Reflections on love
September 2nd 2006 06:35
Disconnected reflections. All questions and no conclusions.
When I first thought about love, long ago, I asked such questions as, Do I love her? How would I know? And why do I love her? And what is love?
Harry says to Sally:
"I love that you get cold when it's seventy one degrees out, I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich, I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts, I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Years Eve. I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as possible."
Now, Harry here explains his love. But there is an ambiguity.
Derrida in the Derrida movie asks what is effectively this question: Does Harry love Sally because of Sally's qualities, or does Harry love Sally's qualities because of Sally?
Plato thinks the former. And this is very natural. It's natural to say that I love you because you're so fucking gorgeous, and so intelligent, etc. But isn't love supposed to be deeper than this? If you "love" someone for their qualities, no matter how particularized, you open yourself to what Robert Nozick identifies as the "trade up" problem -- you'll trade up as soon as a better model comes around.
On the other hand, how can you love someone other than for their qualities? Don't we stop loving people when they change? Isn't the person the sum of their qualities?
Years and years ago, I used to think, "Love is a spiritual understanding that necessitates a bond of care."
I was trying to make sense of romantic discourse.
"Spiritual", because of the qualities/person problem -- souls are a convenient essence behind the attributes. And "bond of care" because "understanding" by itself seems too cerebral to catch what it means to love.
And I still think that something like this is behind the concept of romance.
But is there anything like this behind romance itself?
Can't you love without spirits?
Nozick on love: your own well-being gets tied up with someone else's; you're happy when they're happy, you ache when they ache. The intention of romantic love is to form a we.
Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium: We were originally a race with four arms and four legs. The gods split us, and, ever since then, we have been searching for our lost half.
"Jerry Maguire": "You complete me".
Conversation with Slavoj Zizek -- 15 April 2005, in Syracuse, New York, during the "St Paul Among the Philosophers" conference.
At the very end of it, Zizek discusses Alain Badiou, who apparently said something along the lines of: "'I love you' is not an epistemological decision. It's not a recognition of something in you, nor a recognition of something in me."
What is it then?
A promise? A choice?
Perhaps we bind ourselves, without knowing to what.
Words like "tall" have perspective built in. Words like "something" have uncertainty or vagueness built in.
What if love is not a neurochemical or psychological condition, nor an agreement or contract, nor a behavioural tendency, nor an understanding of spirit. What if it were an ideal, unapproachable, and simply stands for what is most desired, the perfect condition.
In this case, it could offer hints, but never anything solid.
People, after all, are stubborn about not defining love. "Limiting" ideals, by their nature, cannot be spelled out, cannot be described.
Professor Roger T Ames, in a program on Eastern philosophy, remarks that when you speak of being clearer about your love for someone, the tools of reason aren't necessarily appropriate. You can't simply produce 42 reasons why you love them. It's not that sort of clarity.
Well, what sort of thing is love if it's unable to be clarified by reason? And what sort of tools would be appropriate to clarify it?
Is Ames wrong? I can get rationally clearer about makes me angry. Can't I rationally clarify what causes my love?
And can't I quantify my anger? "When I'm pissed off, I'll do x." And can't I similarly quantify my love?
Some think that "self" is not found in your consciousness. Rather, it is the unity of consciousness.
So is it possible that love, also, is outside the conscious field or part of the field's structure? That it lies in the alteration of self, in the alteration of what you perceive and how.
***
When I first thought about love, long ago, I asked such questions as, Do I love her? How would I know? And why do I love her? And what is love?
***
Harry says to Sally:
"I love that you get cold when it's seventy one degrees out, I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich, I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts, I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Years Eve. I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as possible."
Now, Harry here explains his love. But there is an ambiguity.
Derrida in the Derrida movie asks what is effectively this question: Does Harry love Sally because of Sally's qualities, or does Harry love Sally's qualities because of Sally?
Plato thinks the former. And this is very natural. It's natural to say that I love you because you're so fucking gorgeous, and so intelligent, etc. But isn't love supposed to be deeper than this? If you "love" someone for their qualities, no matter how particularized, you open yourself to what Robert Nozick identifies as the "trade up" problem -- you'll trade up as soon as a better model comes around.
On the other hand, how can you love someone other than for their qualities? Don't we stop loving people when they change? Isn't the person the sum of their qualities?
***
Years and years ago, I used to think, "Love is a spiritual understanding that necessitates a bond of care."
I was trying to make sense of romantic discourse.
"Spiritual", because of the qualities/person problem -- souls are a convenient essence behind the attributes. And "bond of care" because "understanding" by itself seems too cerebral to catch what it means to love.
And I still think that something like this is behind the concept of romance.
But is there anything like this behind romance itself?
Can't you love without spirits?
***
Nozick on love: your own well-being gets tied up with someone else's; you're happy when they're happy, you ache when they ache. The intention of romantic love is to form a we.
Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium: We were originally a race with four arms and four legs. The gods split us, and, ever since then, we have been searching for our lost half.
"Jerry Maguire": "You complete me".
***
Conversation with Slavoj Zizek -- 15 April 2005, in Syracuse, New York, during the "St Paul Among the Philosophers" conference.
At the very end of it, Zizek discusses Alain Badiou, who apparently said something along the lines of: "'I love you' is not an epistemological decision. It's not a recognition of something in you, nor a recognition of something in me."
What is it then?
A promise? A choice?
Perhaps we bind ourselves, without knowing to what.
***
Words like "tall" have perspective built in. Words like "something" have uncertainty or vagueness built in.
