so as infatuation, but I've never known it to be true in a lasting relationship.
True love meets a test of both, popular and iconic measures of authentic truth;
Love is present when you can never need to say youre sorry.
So, you've never been in a relationship?
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.
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...
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".
From an old thread "AMOR" ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/769996
I guess it's you and your shadow.
A philosophically inclined person is more likely to be disenchanted with the ways of the world.
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.
Quoting 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.
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 doesnt 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 dont 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 dont need anything else, you dont need to wonder if there is union between you and the other person, you dont 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.
Quoting 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).
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."
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.
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:
This seems to make love fleeting physical attraction.
[Quote]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.[/quote]
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."
Quite the broad assertion, which maybe gets to 's point. This differentiation goes in some regrettable directions, e.g. the famous:
[Quote]
"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."
[/quote]
The two above pronouncements seem to contradict each other. Are children always the purpose of romantic relationships for women, or is it [b]the desire to be possessed? [/B]
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.
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:
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."
Quoting Judaka
Its often been said that love is nothin more than chemicals in the brain. But then, what of anything cognitivepercepts, convictions, thoughts, disdains, etc.that relies upon the brains operations doesnt 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 beand 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 wont 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 others 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, howeverthis contextual expression here conveying strong liking and not authentic loveone does not intimately experience an emotive union with the raspberry ice-creams 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 eatsuch 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 Im at it, heres an affirmative stance irrespective of ones 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 ones 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.
I was thinking it.
My working definition is caring about someones well being, and wanting to see them flourish.
"You complete me", says the lover. The lover identifies the loved as an integral part of themselves, without which they are only a partial being. When away from the loved, the lover thinks of them constantly, feeling around for them like for a lost appendage.
Losing a lover is a special, terrible kind of pain, for a part of oneself literally dies. It is an acute neural injury that may take months or years to heal, as the dense connections constituting the loved in the lover atrophy and are pruned away.
I didn't try to make a case for that. I'm saying that the meaning of words is changed by context and that you're assuming these "general principles" go 1:1 with a word. You've taken the word "love" as though it represents a singular thing, and now you're studying this thing. I wonder about that.
Quoting javra
Does God qualify for "interpersonal" love? What do you mean by imbalanced and unharmonious? On what basis does this love "typically result in psychological pain..."? Though, you can choose to ignore these questions if my later paragraphs are on the right track.
Quoting javra
There are many cultures around the around that don't practice monogamy, that have arranged marriages, that are patriarchal and practice other forms of imbalanced or unharmonious relationships. Opposition to such structures is generally ethical in nature, as opposed to spurred on by a philosophical view of love. Ethical stances should be the best predictors of how one views this subject of imbalanced love. Do you agree?
Quoting javra
Another linguistic issue. Do you appreciate that you're the one who judges the love that qualifies as authentic? Your reasoning separates authentic love from inauthentic love, because your reasoning determines authentic love from inauthentic love.
It's understandable one might resist admitting the importance of ethical or value-based elements, but the correlations will always be striking. Those who despise homosexuality won't recognise love between same-sex couples as "authentic". Those who despise pedophilia won't recognise romantic love between adult and child as "authentic". We probably wouldn't describe love borne from Stockholm syndrome as "authentic". Most won't want to label either a very jealous, toxic love or a possessive, controlling love as "authentic".
What's your opinion on this?
Quoting javra
These are value-based assessments, and your values, interpretations and goals are determinative of "authentic" love. I'm saying this because of the quote of mine you responded to, and to further my argument that "love" is a concept we invented, not a thing to be understood or discovered.
However, in terms of my own personal feelings about love, and I'm no exception, I also define what is and isn't love by my values and ethics, I strongly agree with you. Love, for me, in the contexts I imagine you to be using, entails this kind of prioritisation and importance you describe. This is completely different from the "strong-like" one has towards something like ice cream.
Quoting javra
We agree that there are these distinct concepts expressed by the same word. I'd go further and say I have different sets of expectations for "love" depending on many other contextual differences. Such as comparing a love for a spouse vs a love for a friend or a love for one's child. However, I don't think that's mutually exclusive with your comparison, and contrasting these two concepts of unity and strong-like works fine.
Quoting javra
I reject the entire question of "What is love", and view it as a misunderstanding of language. The discussion requires a context to work with and participants need to be able to understand what factors are determinative. Love could refer to an evolutionary feature developed by mammals that live in packs, that's not mutually exclusive with developing our own social or cultural, ethics or value-based understandings. Of the many valid perspectives on love, there's nothing determinative of the correct answer, and we just end up comparing ideas that shouldn't even be decided between. All because the same word is used to refer to them.
Words are not concepts, and I think you've shown an example of this by contrasting "unity of love" with "strong-like" despite both ideas belonging to the same word "love". Words validly refer to many concepts that aren't mutually exclusive because they apply in different contexts.
Under the conviction that God = Love, interpersonal love will be one aspect of God. Else, of being closer to God than otherwise.
Quoting Judaka
Though more complex than this, it boils down to being in a toxic relationship, be it romantic, filial, or any other, wherein on loves the other. As to the second question: On the basis that at least one party gets abused and/or betrayed in some manner.
Quoting Judaka
Regardless of relationship (arranged, polygamous, etc.) it could be toxic for those involved to those involved, or it could not be.
Also, in one way or another, I also find (nontoxic) love to be inextricable from issues of ethics. Compassion, for example, is one form of love (unity of being). What would ethics amount to in the absence of compassion?
Quoting Judaka
You're here focusing on a sense of "authentic" unrelated to the one I made use of in this context: love as unity of being as being authentic love, with strong-liking being inauthentic love.
Unity of being occurs in homosexual marriages/relationships irrespective of whether others approve. Pedophilia, to me, is sexual in nature, and there need not be any sense of unity of being for sex to occur, as is evidenced in rape. If there were a unity of being between adult and child that would be romantic in some sense, I can only imagine the adult would want better for the child than that the child engages in sex, especially with an adult. As to Stockholm syndrome, it might be twisted, but if it were to result in a unity of being between the abductor and abducted, then it would be a unity of being. Ethical judgement calls on this being a different matter, typically revolving around the toxicity involved.
Lastly, a very jealous, toxic love or a possessive, controlling love most always does not have both parties valuing the other's worth on a par to one's own, this as more or less occurs in a unity of being between parties. Otherwise there would be enough respect for the other to not engage in such toxic/controlling love wherein the other suffers (incurs psychological pain), but instead always granting the freedom of the other. So no, here the love would not be a balanced/nontoxic unity of being.
Quoting Judaka
It's an assertion more than an argument. One on par to asserting that "pain" is a concept we invented, but not an aspect of our reality as psyches to be understood or discovered. As though everything psychological concerns concepts we invent rather than aspects of our own ontological being we discern introspectively (?).
Quoting Judaka
On what rational argument or via what data do you find reason to doubt that this rudimentary distinction between unity of being and strong liking is a human universal?
Quoting Judaka
I get that. But if "words are not concepts" then words will convey concepts, and concepts are nothing more then abstractions (e.g.,"animal") of concrete givens (e.g., "that grey mouse over there"), with concrete givens including the states of being we experience as psyches.
So, in English (not to forget that different languages occur, both at the present time and in the past) the word "love" can either convey different types of "unity of being" or, otherwise, types of "strong liking". But I maintain that just as one is not sincere in the literal stance that an ice-cream cone is "to die for", so too will one not be sincere in the literal stance that one "loves" the ice-cream cone. It's right up there with food being "fun" to eat. This despite all three expressions being used commonly enough in our society to express concepts nonetheless.
I'm here not analyzing words but two different subspecies of states of personal being which in English are expressible by the same word.
Lots written. But in sum: We so far seem to basically agree on the difference between unity-of-being and strong-liking-of. I don't much want to engage in a debate regarding the nature of language. Again, I basically intended to make the case that the two sense of the word "love" are distinct. And that when we love another, we typically hold a unity of being with them, rather than a strong liking of them (although of course the latter can overlap with the former, the two nevertheless remain distinct states of psychological being).
Recalls to me the idea of Plato's "giving birth in beauty." But then this:
and this:
...make me think as well of Heraclitus' tension of opposites, or even more so Eriugena and Hegel's dialectical progression through opposition.
But with Nietzsche, the problem I always find is that he's a bit too disordered in his approach. The aphoristic style makes him a joy to read and a pain to systematize. If the problem with folks like Plotinus and Hegel is that they are too focused on the abstract, the general, and the rational, losing the powerful influence of the specific and dramatic on the course of human life (and human history), the problem with Nietzsche I find is a lack of focus on the general.
If man rises out of mediocrity, and overcomes resentment, developing a love for his own life, how can a free community of such beings exist? And how can people support each other in such a venture? I don't think we really get an answer. Social freedom isn't directly addressed.
