Overpowering, unconditional love
February 18th 2007 10:12
Random thoughts...
The Garbage song "#1 Crush" goes a little something like this:
What does it mean to act out of love? What is the extreme?
Is it crazy possessiveness? Is it blind obedience to the will of the loved one? Is it paternalism -- doing what's right for them regardless of whether they want it?
Is it killing them, then yourself, when you can't have them?
"Love" seems to fix the motive, but not the act.
While there's still a chance with Lolita, Humbert Humbert is obsessive, all-consumed; and when he can't have her, then there's nothing, it's over -- the logic of suicide is complete. He wills her his possessions, murders his rival, dies in prison.
The depiction of overpowering love can favour villainous characters. The action hero is always under suspicion of being a one-dimensional eagle scout: -- of course he'll rescue the damsel, but is it love, or is it mindless goodness, mindless morality?
Whereas the villainous prove their love, are moved despite their other impulses.
"The logic of suicide is complete." The moment of Lolita's refusal is also the despairing moment when Humbert Humbert sees his death -- confronts his uselessness, reduction. Without Lolita, he's a pretentious has-been with a funny name -- becomes simply a grown man crying.
The myth of overpowering love can favour losers -- it can ennoble them.
For love is tied to identity, if you love truly. In possessing the beloved, you attain perfection. In saving the beloved, you save yourself.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Lolita (1962 film). The image of Helen of Troy came from this website. The image of John Cusack as Craig Schwartz came from this website.
***
The Garbage song "#1 Crush" goes a little something like this:
| I would die for you. I would die for you. I've been dying just to feel you by my side. To know that you're mine... I will pray for you. I will pray for you. I will sell my soul for something pure and true. Someone like you... I would kill for you. I will steal for you. I'd do time for you... I'd sink ships for you... |
So how unconditional is unconditional love? How much do you love? To what extent does it triumph over other impulses?
Sure, you might kill yourself, and that's something. But would you torture and cannibalize for love? Would you detonate the rest of the world for love? Would you damn yourself to hell for love? -- And if you wouldn't, do you really love?
***
What does it mean to act out of love? What is the extreme?
Is it crazy possessiveness? Is it blind obedience to the will of the loved one? Is it paternalism -- doing what's right for them regardless of whether they want it?
Is it killing them, then yourself, when you can't have them?
"Love" seems to fix the motive, but not the act.
***
Whereas the villainous prove their love, are moved despite their other impulses.
***
Craig Schwartz -- as he's running -- he's sweating, panting -- his hair's flying -- he's pathetic, ridiculous. But the audience applauds the desperation. His whole personality is bent to the objective. Love is life.
The myth of overpowering love can favour losers -- it can ennoble them.
For love is tied to identity, if you love truly. In possessing the beloved, you attain perfection. In saving the beloved, you save yourself.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Lolita (1962 film). The image of Helen of Troy came from this website. The image of John Cusack as Craig Schwartz came from this website.
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Comment by katyzzz
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MS Paint Art
That's a very beautiful girl,
I'm a practical soul [well some of the time]. I don't believe in unconditional love, for fairly obvious reasons, but it sounds good to many....pipe dreams....get yourself a dog.
katyzzz
Comment by Ash
Flashes of memories
Personally I think unconditional love does not exist between lovers...one will always love the other more.
Unconditional love is something which lives in the ideal world, rather than the real world. You can always love someone unconditionally, however when their love does not meet your standards it will always have conditions attached to it....
Unconditional love between family? Another type of love that lives in the ideal world. Just because you are family, does not mean you have to love one another...just because...
Unconditional love between friends....well yes...until you cross the line and one turns against the other.
However, every now and again you may find one who loves YOU unconditionally...if you can meet them half way then you have found unconditional love....but didn`t you set conditions to find that unconditional love in the first place????
Comment by Miswanderlust
Killer Beats
Ramble On
Hipnotherapy
"Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love." Sri Yukteswar
I agree with Ash...how fortunate you would be if someone loves you unconditionally...and so rare.
Mis
Comment by Anonymous
See [my] face every place that I'm walking /
Hear [my] voice every time that I'm talking /
< I > will believe in me /
And I would never be ignored /
...