What if love is not a neurochemical or psychological condition, nor an agreement or contract, nor a behavioural tendency, nor an understanding of spirit. What if it were an ideal, unapproachable, and simply stands for what is most desired, the perfect condition.
In this case, it could offer hints, but never anything solid.
People, after all, are stubborn about not defining love. "Limiting" ideals, by their nature, cannot be spelled out, cannot be described.
***
Professor Roger T Ames, in a program on Eastern philosophy, remarks that when you speak of being clearer about your love for someone, the tools of reason aren't necessarily appropriate. You can't simply produce 42 reasons why you love them. It's not that sort of clarity.
Well, what sort of thing is love if it's unable to be clarified by reason? And what sort of tools would be appropriate to clarify it?
Is Ames wrong? I can get rationally clearer about makes me angry. Can't I rationally clarify what causes my love?
And can't I quantify my anger? "When I'm pissed off, I'll do x." And can't I similarly quantify my love?
***
Some think that "self" is not found in your consciousness. Rather, it is the unity of consciousness.
So is it possible that love, also, is outside the conscious field or part of the field's structure? That it lies in the alteration of self, in the alteration of what you perceive and how.
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Comment by Anonymous
Helen.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I have sympathy with your view that love is not valuable without commitment.
But commitment and love are different things, right? You can have one without the other.
And is there a time when, though you still love, you'd should give up the commitment? I'll write a brief blog on this idea tomorrow. But, basically, I'm suggesting that sometimes love can be destructive. And no matter how much the pressure to persist with it, the right thing to do is to count your losses and fold.
Comment by Maramara
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I sometimes agree with you. I sometimes think that it's too vague a word to mean anything -- perhaps akin to the word "nice". So, for the sake of clarity, it may be better to avoid using the word altogether.
But I also think that people mean something when they speak of love. It might be very unclear, and they themselves might not know what they mean. But I think there is some sort of value to investigating what they might mean (as I've tried to do in this post).
I personally try to avoid using the word, along with such words as "philosophy", "democracy", "intelligence", "science", "maturity"...
Comment by Anonymous
The inadequacies (and cliches) of language (English) render a definition useless - there can only be action now, I think.
Love is what love looks like... not what it sounds like.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Tell you a secret, but you're not allowed to tell anyone.
On the night I lost my virginity, I may have referred to that passage, and may have said something like "In the words of Umberto Eco, I do love you."
Comment by Anon again (Miranda)
If all language is filtered through our own individual socio-political experience we think there is a chance of finding an authentic meaning - but Nietzsche would tell you that there are only so many throws of a dice - life's options are finite. You won't find 'new' meaning.
Stop looking.
You can probe love like a haruspex but you'll find nothing but the mechanics - the experience (as inauthentic as it is) reveals itself as the sum of its parts.
The mystery of love is that it's indefinable - you can never 'know' it but you can act like you do.
Last night I told my partner, "In the words of Adrian, I love you". She wanted to know who Adrian was and why he loved her. I said I was looking for a new way to express myself and that the only way I could was to quote someone new, someone she hadn't heard me speak of before.
The problem with this is, 'Adrian' holds no sway in our house... but Umberto does.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I sometimes quote me as well, and I don't hold any sway in my household either.
Lots to say in reply, but will try to keep it brief.
I certainly have sympathy with the gist of what you say, which I'm reading as: (1) it's often better to love than to talk about love; and (2) talking about love is often futile -- the concept is undefinable (and some of the ideas in my post above also circle around this idea of indefinability).
So I sympathize… But I'm still going to talk about it, even if I think that the project is doomed (and even if I never speak of it to my partner).
I guess I sort of see it this way.
On the one hand there is the hope that it's definable after all, or the worry that, rather than indefinable, it's meaningless. (For instance, words like "terrorism", in their meaninglessness, are an excuse for arbitrary exercise of power; and it's been asserted that the love myth is like Naomi Woolf's beauty myth -- another fiction designed to oppress women).
On the other hand, even if one thinks it indefinable, there can be impulses to speak. Reminds me of Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill, even though it's going to roll down again; or Atticus Finch defending a black man though he knows he's going to lose; or existentialists giving themselves purposes in life even though they think life is meaningless.
The impulse to speak is, for me, partly a desire to preserve, to catch experience in words. It's partly curiosity -- the desire to understand, to catch an experience in thought. And I wonder also if it's in love that I speak about love -- if love is something that courses through the physical parts of your life, and this obsessional speech and reflection is one of the symptoms.
So what I'm suggesting is that even if you think to yourself, and you know in your bones, that you won't succeed in talking about love, there might still be some sense or some reason to the attempt.
Comment by Anon again (Miranda)
The polarity of the love discourse is frustrating - love is all there is - love is meaningless. The curiosity about what lies in between may be the death of me!
I have just ordered, 'The New Psychology of Love' by Sternberg - hoping to find a few more ideas to sustain my obsession.
ps - this is my first blog/comment experience
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Hope your first blog experience was entertaining, and (if this is the last exchange on this topic) thanks very much for taking the time to comment.
I was thrilled when you said you entirely agreed, and when you described your frustration. There's a thrill for me in knowing that I'm not alone. It's so surprising to meet someone who thinks similarly.
Comment by Joy
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I think I love to overanalyze... And sometimes, when you beat your head against a wall, it's the wall that gives way.
Thanks Joy!
Yours is actually the first comment I've received on an old post, and it's really great to know that this stuff hasn't completely vanished into the ether!
Comment by Joy