Nietzsche can be responsive to Ree because he knows him, shares a friendship with him. But what about his fellow philosophers, the ones he disparages so vociferously in some passages? I don't think it's unfair to say there is a fair number of strawmen in Nietzche's critique of his philosophical brethren. Nietzsche was the first philosopher I read, so I took his critiques as gospel, but returning to BG&E 12 years later, I realized that for all his achievements, he often seems overcome by the very resentment he speaks against. There are more uncharitable philosophers (Russell), but not many more. Yet there might be a potent lesson in that. As Nietzsche seems to allow, perhaps such irascibility is a goad to developing his "yea-saying," but it would seem to be a goad that must be left behind at some point.
The love of one's own fate as the highest love -- it's an interesting thought. It seems to be at once possibly the most transcendent type of love and the least, completely universal in terms of our experience and completely particularized.
I think this is right. This is why the God of Plato and the Patristics "all loving," as opposed to being indifferent, jealous, or wrathful. Hatred involves being determined by that which is outside of one:
Its on the way but you can feel like this about some goldfish. For me this misses out on love being more like a great big electrical experience, galvanised by devotion and sacrifice.
:up: Nicely said. Although I'll be currently shying away from embellishing this on account of it getting into non-physicalist ontological notions of "unity of being"--of which the sensations of love which we emotively feel, both the pleasures and tribulations, could be deemed a microcosmic expression of a macrocosmic force, or impetus, as universal as that of gravity. The topic of Stoic/Heraclitean Logos partly comes to mind here. But no doubt its one of them out-in-the-left-field notions that's bound to get easily misconstrued. So, having said my peace on this issue, I'm shushing up about this possible vantage of love/unity-of-being. :razz: Back to the issue of love as we experience it.
Quoting javra
I would assert everything for pain as I did for love.
Quoting javra
Words can be used to refer to these "aspects of our own ontological being", but they aren't them. If this thread was instead "What is pain", it'd be equally misguided.
Quoting javra
1. A wide variety of "states of being" can qualify as love or pain, and thus we lack specificity. What I wanted was additional information and context. If the thread was "What is pain", and didn't even specify if we're discussing emotional, physical or psychological pain, wouldn't that be absurd?
2. Both "love" and "pain" rely on interpretation, and I may interpret "states of being" as love, even if you or others do not interpret those same "states of being" as love.
3. A state of being that can be referred to as "pain", may qualify as "pain" for a multitude of different reasons. These reasons can drastically change the thing we're discussing. Pain is a great example, see how emotional pain from grief is very different from emotional pain from betrayal and so on.
I could go on but to summarise, without specificity, we're wandering aimlessly. That's completely unlike "animal", and especially the "grey rat". Grey rats aren't fundamentally changed by context or circumstance, nor who is speaking and how they interpret the term.
There are more specific, psychological terms that have strict criteria that require clinical diagnosis, such as bipolar disorder. Also with bipolar disorder, there is an underlying, identifiable phenomenon that the term aims to refer to. While studying that experience, flawed language can be identified and corrected to better describe the condition. "Pain" and "love" aren't specific terms, they represent ideas. What is and isn't love or pain has more to do with the ideas of love and pain, than the actual states one may use these terms to refer to.
"Love" and "pain" are invented concepts, and the "states of being" you refer to aren't determinative of what these concepts mean. It has much to do with our cultural and philosophical perspectives. Our understanding of love could be influenced by a famous movie or book, and it has, with works such as Romeo and Juliet or Snow White. Such influences fall far outside the realm of introspection or science.
TLDR since you didn't want to discuss language, this topic requires specificity and restrictions, that's all. I wanted this to be read, but I'm okay with it not being responded to, I want for you to only participate in discussions you're interested in.
Quoting javra
Ironically, the only other reply I received tried to connect the two.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I doubt many others could explain "unity of being" as you understand it. I'm not entirely sure of what would be determinative of whether the distinction would be a "human universal".
Quoting javra
It was clumsy of me to use "authentic", but I'm glad you understood my meaning, your response is as I had wanted. I think I have a good understanding of what you mean now.
It seems you've conveyed what you wanted to, and it doesn't seem like you're looking for anything else from me.
Western ethics is concerned with imbalances of power in romantic relationships and views them as inherently toxic or unhealthy. Even if both parties consent. The subjectivity stems from what makes a relationship "toxic", but it seems clear that you appreciate that. Your view is pragmatic, but I imagine it also coincides with your philosophies and ideals, what's missing is what we think is determinative of the correct answer. I'm not sure what would make you right or wrong, and I imagine most would agree or disagree based on their preferences and personal experiences. I don't know what to make of that.
Do words have to "be" the things they refer to have content? I don't see how this line of reasoning doesn't similarly make talking about "triangles" in general impossible, or "matter," or "American drug policy," or "energy" for that matter.
Do words necessarily have to refer to unique things or can they refer to general principles/universals (or tropes if you don't like universals)? Moreover, can't they refer to sets, potentially sets of universals that share properties?
Why would it be absurd? Simply because you can break something down into a smaller typology?
Would it likewise be absurd to discuss energy because it can be broken down into kinetic energy, nuclear, electric, etc.? Is "American gun policy," impossible to discuss because it varies by state and municipality? Surely there is commonality here.
Plus, even if we're allowing that any universal is just a name for reducible traits in some physical system, it seems trivial that various brain states correlating with deep types of affection are going to have similarities they don't share with states of various sorts of disgust, loathing, or indifference. Phenomenologically, there is a similarity as well, such that while "Ted loves Donna," might refer to several different types of love, its content clearly has a phenomenological reference that is distinct from "Ted hates Donna," or even "Ted lusts after Donna."
All sensory data requires interpretation and the same is true of readings of specialized instruments. Plenty of people still claim the Earth is flat, that the germ theory of infectious disease is wrong, etc. That people can disagree on the meanings of words or sensory data doesn't really say much because some people will disagree about virtually everything.
And yet it seems like there must be some causal explanation underlying the application of the same word to diffuse states and some causal explanation for how people generally understand these words so easily.
Regardless of how protean language seems to be, I don't think this warrants positing that it is somehow acasual, sui generis, or supernatural somehow floating free from the world. To be sure, you could flip around the meanings of words and have an intelligible language, but language still has a causal history that allows for its use. The claim that "nothing in language necessarily maps to the world" doesn't preclude contingent mapping.
I don't agree at all that people would be at a total loss if someone were to say they are experiencing "pain" and they failed to specify which type of pain. They still have an idea of what is being referenced.
It seems to me the "love" is generally understood better than "energy," "information," "complexity," and "work," all of which have a plethora of competing definitions in the sciences and yet remain incredibly useful there.
"Invented concepts," cannot be free floating from the world unless language is causally distinct. As for bi-polar disorder, etc., is the argument that words only have meanings to the extent that they are operationalized?
How many people can explain quantum chromodynamics like Wilzek? Surely, people can be "more right," about describing things than others, e.g. Keplar in his day re the solar system. Is the poet, philosopher, or psychologists excluded from such expert knowledge re love? Perhaps, but the fact that people can disagree with them cannot be the reason for this.
I'll definitely allow that some subjects are much more difficult to attain certainty on than others. However, I don't think a hard line between "knowledge of real things," and "knowledge of [I]invented[/I] things," works without some sort of dualism. What necessitates this hard epistemic wall? How are Romeo and Juliet and Snow White causally distinct from other experiences?
Yeah, but this seems to be largely true on the cutting edge of science and metaphysics too. But I guess the question is one of "current lack of good evidence," versus "the impossibility of good evidence."
Terms also get more specifically defined in light of better evidence.
Schopenhauer thought it of the highest significance as it was an often used vehicle for which Will to propagate.
Although @Count Timothy von Icarus already addressed this, I wanted to also point out that "grey" and "rat" (I did say mouse, though) are both abstractions as well: grey comes in many different shades; rats (or mice) come in many different sizes, shapes, hews, personalities, etc.; so both terms convey abstractions; abstractions the most definitely can change by context, circumstance, speaker, and interpreter. To that effect, as far as I can discern, all of our linguistic thought - i.e., all which can be conveyed via language - is strictly composed of abstractions, be they of things, processes, or otherwise. Concrete particulars are only what we immediately experience, like our perception of "that grey mouse over there", but then, in the nitty gritty, even such immediate perceptions are in part there due to pre-established abstractions which we already hold that, furthermore, at least hold the potential to perpetually evolve given novel experiences. Its a very complex topic to me. And, to me at least, language only strongly accelerates but is not foundational to such abstract cognition; otherwise no lesser animal could, for example, discern such things as "prey" from "predator", language-less though they are. And all this without introducing the concept of universals.
But this sure seems to deviate from the thread's intent.
I'm not super familiar with Schopenhauer, but wasn't his take that this is sort of an irrational takeover by the "will to life?" His whole: "If children were brought into the world by reason alone, would the humanity continue to exist?" To which I take it the answer we're supposed to have is "no."
Seems in the bucket of "love as inscrutable Eros."
Indeed, it is the will-to-life perpetuating itself. That is romantic love at least. Perhaps something like agape is more akin to his idea of "compassion" which has quite the opposite nature of Eros- that of "quieting" the will in that one is seeing the nature of reality in its true nature, as a monistic being, divided by appearance. This is in contrast to Eros, which is will following its normal pursuit, "falling" for the appearance, and not just falling for it, but possibly perpetuating the species, and thus the whole illusion, again and again.
But romantic love can be broken into many facets of its phenomenology. Let's look at some:
1) Attraction. Some people's physical features and attributes seem attractive. There is something alluring, keeping one's gaze on them and attention. I've argued that physical attraction could be cultural and learned, but even if we were to keep it to its pseudo-scientific grounding in some "innate" feature, it doesn't matter, the consequence is the same.
2) Accompanying physical attraction is attraction from some emotional connection. This can be through personality, closeness, fondness, how they make you feel in some way.
3) Sexual function. Sexual organs can function in such a way as to gain pleasure. Sometimes one can feel sexual in what might seem as odd "fetishized" ways, but generally it's grounded in the usual sexual organs. That is to say, the phenomenon exists whereby one can have sex with someone they are not particularly "physically attracted to". Indeed, this is often called "settling". You WOULD like to get that really hot X, but you will "settle" for this person who is in proximity, able to be attained, and you get along with well enough. And, perhaps, due to proximity and closeness, you have developed a more emotional and personality-based attraction to, which increases the overall attraction of the person (see 2).
4) Relationship. Apart from, but connected to attraction and sexual function is relationships. Relationships are a commitment to one person (or perhaps more than one in polygamous type situations), whereby two (or more) people support each other in long-term emotional ways. Often this involves deciding to procreate or raising a family. Sometimes it just means being attached to that person in a closeness with them. It is about signaling the social cue that "this" person is my "partner" in life in a more close way than anyone else. They are the ones that care about your welfare, they motivate you, they have quality time with you, they often cohabitate with you to the point where you sleep in the same bed together, eat meals together, sit in the same room together, and go out for entertainment together. There is often an element of financial support as well, pooling resources, and dividing household chores, etc. This last one can be a source of contention.
The human animal and its mating behavior and life in general is complex. 4 - Relationships, are supposed to be the result of some mix 1-3 working at some level. 1-3 is supposed to lead to 4. But notice, there can be lots of room for all of these things to be separated and break down which causes even more misery for the human. That is to say:
-One can be more attracted to X person (1,2) which puts 4 in danger. One can technically get 3, but not really think 1,2. Ideally 1 and 2 should go with three, but technically those can be separated. Opposite this, one can have 1 and 3, but not really get anything from 2, which will lead to unhappiness as 4 will not be achieved. Also, 4 can be achieved, but 3 is lacking, which might lead one to end 4. When one gets older, 3 might not matter as much. When one is in 4 for a long time, they may lose touch with the world being outside of 4, and take it for granted. As mentioned earlier, the dividing of resources, time, and household chores might be a source of contention for 4. One might not find 4 as fulfilling as pursuing 1 and 2 again.
There are so many permutations for unhappiness.
My main idea is that "love" (similar to Schopenhauer's view) is just another avenue for suffering. Just like life itself, the ideal is not the reality. "Romanticism" can mean many things, but in the realm of romantic love, it is an idealization or rather Pollyannaish lens for which to see love. But as I was explaining, "love" is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and when people say "love" they are defining those facets in a particular way (specifically 1 and 2 leading to 3 and 4). But there are so many ways love breaks down and causes pain and misery.
And since suffering is implicitly deemed bad, the only logical conclusion that I so far find to this affirmation of supposed fact is that love in all its variations is a bad thing to maintain or pursue.
The ethical ramifications of this logical deduction from your given premise being what exactly? That Hitler and Stalin are good guys on account of their unlovingness but the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are bad? So it's said, both camps suffer/ed in life (the present Dalai Lama still kicking it), but in utterly different ways and for utterly different reasons.
In short, given the premise you've affirmed, what then makes an unloving life preferable to a loving one?
No no. Earlier I stated the difference between Schopenhauer's idea of compassion and romantic love, and what that means:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So I was not just leaving it at "love" without distinction between kinds. Specifically I was separating out a sort of compassionate type love and erotic/romantic love.
Quoting javra
So yeah Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa type love can be deemed more in the agape/compassion category that I mentioned, though of course that would have to be applied in real-time contexts and determined etc. But the love they are striving for (and often spoken of in religious contexts in general) can certainly be deemed that.
Quoting javra
So I was specific about romantic love, so in that context perhaps. I tried to define more systematically the "fuzzy" notion of romantic love. I was trying to say that it actually has several parts, and if they do not work in the right order, or are missing components, this can cause internal tensions that manifest in various negative emotions. Also, at every level of the four components that I theorized are involved in romantic love, there can be breakdowns that lead to stress and negative emotions.
Now going back to your idea of is "an unloving life preferable", that is tricky. My point about the multi-facets is that it becomes as much a sociological problem as it is a personal preference. Other animals have mating strategies that are more defined, innate, or whatnot. Some are learned. Bowery birds need to collect enough blue objects and do a dance in a certain way that the mate finds appealing to have maybe 5 seconds of coitus. Some birds also have various sharing responsibilities over the eggs and some mate for life even. Presumably this is all a combination of mainly innate features with some room for learned variance in there and contingency.
However, humans, being the complex beings we are on a social level, do not have a set pattern for which we can harken back to. It is hard to say how early Homo sapiens "loved" and mated. One can extrapolate from some of the earliest living hunting-gathering groups like the San Bushmen. They seem to be able to pick their mates rather than it being assigned from parents. Often though, dowries are involved, and exchange of resources between families, and marriage becomes much more than "feelings". But then there was always cheating, and some societies allowed polygamy which prevents that from being as much an issue for men, perhaps.
But the numbers 1-4 are more of the "modern" take on it, perhaps since the 1700s, when modern attitudes of dating became conventionalized. So to that extent, romantic love is supposed to lead to a package deal whereby one is attracted to (physically, personality-wise), is emotionally invested in, is sexually active with, and forms a relationship with a particular person. That person can be the source of immense highs and lows if all of these things are to be enwrapped in that person. So, is it worth pursuing with this modern sociological construct? Divorce rates, if they represent broader notions of "love" and "relationships" are about 50% in most places or more. Romantic dramas and comedies extract a kernel of truth from the sorrows and highs one gets from such ventures.
One of the problems is 1-4 is not defined very clearly so expectations are misaligned, and people have different ideas of various things. Perhaps someone just wants 3 and not 4. All sorts of things go wrong.
What is true is that humans are a social creature. Books, entertainment, gardening, going to X place for a hobby can be done alone, but everything that put you in place (by way of being born in the first place), and the use of the various entertainments, was from other people doing something. You can't get out of being a social creature, even when alone. So what is one to do? One keeps living and suffering because the alternative is not living.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856869
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/857263
The breakdown of types seems fine. It just seems to be missing something to say only that: "love leads to suffering." This is surely true, but just as true is the fact that love also leads to happiness. Moreover, it does not seem to be in any way the case that lack of eros, of itself, precludes suffering in any way. Indeed, lack of eros is often specified as a source of suffering.
Against the total preferencing of agape over eros, we could consider Plato's position: It is the settling for mere lust, for what is less real, that is problematic re eros, not eros itself. Settling in this way makes us an effect of causes we cannot fathom. Passion, ecstasy, eros - are these necessarily to be despised? "No," is Plato's answer. It seems these can be apprehended in spiritual ways, e.g. Rumi, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Bonaventure. Finding what is truly self-determining is always transcendent, and eros is no different.
After all, what happens in the end when Eros meets Psyche? Though there is suffering and travails, all ends well in a divine comedy, with Hedone born of the meeting.
Schopenhauer's view seems more in line with the later Gnostic retellings of the tale, where Psyche is the human soul, continually drawn into the suffering of the material world by the manipulations of Eros/Cupid.
Which version gets at the heart of things? Both I'd say. There is Eros as the tempter, adulterer, and prankster, Eros as cause and master over man, and there is Eros as divine love, transcendent union instead of cause-effect, Boccaccio's Eros, the Eros of the Canticle of Canticles (the love of the divine and soul).
It would seem to me that the difference is in the experience and knowing, in the soul. You can read the Canticle of Canticles as a lewd and surprising addition the Jewish prophetic cannon or you can read it as a love song between God and the soul (individual, e.g., Origen, or collective e.g. Saint Augustine). Which is sort of Plato's point; it's the knower, the subject's relation that makes the difference.
Schopenhauer's overall theories notwithstanding, his personal problems with relationships, some of his misogynistic rants, which would be well at home on "Manosphere/Incel/Black Pill" blogs today, seem to suggest missing this side of eros, the side animating Dante's sublimity or Shakespeare's eternal Sonnet 18 ("When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st./ So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.") I mean, are these writers, or us through them, celebrating only lust? It seems not. "On my bed by night, I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him but found him not." (Song of Songs 3:1) - seems to appeal to more than a woman missing a warm body.
I think Schope's student Nietzsche gets a good deal closer in his later works as his appreciation of the "Dionysian" grows, although I'm a little weird in that I like Birth more than a lot of the later stuff. I still see a value in diagnosing naiveté about eros, but it's not the end of the story IMO.
"Loneliness" has lately been getting some attention in the news. Lots of people are lonely, experts have found.
Loneliness, alienation, disconnectedness, isolation, meaninglessness, etc. are deficiency conditions. Love, friendship, belonging, connectedness, validation inclusion, etc. are conditions of sufficiency. Lonely people feel emptiness; loved/loving people feel fullness, to put it in very simple terms. Of course, the experience of emptiness and fullness are not binary -- 0 and 1. There are ever so many ways to experience deficiency and sufficiency.
Love isn't the antidote for loneliness, though it seems to be often sought out as the cure. To counter loneliness one needs friendship, connection, validation, meaning.
AN ASIDE: Back in the 1960s, registration for classes at the university involved a final stop before one could select classes: the Validation Desk. There one's university documents were checked to make sure one's academic affairs were in order. Validated students proceeded forward. Invalidated students had to go fix whatever problem existed.
We all want to be VALIDATED--judged as legit, paid up, qualified, deserving. Validation can be hard to find. END OF ASIDE
We tend to think / hope that a sufficiency of LOVE will fill in all our deficiencies. Love, in this sense, is instrumental. "you give me love" and that will make loneliness, alienation, and other kinds of psychological crap go away. If only! It doesn't.
There is a cure for loneliness, it just isn't "love" per se. In some ways, the cure is more complicated than it is for lovelessness.
We do need to BE LOVED in order TO LOVE. A very large portion of the population are adequately loved early on, enough, so they can love others.
You know, Schop, I think I'm starting to babble here, so I'll step away till later.
Good stuff there, but I think something you may not have picked up was how 1-4 in my initial post laid out love. The way you are telling it, is indeed this "romanticized" version. It is the "romance of romance" that you talk of, but not "love" proper, I'd say. Love proper- that is love grounded follows more in line with 1-4. That is to say, what is this "feeling" but 1 and 2 in the divisions I laid out? What is the "passion" consummated but aspect 3? What is the long-term goal of 1-3, but of course 4. My point was I was trying to refine what it is specifically in a grounded way, how it is lived phenomenologically in our modern day for how love causes misery and breaks down. I wasn't just leaving it at "love causes misery", I was explaining the mechanisms for where at each point this misery takes place and what that might look like. Everything from finding "love", "loneliness", "attraction", "sex", and "long-term peace with another person one feels connected with" are all their own thing, which then gets lumped with "love", I was pulling those things apart and then seeing where they combine, and how they combine.
In the modern day, it does seem like by "love" people are looking for an ideal. What is this ideal? It is 1-4 working in stepwise fashion.
It's interesting because being a self-reflective, recursively thinking being, these feelings are much more amplified in humans than it seems any other being. A dog likes being pet and walked and playing a game. But that's it. It doesn't need much socialization beyond. An ape grooms, and forages together, and forms hunting parties and various hierarchical relationships and plottings. This is more complex, but still, the lack of recursive, self-reflection (self-talk, self-examination) makes the amplitude of possible suffering perhaps less. Humans need what you mentioned and more it seems.
But I was specifically wondering what you though of my analysis of how love manifests in modern day in this post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856869
The reason I am interested in it, is I think most people's definitions of love follow the steps 1-4 in some linear fashion, and it is this linear fashion not being achieved in either the right order, or the perception that one of these steps is missing, that causes the breakdowns in finding, obtaining, continuing, pursuing love. In other words, do you have any more thoughts about how these breakdowns occur, and if that systemization (realizing it is only a model) might be more-or-less an accurate encapsulation of the ideal and where the ideal breaks down?
Because "love" is everything from the feelings of attraction, emotional connection, the sexual impulse, to the culmination of these into a relationship (a final "state of affairs" if you will regarding the first three state of affairs). It isn't JUST the feeling of attraction or relationship or sex or isolated. It has to have them in combination. That is another aspect I am asking to consider.
I'll have to think about it. Like I said, the layout seems right, at least as respects the common flow of things. But this seems more "what usually happens" less "what is ideal." What is ideal is 4, no matter the process. I also think you can have most of the elements of 4 without 1-3 in the form of deep friendships. These can be passionate, but not sexual, e.g. the fictionalized version of Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy in "On the Road."
But whereas "eros" might be used to refer to attraction and sex in general, the English "love" seems quite disconnected from this. To be sure, there is a relation, but plenty of people will say they are not "in love" with people they've slept with or are attracted too, while most will say they "love" their family members.
The commonality between 4 and stroge/agape jumps to mind here. The "ideal/universal" seems like it can/should be realizable in many forms. That's what makes it the "universal," the truly self-determining, it isn't bogged down in the particulars. 1-4 might be the way it goes for most happy couples, but it seems plausible to talk about a celibate priest living a "love filled life" without stretching the term.
If people end up suffering because they don't go through 1-4 as expected, this seems like it could be a case of the type of "lack of understanding" Plato is talking about. It's mistaking accidents for substance; what people want is the substance, they suffer for chasing accidents.
Paraphrasing Tolstoy, unhappy families have lots of permutations; happy families don't.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We can be attracted to all sorts, but if there is zero attraction toward us, it's a non-starter. Some degree of mutual attraction is required. Face, figure, scent, clothes, body, bearing. Brains, maybe. Later.
One can, should, exercise one's intelligence about attraction. There are people who are extremely attractive, but with whom a relationship would be a certain disaster. That wildly worldly woman at the bar might be very arousing, but she probably doesn't want to settle down in a suburban white picket fence existence with an accountant whose hobby is stamp collecting.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The emotional connection may not appear concurrently with physical attraction, but if there is prompt and disagreeable emotional affect, it's probably a non-starter.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes.
Successful sexual encounters can range from the minimalist encounter in the dark to grand seduction scenes. The latter are way too much trouble for my taste.
The experience of sex is simultaneously simple and enormously complex. See Kinsey.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If we add up attraction, emotional connection, and sex over time we will likely end up with a relationship--usually in that order. Folk wisdom has it that sex with people who were first established friends isn't going to work out. That's been my experience.
A sexual, emotional relationship that lasts will be conditioned by other factors: money, employment, poverty, major illnesses, and so on. If the partners are loyal, the relationship will endure through thick and thin, depending on the capacities of the partners. Failure can happen to good people.
In a long-lasting relationship, the factors that ignited the relationship will change. Lots of relationships endure decades with major changes in the circumstances of both partners. I believe the chances of having a long relationship improve with age. Two teenagers lack enough experience to have a chance at negotiating a long relationship. By somewhere in their 30s, people are (or should be) better able to make a long relationship work. For child-rearing, though, one doesn't want to wait too long.
Needless to say, if you mix too many drugs and alcohol into any stage of a relationship , things will not go well.
Well, I think this is where we must parse distinctions-
Storge is love of kin more-or-less: parent/child, pet/pet-owner, etc. Sometimes a "relationship" might fall into this, but I see it as the end result of eros love. If erotic love does not turn into a relationship, it becomes unstable, which perhaps we can discuss more.
Agape love, is like love of humanity, love of a person in an abstract way such as to see the commonality of them in you and whatnot. This is the love you mentioned tied with religious points of view of "love for fellow man"
Philia is brotherly love, basically a friendship.
Finally, there is erotic love, which is one based on some sort of attraction and/or sex. It is "erotic love" for which most people default to when discussing "love" in the general sense. It is this love in particular I am focusing on. Often 4 (which can be considered a type of storge love), is only the end result of 1-3. And that is my point, it cannot be bypassed.
Quoting BC
So my point with 1-3 cannot be bypassed for 4 only, is the following:
1 alone is simply a sort of infatuation, but not "love" (eros love that is).
2 alone is simply a friend, and perhaps can count as a sort of philia.
3 alone is simply a "friend-with-benefits" or simply physically pleasurable in nature
4 alone is near impossible without 1-3, which is why I said that it pretty much has to arrive in that order for 4, to obtain. If not, it may be seen as inauthentic, rushed, not real, etc. 1-3 needs to be there to legitimize the status of 4.
Thus, I say that "erotic love" in order for it to be indeed "love" has to have all 4 elements to obtain that status. But it is also because of the necessity of each step to be present and aligned correctly, for which love is generally hard to enter into and hard to keep. There are so many ways 1-4 can fail.
It is also interesting to note that the process is quite cumbersome. Because 4 is not instant, nor is it preferable to be instant, it needs a lot of time, energy, etc. and this makes erotic love that much more fickle than most other types of love.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You are describing erotic love as the end result of a progression, beginning with attraction and ending with "authentic" (whatever that means) erotic love. Probably all love follows a progression. The kinds of love mentioned here--eros, philia, storge, and agape--require investment, commitment, desire, and more by the subject. One doesn't just wake up one day and find one is full of agape.
Quoting schopenhauer1
One of my favorite religious writers, Dorothy Day's (founder of the Catholic Worker Movement) biography is titled "A Harsh and Dreadful Love". The love of Christ is a very difficult path to follow. Most of the time, for most people, love is not harsh and dreadful but it can be damned difficult.
Ordinary love, the kind most of us find and hope to keep, is difficult because humans are not constant. We change for better and for worse. We may fail in our love at a critical time when our partner most needs us. Love, of course, is never the only thing we feel.
Quite true, theorizing is no way to love. However, I think it becomes more a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything really prohibitive. It is the romantic fairy tale that it's just a "feeling" and there can be no intellectualizing. But being a philosophy forum, I think we can step back and see the patterns. Perhaps the patterns can inform better. Do you find this person physically attractive or do you want to get laid? Do you find this person's personality attractive? Do you feel like you care for this person beyond when just spend time together? Do you have physical intimacy? Do you see yourself over time sharing responsibilities and the everyday burdens of life that entails a long term relationship. So, yeah knowing the pattern can indeed inform oneself, more than you might let on with just "It's all about the feels!".
Quoting BC
Indeed, I should not discount that other love follows a progression too, and is temporal. The stakes are different though. Agape is all consuming for the religious-inclined.. Monks, nuns, or just the "devout". Perhaps the atheistic ascetic and Buddhist devote can fall into this too. But for many of the masses, this is not what they care about (even if they should?). Rather, they want the progression of erotic love (1-4). 4 especially leads to a kind of stability. You can deny that it is more important than the other loves, but it seems pretty important to people. At the beginning of life, family stability, and throughout life friendships are important, but a relationship as represented by 1-4, seems to be very desirable, as something more encompassing to ones everyday life. There is a reason you "go back" to your wife/husband/partner, and not just to a "friend". There is an aspect of "home", and shared space, etc. It's different in its all-encompassing nature. Of course, none of this mattered centuries ago. Love had not much to do with marriage, procreation, and a domestic partner. That is relatively new. There were a lot of arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, of necessity, etc.
Quoting BC
Indeed, but I do see the 4 components outlined a good tool to see where the failure takes place.
I don't think it is at all a deficiency that people prize erotic love. As embodied beings who experience the world through the physical senses, we ARE carnal beings. The sexual drive goes back a long ways. The wellspring of life ought not be disparaged. (Screw the Apostle Paul.)
Just guessing, but I don't think our emotional apparatus begins with well-differentiated forms of love -- erotic, philia, storge, agape, etc. Our first simple love is for mama and over time (decades) is differentiated. Young children evidence simple caring--simple philia. Children have sexual urges too, if maybe not erotic desire. By 12? 13? the vaguely sexual becomes specifically erotic, whether acted on or not with others. And our sense of caring, the sense of our capacity to comfort others. and empathy grows as we move into adulthood--not at all evenly across the population, of course. Well developed adults display diverse love -- erotic, filial, maternal, paternal, agapaic, civil even, Love of country.
BUT, being embodied as we are, it is physical erotic pleasure that is the foundation of long-term family relationships. (Non-sexual relationships, like college friendship, can last into old age too.)
Quoting schopenhauer1
How many centuries are you going back? Ordinary English villagers lives 600 years ago displayed evidence of courtship, marriage for love, domesticity. Kings, queens, very large landowners, (earls, dukes, etc.) were under obligations to make strategic marriages. You know, if your estate covers a couple of counties in England, you are not going to marry a woman with nothing, no matter how nice she is. You jolly well better marry the daughter of another wealthy landowner, and maybe you will be richer for it. "What's love got to do with it?"
Human psychology hasn't changed much. (That's my theory.).
Courtly and romantic love" as depicted by troubadours and poets was new back in the medieval period. It wasn't practical advice, it was 'romance'. On the other hand, the Song of Solomon (it's in the Bible) was written... maybe 900 B.C. Male and female POVs alternate.
Don't sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me?
I don't know whether Solomon existed, and if he did whether he had anything to do with the poetry, but what the poet is talking about here is not strategic or arranged marriage, but good old carnal love.
Quoting BC
Indeed, this is actually why I see Paul as a kind of "Gnostic-lite". If suffering begins at birth, and prior to birth control, sex led often times to birth, then stop the cause and you stop the effect of suffering. Of course, Paul's shitty application of Gnostic-like ideas (it was floating around then.. you can't tell me Paul wasn't familiar in some ways to Gnostic ideas), and Augustine's ridiculous treatment of this whole thing based on his own self-inflicted guilt, is another matter (he was a full blown (no pun intended) sex addict according to his autobiography).
But indeed, even your odd evasion of erotic love now, is telling of how erotic love, leading to relationships is almost shameful. That is to say, sex stripped of relationships seems more appropriate to talk about than relationships. It is too domestic, too close to home, too close to the vest. That is to say, to want to have a deeply formed relationship with someone you are physically, emotionally, and sexually compatible with is also some of the least likely things to align successfully. Yet people take the ventures and fail often. Women are socialized to make this an open thing. Males are socialized to downplay it as no big deal, even though, why do they willingly conform to such arrangements? Also, the happiness levels of married couples belies an interesting idea whereby many times it is the men who are happier with such arrangements and women who get less happy in marriage. Anyways, it seems that wanting a relationship is shameful in society, the sex is actually no big deal anymore. Interesting sociology.
The distinction between agape and eros is all fine and well. But it doesnt satisfy the issues posed.
First off, while agape can certainly be had in the absence of eros, eros devoid of any form of agape well, many adjectives can be used, but Ill keep to the point and say is dehumanizing, or else dehumanized. Rape as a good example of this. Its never been my thing so Ive never personally partook, but from what Ive gathered from others and from reading, even threesomes and orgies from ancient to modern - typically contain some form of agape, however minuscule as in compassion for the others being (such as via respect for the others limits of comfort despite maybe depriving one of fully satisfying ones own cravings) if theyre not to be dehumanizing at best, violent rape-fests at worst. Ditto for some presence of agape in masochism (if one actually studies ones fair share of anthropology and doesnt go by pre-judged cultural stereotypes).
An interesting issue, actually: When one mentions eros does one strictly mean sexual gratification, so that one construes rape to be a form of eros? Something about this to me is utterly wrong so that eros necessarily implies some measure of agape. But maybe others disagree?
But then the same to me applies to philia and to storge: devoid of any agape whatsoever they become meaningless. Then again, agape is itself fairly hard to define.
At any rate, in reference to my previous post, love as agape (say, one devoid of eros, of philia, and of storge) can and does most often incur the very real risk of suffering on account of the agape held. Minimally in the form of disappointment. If, for example, one holds agape for humanity, and humanity behaves like a bunch of shortsighted lemmings about to drown themselves in the ocean (say, for example, by ever-accelerating climate change), one will experience dire disappointment on account of the agape held. Which would never have been in this agapes absence. Not to even mention the possibility that one such fellow human might commit violently unjust crimes against the agapeist in question, or something to the like.
Furthermore, agape too has its often felt ideal it pursues, one that many of us will proudly gripe and whine about being an unrealistic future only idiots believe in. (As though this is what children should be somehow taught by us jaded adults so as to live more ethical and upright lives. Apropos, sarcasm 101, if it needs to be translated.)
Agape, as with eros, will far more often than not lead to suffering. Exceptions occur in both cases, yes, but it is not the norm.
So then what makes pure agape a more preferable love to maintain and pursue than an agape-consisting eros? For, in the first place, both can equally be almost guaranteed to result in suffering on account of being held or pursued and, in the second place, as the individual persons we all are, most of us stand a far greater chance of gaining more eudemonia from a sustained, agape-consisting eros than via an agape alone. The ideal romantic relationship in the extended moment is persists this, for some, being well over 50 years of loving marriage (with personal relatives as examples, if nothing else) can enrich ones life with both warmth and wisdom gained from the others perspectives far more than can a universalized compassion for mankind, for example.
Theres no reason why one cant have both; Noam Chomsky as one well enough known example of this. But if one is to draw a line in the sand between agape and eros, why should the likely suffering to be incurred by the former be prescribed while that to be incurred by the other be proscribed? After all, both can be addressed by your previous affirmation of being just another avenue toward suffering.
(And, for the anti-natalists out there, the bringing forth of offspring is not essential to the occurrence of a romantic relationship: the latter can well be held just fine without the former.)
-----------
BTW, since you were getting into a little bit of anthropology, just wanted to mention as an aside that polyandry has also been known to occur in addition to polygyny. Irrespective of polygamy type, though, compassion and the like are inextricable from such sexual relationships if they are to be in any way happy for those involved. (Most polygamies in our history as humans dont revolve around kings or emperors. If this needs to be said in general.)
No not at al. Not how I was breaking it down. Let me quote for you my theory of eros:
Quoting schopenhauer1
And here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So with all that being said, eros implies that those 4 things be in place for it not to be something else. So, in a way you are right if you are trying to say eros cannot just mean 3 alone (sex without any other aspects aforementioned like attraction, personality, emotional connection, etc.).
Quoting javra
Indeed, there aren't many perfectly successful ascetics, Schopenhauer-style, or whatever manifestation of the saintly life one conceives.
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
:up:
Dear me, when was I evading erotic love?
Quoting schopenhauer1
"Lord, make me chaste -- but not yet." Augustine prayed.
Well, OK, thanks, but it doesn't answer why one should prefer an unloving life to a loving one (or else a loving life over an unloving one) - irrespective of the type of love addressed. I deem this to be a rather important question. But maybe its just me.
:lol:
Looking back, no you sufficiently addressed it. But I was trying to pry it from your going back to friendships and the like, which I thought might have been equivocating like "eh if you have good friends, and you had sex just casually with a friends-with-benefits/fling, you don't need relationships". But that is not eros. My whole theory here is that eros has to embody all 4 of those things in a person(s) (at the least) for it to obtain, and it is not something that is trivial and can be mixed and matched, and as you state, is the prime reason humans [s]mate[/s] exist (for good or bad!) and write poetry, songs, endless conversations of despair and delight, etc.
No I agree with you. That doesn't negate that it causes suffering nonetheless. I never said "thus we don't need eros". Rather, it is part of being alive as a human. Even ignoring, downplaying, or eradicating love from one's life (or attempts thereof), is having to deal with love, but in the "negative" sense of negating it. One is still contending with it on sociological and personal level.
Run of the mill sex with a casual partner usually didn't pose a threat to a settled relationship. What did pose a threat was great sex with a casual partner--it tended to pull one's interest away from the person one was most committed to, giving rise to jealousy and resentment.
How does any committed relationships last under these circumstances? They last IF both partners are committed to each other, without being exclusive. Also, as couples age, the attraction of casual partners diminishes. Casual sex takes time, and having a home, a partner, pets, a job, an exercise routine, civic / religious activities, etc. just doesn't leave time and energy for sexual adventures on the side.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
All that's required is context, which has been the theme of my criticism. We usually have considerable context which allows us to navigate the nuances I describe with ease.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Words such as "that" can be used to refer to all sorts of things, does that mean "that" is a "general principle"?
Asking "What is that" with context is a perfectly reasonable question, and asking "What is that" with no context is a perfectly unreasonable question. Can I say that we've established some words such as "that", rely heavily on context and do not represent "general principles"?
On the other side of that spectrum, of requiring context, are terms like "lactose intolerant" or "spotted hyena". I'm guessing these are not what you'd consider "general principles"?
Assuming you agree the word "that" absolutely requires context, and the term "lactose intolerant" doesn't, then what is the difference? Is it perhaps that what the word refers to differs by context?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
They can.
You bring up examples such as triangles, which as a term, is closer to "lactose intolerant". All shapes that qualify to be triangles do so for the same reasons, it's not changed by context. Triangles "share" properties because for a shape to be a triangle it must possess specific properties. Also, a triangle is just a shape that has these properties and nothing more.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, though it would be absurd if it could be broken down instead into electric, spiritual and sexual energy. My problem isn't with breaking down concepts into smaller categories but pairing categories that are related by the shared use of a word, and assuming they're connected.
I don't think "energy" is changed by whether we're talking about kinetic, nuclear or electric, but I do think "pain" is changed by whether we're talking about physical or emotional pain. I'm not denying that there can be similarities, but it's not unusual for different things to have similarities, and similarities themselves aren't necessarily meaningful, especially if they're linguistic. The process for qualifying as physical pain vs emotional pain has differences, the process for qualifying as energy has none, same with qualifying as a "triangle".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Interpretation is built into the truth conditions of the terms. While people can disagree on anything, in cases such as the Earth being flat, there are no such truth conditions, people can be wrong. It's a matter of what's determinative of the correct answer, and appreciating that when opinion is part of the truth conditions, the answer is a person's opinion. While we've stepped away from "right" and "wrong", still, some answers are useful, compelling, and inspirational and others are misguided and foolish, that's worth keeping in mind.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, they use context.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep, using context, it's really easy to overlook, but you're not bringing context up at all.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
They're not necessarily "floating free", as I said, our understanding of "love" could be influenced by a play such as Romeo and Juliet. My point is that a wide variety of factors are involved, as opposed to just our understanding of the "states of being".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No. Bipolar disorder just sits closer to "lactose intolerant". Word meaning is context-dependent. Though I'm talking about studying, investigating and understanding concepts. Operationalization addresses the problem of the inappropriate determinative factors I describe by taking words and ideas that differ by person and defining them in ways where they do not differ by person. Allowing for consistency and clarity, reliable data collection, and rooting the topic down in place.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
When dealing with "things" that have interpretation embedded into their truth conditions, or have implications that fall outside of their truth conditions, then being "right" is reliant on interpretation.
Expertise in love might mean explaining love in a way that helps people to have healthy relationships and live fulfilling lives. Giving people a framework to create meaningful relationships and act honourably, allowing them to win the respect of others and themselves. It might mean being able to articulate an understanding of love that would create a peaceful and flourishing society.
We want different things out of our words. Our opinions might sometimes be changed by scientific developments but they could also be changed by a variety of other factors as well. This leniency is useful, not a flaw, it allows us to adapt our language to express our thoughts and feelings and remain flexible in our ability to make practical changes.
I suspect your understanding of love coincides well with your ethical stances, how you want people to be treated, how you think others should act, the kind of society you'd like to live in, and so on. Our views, products of the time and place we were born into, and are shaped by social, cultural and moral factors. Surely, we can't have both this and a scientific or "general principle" approach, they're mutually exclusive. Unless I'm wrong that the concept of "love" is receptive to ethical and cultural changes, how can it be a general principle that one can study and be "right" about?
Ill try to simplify my perspective: granting that suffering is unwanted by the sufferer(s), if all paths in life end up being just another avenue toward suffering then: 1) that some path is just another avenue toward suffering makes no difference whatsoever in respect to the paths worth in comparison to any other path and 2) the intent to minimize suffering in oneself and in others would then become warrantless, for this too would then in itself be just another avenue toward suffering.
This digs its heels into a much broader issue than that of love. To me something is very wrong with this outlined reasoning. (The only out that I so far see is if some paths in life were to lead to liberation from suffering in principleat the very least to a far better extent relative to other paths. This as in the overly simplified affirmation that "only love can conquer hate", wherein love is deemed to be such a path toward liberation from suffering. But this is something I so far presume you disagree with.)
This stipulated wrongness however, whatever it might be agreed to be, then directly applies to the affirmation that love (even if strictly understood as eros) is just another avenue toward suffering. Its then a difference that makes no difference whatsoever. But underlying this is the far broader issue just mentioned.
All this being relevant to the issue I initially raised, which I summed up in my last post as that of:
Quoting javra
Do you disagree that love is an abstraction abstracted from, ultimately, concrete particulars?
If it is, then as abstraction it will hold its own properties which equally apply to all subspecies of love, each its own abstraction, which in turn will each hold properties applicable to, ultimately, concrete particulars.
Via analogy, animal is an abstraction of, for example, mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, etc., with each such subspecies of abstraction ultimately being abstracted from concrete particulars. As such, the abstraction of animal will hold properties applicable to all subspecies of abstraction and, ultimately, all concrete particulars it is an abstraction of. And an animal is utterly distinct from a plant, or fungus, etc.
Love, then, would be endowed with a fixed set of universal attributes relative to what it is an abstraction of in like manner to how animal, for example, is so endowed.
Indeed, but my point was that we should not conflate eros with any one part of those 4 parts, otherwise it isn't love. Sexual adventure is just that, sex... Physical acts of a sexual nature. Just because it is with someone else, doesn't make it eros.
A strong emotional bond with someone can also be a kind of love. But if it is not sexual or physical in nature, it's hard to call that eros. A deep kind of Platonic love (philia perhaps?) would characterize this better.
A strong physical attraction without any emotional bond or sex is simply a sort of crush.
A relationship without attraction or sex, would deflate back to a friend.
That's all I'm saying. We can convolute it all we want but my conclusion was that if that is the case, then as you point out, this 1-4 necessity of eros to obtain causes quite a bit of strife for parties involved who seek eros. And as I stated, males are socially supposed to be quite stupid when it comes to how it works, and emotionally indifferent to wanting it. Females are socially supposed to be more open about finding love, and having 1-4 obtain. Perhaps they are often the gatekeeper for how 1-4 traditionally plays out. In the gay community, this may look a bit different, especially if males are generally indifferent to 1-4, and women are hypersensitive to it. Obviously this is generalizing and caricaturizing, but there may be truths to cliches and not because they are innate necessarily, but because it is how men and women are socialized.
Well you did catch on to my point, yes. It is the Schopenhauer schema. That is the human being has no choice but the suffering of their wants and desires which may or may not obtain and may cause pain, harm, suffering along the way. It's unavoidable. You can try to minimize it, handwave it, or ignore it, but it's there nonetheless. Are you really going to tell (gaslight) me that love does not lead to much strife in the human socio-psychological sphere?
And eros love in particular is something people strongly desire, but fail at. I simply laid out a model for why it is easy to fail, as there are several steps and each one has to align, and each one can cause the downfall of the whole project.
As I stated just above:
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's akin to "work" and "labor". That is to say there are things in life we rather not do, but we can't just handwave it. It is inevitable to suffer in a way such that one has to do tasks that one would otherwise skip. But the pain, harm, tedium, and suffering involved in non-wanted forms of work have to be dealt with. Just like with love, one can try to find all sorts of self-help therapies to deal with unwanted aspects of things, but the burden is there to "deal with" nonetheless. Life in a way, for a self-reflecting animal as ourselves, is oriented with "dealing with", and psycho-social ways we choose to cope with the burdens involved in "dealing with".
So I'm not saying that thus love should be abandoned. I am just elaborating on the why it is hard to obtain and maintain. I am systemizing why eros breaks down in so many ways. It's a process and a state of affairs that has to be aligned and present.
The body is wired for sex; we don't have to learn a sex drive. Is the body wired for agape? Storge? Philia? We seem to need to be taught about agape; love of country or community; philia may need less tutoring than agape, but we at least need to learn how to practice philia, agape, storge. ["Storage" only shows up in discussions like this. What word do most people use for Storge (storg?, Greek: ??????) is liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance. An example is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child.].
Is there a single source for the "love urge" be it for one's child, one's friend, one's brother, for 'the world', for whatever it is that we love?
How is erotic love -- or raw eros, for that matter -- related to the other types of love?
Is there 'a basic love' that differentiates in various ways, given the circumstances, or do the various kinds of love arise separately? (seems unlikely to me).
I'm not expecting any definitive answers. Lots of theories out there.
As for erotic love -- my theory is that eros begins as a raw form and is gradually tamed, civilized. Who does the taming, the civilizing? Parents? Not mine -- they didn't talk about sex. School? God, no. The church. God forbid. Who, then?
Eros gets civilized, tamed, during sexual interactions--in the trenches, as it were. Other people set the limits on what they find acceptable or out of bounds, and since we want their approval / cooperation... whatever, we conform to their standards.
In contrast, take a person who has lived a very protected life or has lived in an institution from childhood into adulthood, say, owing to disability or MI. They are liable to display inappropriate sexual behavior because they haven't been out and about enough. By "inappropriate" I mean they don't "read the room" very well.
(I'm thinking of a fellow I met at the Y who was in a MI program. He said he was schizophrenic; could well be. He apparently was gay. His behavior in the locker room wasn't scandalous, it was
unschooled. 99.9% of men avoid prolonged frank stares, for instance. Not this guy, I was sorry to see him at a large gay bar downtown later -- not the place uninitiated vulnerable people should be hanging out.). He hadn't learned the social routines of fitness centers, let alone gay bars.
Case reports aside, most people learn how to seek out and find, locate sexual partners; appraise them for suitability; determine interest, make appropriate overtures, and go somewhere to get It on. Having gotten there, we learn what works well, what falls flat, what is likely to upset or antagonize, and how to avoid doing it. (Thinking of my first early adult sexual experience, "OK, now what am I supposed to do?)
In most cases, it doesn't take long to figure all this out, because quite often the rules for sexual encounters are similar to those that apply in any other kind of encounter.
For about two days now youve touched upon just about anything and everything but the core issue Ive raised in every post Ive made to you.
Ill try one last time, but, if you again evade the issue and don't provide an answer, Ill then be convinced youre doing it intentionally on account of not having a rational answer to give:
(To spell things out a little clearer, what Ive been repeatedly asking you is a morality question of how any ethical ought can be obtained given the premises you uphold. And yes, most will in simplistic terms maintain that love (be it pure agape or else agape-endowed storge, philia, or eros) in general is a good, whereas malice in general is a bad. But, again, why should this generalization be upheld when both necessarily result in the same bad outcome? Its a simple enough question regarding reasoning.)
I think there could be a case that they are all related through the idea of "care".
Agape is caring about humanity or the divine.
Philia is caring about someone one interacts with over time.
Storge is caring about "chance" or circumstantial kin (as you rightly framed that term).
Eros is caring about someone.
But then, not to beat a dead horse here, but Eros and Philia then become the same thing UNLESS you add the other component. Thus:
Eros is caring for someone you are attracted to physically/personality-wise, are sexual with, and forms into a relationship for which the care takes place over a long-term duration.
Quoting BC
I think what you are saying actually ties into one of the modern day foibles of eros love. That is to say, because 1-4 is not explicitly stated, and because love is supposed to be seen as a sort of serendipitous event, it leads to misunderstandings, with unmet expectations, and misaligned communication. That is to say, 1-4 is the structure, but since love is supposed to be some ideal that is undefined, it tends to fail to start, flourish, sustain, and so on. Ironically, discussing the "structure" is taking the "romance" out of it. As if with all of this, there needs to be an element of whimsy and chance otherwise it is sterile and 1 leads nowhere (no 2 had, no 3 had, and definitely not 4).
Quoting BC
Yes, but you speak of very specific interactions. I am speaking of the structure, what the interactions represent. Thus the initial interactions are probably because of some attraction. More interaction creates even more attraction or perhaps the opposite, a sort of repulsion. That might lead to sex and relationships, etc. Sure, sex can be had right off the bat, and then perhaps the other things follow, but that usually is not how it goes, and generally leads to friends-with-benefits or flings. It doesn't have to go in order, but the order is generally the way it goes. Even if the order is not there, 1-4 steps have to be present in some sense, otherwise you can be talking about anything physical or sexual and that counts as "eros", which obviously I am making a case that it is not.
I think you just present a false dichotomy or odd straw man. Why would love causing suffering and mass-murder causing suffering be equivalent because one can lead to suffering, and one definitely leads to suffering? You are trying to get me pinned down to a morality tale from something that isn't necessarily moral. If you play a game and it leads to suffering, it isn't "immoral" that you played that game. If you FORCED someone to play a game knowing that it will probably lead to suffering, that is a different story, and we can start talking morality. Obviously the case of the mass-murderer is FORCING a harm onto someone else. But we need not go down this side-street.
Rather, my position overall is that once born, we are in a position to have to "deal with" as that is part-and-parcel of life. You can choose to deal with things in a number of ways, but you can't get away from certain inherent features that are part of being a self-reflective social creature.
Quoting javra
The term is changed by context, it's influenced by culture and ethics, and it's a concept with no clear rules or truth conditions, and truth conditions are separate from the meaning of the term. There are so many different, but valid ways to understand the word. Some of these ways are more directly aimed at referencing "concrete particulars" than others. You've already addressed some distinctly different ideas.
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
Later in the same post, you went on to clarify the distinction between "strong-like" and "unity of being". This wasn't your attempt at an exhaustive list, and I'm confident there are many more distinct perspectives on love that you could bring up, but even so, you effortlessly brought up so many.
Isn't that true? It's confusing to be asked whether love is "an abstraction...", you should know that there's more than just one. Explain your thoughts on this.
Quoting javra
Love involves interpretation, and is thus influenced by a variety of biases and contextual factors, though in this case, I don't mean "contextual factors" which influence the type of love we're talking about. You've agreed with me that ethics plays a role. This alone destroys any chance for love having consistent properties. Think about it, how can ethics influence our interpretation of an intensely personal feeling? The same feeling could exist in two scenarios, classified as love in one, and not the other, because of how we interpret what makes a relationship toxic or unhealthy. Are these the properties you're referring to?
Quoting javra
It doesn't matter if "love is an abstraction abstracted from concrete particulars". If there's even a single truth condition that's dependant upon interpretation then the properties you refer to include factors that differ by person.
All the words used as counterexamples consist entirely of truth conditions uninfluenced by interpretation, feelings, circumstances, context or bias. That's what gives a term like "animal" its universal attributes, they're universal because they do not differ by person. Each organism that qualifies to be an animal must have these properties. For love, we can say each subcategory of love has the properties to be considered love, but just from one person's perspective. It's distinctly not universal.
I dont. Although I dont want to here get into a debate on how deontologys sole justification is consequentialist in nature, consequentialism, which includes eudemonism, certainly enters the picture. And the perspective addressed is not that of some abstract notion of harm to anyone. As one example of how this dictum is often ill-fit, sustaining equality of rights FORCES direct harm onto tyrantsbut this doesnt justify a morality in which tyrants are given the freedom to tyrannize.
The perspective is simply that of an individual subjects reason for choosing between future acts of malice and future acts of lovethis when both are deemed to hold the same bad consequence of suffering for the individual subject in question.
But I get the impression that were on very different wavelengths here. Pity in a way, since I believe that the topic of love and suffering is rich with nuances and, indeed, with exceptionsthereby justifying the prescription of love over malice. But so be it then.
Indeed, and I would agree that the tyrant then is causing harm, and it is okay to stop them from doing so. The suffering of a tyrant not being able to cause harm is not a moral consideration, but a consideration of if someone is allowed to pursue their self-interest when that self-interest IS violating a moral consideration.
Quoting javra
Future acts of malice are immoral. Future acts of love are not. Both can lead to suffering, however. But those aren't conflated. Life necessitates suffering indeed. But I wouldn't want to force the conditions of life's suffering on another, if possible. So once alive, if it's easier to negate love than pursue it, and that causes less suffering, then do it. If pursuing love causes less suffering than negating it, than pursue that. If both cause the same amount of suffering, it's a wash.
Edit: And one of the conditions of life is that sometimes, to pursue a goal, we must suffer greatly. Presumably erotic love is so desirous a goal because it meets many people's desires (to be cared for/to care for others, physical intimacy/sex, and having a person you are with to share good and bad times with and feel close to). That seems to pack a high value. However, obtaining and sustaining this can cause also high amounts of suffering. It is probably worth it to pursue if one wants to gain the benefits of fulfilling those needs.
This goes back to the idea of whether suffering is all that bad. And contra a Nietzschean perspective on suffering, I think it is bad. That is to say, if those needs were met to begin with (pace Schopenhauer), then the suffering need not take place to begin with. The Nietzschean counter that, "The value is in the suffering/pursuit", I simply say that this is in fact the "slave mentality (notice I am actually inversing Nietzschean's terms, that rascal!). That is to say, if one already had what one needs, want wouldn't even NEED to justify the suffering in the first place. One would feel whole in some sense, complete. But that is not the human condition.
As relates to the English term "love", I so far maintain that it can only bifurcate into "unity of being" of various types and into "strong-liking-of", which again can come in various types. Both seem to me to belong to the umbrella concept - itself an abstraction - of "affinity" but that, whereas "love" can be a verb, "affinity" cannot - to my mind partly explaining why love can in English be used in both senses.
As to more than just one type of unity of being, yes, of course. Greek comes in handy in distinguishing philia, from storge, from eros, from pure agape, for example. But all these different types of unity of being shall yet be a unity of being. Else expressed, all specific types of love (in the sense of a unity of being) shall yet be love (a unity of being). This just as there are many different types of animal but, from fish, to birds, to amphibians, etc., all are yet animals (here, at least, going by the science-grounded definition of "animal" ... a little more on this below).
Certainly love, be it understood as a unity or being or more broadly as affinity (wherein strong liking can be incorporated), is globally distinct from envy, for example, to not once again express the attribute of malice. As such, all variations of love will share a commonality.
To my mind, it is this commonality which the question of "what is love" seeks to better explore.
Quoting Judaka
I myself don't situate thing in terms of ethics playing a role in love, but of love playing an integral role in ethics. I'm coming from the vantage that love, unity of being, is ethical - in so far as being good, if not what's sometimes been termed "the Good" (neo-Platonic notions of "the One" for example come to mind, wherein the One is a literally absolute, hence complete, and perfected unity of being). It is then our all too human deviations from love - such as the inclination toward possessiveness in romantic love, or of domination in parental love (to list just two among innumerable examples of how love can go wrong, which will also include the opposite of holding laissez faire attitudes in either type of relationship just mentioned) - which leads to the unethical, i.e. to that which is bad. The more we deviate from the ideal of love should be, the worse, and so more bad, the situation becomes, despite the feelings held. And it is in this latter case alone that institutionalized ethics, morality, then influences our interpretation of intensely personal feelings. But I grant that this plays into an ontological interpretation of love which doesn't fit that of it strictly being a biologically evolved set of emotions or feelings. And it might be this which we at base actually disagree on (?).
Quoting Judaka
I so far find the same can be said of consciousness, for example. Yet I'm not one to entertain thoughts that one's person's consciousness is another person's cauliflower. :wink: More soberly, I do maintain that something which the term "consciousness" tacitly references is universally shared by all conscious beings, regardless of culture and so forth, and this despite what it exactly is not yet being adequately defined.
The parable of different blind men interpreting what an elephant is based on their strictly localized experiences of its body comes to mind. One will define it by its trunk's properties. Another by its tail's. But the elephant remains and elephant all the same. Same I think can be said of consciousness, as well as of love.
Quoting Judaka
When it comes to the term's scientific definition, yes. But in everyday life most certainly not, and here the scientific interpretation is just one variant among many. Most will maintain that a coral, for example, is not an animal. And many adamantly hold that humans are not, this on the opposite side of the spectrum. To give just two examples of how "animal" doesn't hold universal attributes as abstraction among all people that utilize the term. (Even the typical scientist won't like it much if termed an animal by some other.) But yet when looked at more impartially, what an animal is can be pinpointed with relative stability, this as biology does. Of course, a main difficulty here is that love, unity of being, is not biological in any empirical sense but psychological and intangible. This, though, I argue does not make love either unreal or else unimportant (immaterial in this sense). As to its common property, I tried to already speak to this; namely, all forms of love will be a unity of being, differing in the specifics of between whom.
All this not so much in attempts to convince but more in keeping with sharing perspectives.
.
(Spoiler alert: the video refers to certain practices that may strike some individuals as being quite religious or even spiritual. For those, viewer discretion is advised. :snicker: )
Yet this Sufi understanding of love would then be entirely contingent on what one makes of, else how one interprets, the term God. For instance, if "God" is understood in a more Brahman-like way, then a mutually shared romantic love (with its erotic sex included) will be one aspect of love thus understood.
At any rate, the video presents what is to me a pleasant alternative to the often-touted motif that one ought to have fear of God. Love as longing for unity with God, as the Sufis can be said to hold, and, on the other hand, the need to constantly hold a fear of God will generally lead to two very disparate and in many ways contradictory worldviews. (Via a very rough analogy, loving one's parent is a very different form of respect than that which occurs via fearing one's parent.)
Apropos, what then do you make of the proposition that "love obliterates ego in due measure with it's strength"? Otherwise stated, that one looses oneself with the attribute of love in due measure to the love's strength. This furthermore varying with the type of love addressed.
Thanks for your reply! :smile:
Im not a Sufi or expert, but Ill go out on a limb and say that at the height of the experience, the Sufi merges with love, with the All.
They probably could get philosophical in quiet moments, and explain it in concepts.
But the being and experience seem primary, as I understand it.
But yes, a merging with the beloved that beyond sexual and personal seems to be a goal.
Quoting javra
Yes, well said! :up:
Quoting javra
Perhaps when the love is strong, it makes one forget any feelings of separation and loneliness?
Rumi must have written a poem about it! Lol.
As a side issue
I wonder if these Sufi practices and methods could be modified(?) to suit someone not comfortable with the whole God thing, which is understandable and common.
Buddhist meditation does not need to have a deity to focus on.
Maybe one could say they are seeking and (hopefully) merging with Pure Love, or something.
Who couldnt use a little transcendence now and then?
:grin: :up: I like that sentiment. But I don't have an answer as to the typical atheist's views on something like "Pure Love".
Quoting javra
What's determinative of that?
if I show evidence of different ways that the word is used, what could that accomplish? How would you respond?
Quoting javra
The term "consciousness" does not have truth conditions that differ by person, and as a concept remains consistent throughout the majority of contexts or circumstances. This is unlike either "love" or "pain", and the two important differences. Same with "elephant", "animal" and I think every other example you've brought up. I'd like to emphasise criticism throughout this thread, of the topic "what is love", has been about these two important differences.
Quoting javra
I suppose I can understand why you feel that way. In my view, "unity of being" is entirely your concept, and its only ethical and moral influences are your own. Each of us has our own views, the role of ethics only becomes apparent when you start taking into consideration the variety of views, and looking at their reasoning.
Quoting javra
Keep in mind that when you say "the inclination toward possessiveness in romantic love, or of domination in parental love", these are necessarily ethical views. For instance, in the West, what we consider "possessiveness" is less controlling than what exists as norms in some other cultures. These are more words with interpretations as part of their truth conditions, and these conditions are informed in part by ethics. You cannot separate "love" from "love" like this without involving ethics.
Linguistically, if "Unity of being" is "just good", then speakers will simply refuse to refer to anything they think can't be "good" using the term. A term can be innately moral, but it can't both be innately moral AND be absent moral agreement as a truth condition. It would mean speakers would have to refer to relationships or feelings that they thought were immoral, as moral, by referring to them as "Unity of being".
Another example. You said that "Unity of being" can emerge from Stockholm syndrome, and I'm sure you can appreciate, that's a controversial opinion. There will be those who disapprove. You may feel that by definition "Unity of being" is inarguably true, but you've also said "Unity of being" is "just good". Someone unsupportive of such a relationship can't justify their feelings while simultaneously agreeing that their feelings are "just good". Certainly, If I was put in such a position, I'd make "goodness" a truth condition. "If "Unity of being" is good, then logically, feelings borne of Stockholm syndrome cannot be "Unity of love", because feelings borne of manipulation and abuse cannot be good".
I hope you appreciate where I'm coming from here... Whether ethics plays a role in "Unity of being" conceptually or in application, it will play a significant role, it's unavoidable.
Just to remind both myself and you, I brought up ethics because I wanted to show that "love" is influenced by it, and this influence demonstrates that "love" is a concept influenced by our opinions and feelings. If not for ethics but some other reason, such as recognising the influence of Romeo and Juliet or Snow White, or Jesus Christ/Christianity etc.
Quoting javra
I'm okay with the co-existence of even mutually exclusive understandings of love because I view them as separate concepts.
Quoting javra
Aren't they just examples of people being wrong?
Quoting javra
The term lacks truth conditions that differ by person, and the truth conditions being fulfilled represent the meaning of the term. Sciences generally aim to avoid language that differs by person. There are both psychological terms and terms of intangible concepts that try to, with varying success, be ones that can be pinpointed impartially with relative stability. "Love" just isn't that, it's a word that expresses something deeply personal and important. It's not a word that a scientist or philosopher can design however they see fit. We don't want all words to be like "animal", it's necessary to have words like "love', they each have their role.