I would crawl on hands and knees /
Until < I > see... (<I'm> just like me~) /
I think her compulsion towards the language of obsession is just part of her attempts to gain higher self-awareness.
And no, I don't think there's such a thing as unconditional love...
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Thanks for reading! Sorry I've been lax with replies lately. Will try to catch up over this week.
Ms Katyzzz -- the character in the top image is Helen of Troy, from the recent movie. Personally, she's not my type. But it must be a very difficult thing for a casting director -- how do you find someone who can pass as the most beautiful woman in history?
I think unconditional love is quite possible myself, depending on what sorts of acts it's supposed to involve. If it's doing anything to obtain a person, well, maybe plenty of people have done that. If it's murdering, killing, etc to obey a person -- I think plenty of people have done this as well...
And what about God's love?
Dear Ash,
Responding just to your first para...
Well... Depends firstly on the exact fact situation.
1. The other case of extreme love in Being John Malkovich is of Cameron Diaz's character for Maxine. I don't remember the plot very well, but, near the end of the movie, she's chasing Maxine through Malkovich's memories, and trying to shoot her. In this case there was no threat beforehand -- it was just action and response.
But even if there had been a threat, would this mean that there are conditions set on love? -- Depends, I think, on one's conception of love. What it means to "act out of love".
-- Does love need to be a two-way street in order to count as love? Or can it be one-sided? Can I love you even if you don't love me?
-- Does love mean that I can't hate or hurt the loved object?
If there's been a threat, then I've gone to extremes to try to get you to stay with me -- and it probably implies that YOU don't love me. But need it say anything about whether I love you?
2. There's a Boris Karloff film... Hopefully Bryn will chime in and give me the name... Something about a surgeon who re-creates Edgar Allan Poe's torture devices, and becomes obsessed with a girl he's patched up. And when he can't have her, he tries to kill her.
In this case, the movie makes him out, I think, NOT to love truly. The impulse to love becomes subordinate to the impulse of revenge, or his own peace of mind. You're sort of sympathetic with his extremes until the last moment, when he decides to kill the girl as well..
So, I think that if the character is supposed to love truly, and has killed the loved object, the depiction of unconditional love requires you to kill YOURSELF afterwards.
Dear miswanderlust,
Personally, I don't know if such a power exists -- but I might grant that there's something to the idea that systems often move towards equilibrium.
There might be something to the idea that love is death.
Dear Anonymous,
I don't have much to say to that -- except that it's a very useful interpretation, in terms of jiving with the theme of love and identity, in loving the other you love yourself, etc.
But does the self have a self to love?
Comment by Damo
Eros, Philia or Agape?
English uses one word for all three which causes nothing but confussion.
Most destructive relationships are based on eros alone and are easily manipulated with guilt.
All love has conditions to exist and to be nurtured. So I would argue that the term unconditional love is very vague.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Re love...
I guess I'm talking about love like Santa Claus. I'm treating it as amounting to whatever people say about it -- regardless of whether there's a reality -- and regardless of whether there are finer distinctions that, for particular purposes, need to be made.
It's definitely a vague term. And it's possible that eros, philia, agape are a more accurate scientific description of what's going on (though I'm skeptical that they are).
What's the point of discussing the idea without talking about the reality? Well, because the currents of the idea are still interesting for other purposes. Are still an artifact of human language, psychology, society.
Re unconditional...
I guess I'm talking less about conditions of existence than about supremacy over other impulses.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
.. Love is so confusing (as Damo says) ...*lol* sure, some like it hot… ooh the exquisite ecstasy, the torture of it all ... personally? Whilst this is okay, I have always felt that unconditional love, also involves degrees of letting go between the passion (in order to grow). It's the ability to let someone go, that seals it as ‘unconditional’ in my mind. Quite the opposite to those darker emotions ... but that doesn’t make sense?
~oOo~
The Buddhists say it is unconditional: “When your love for someone outweighs your need for them.” The only problem with that is that people would never have babies would they? That’s okay if you're a Buddhist monk perhaps... *chuckling* seriously, there is some truth and wisdom here too ...
~oOo~
Perhaps this question is best summed up for me by Mother Theresa, when she said,
We cannot do great things,
We can only do little things with great love.
Lilla ...
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I think this is because you're coming from a conception of love as concern for the loved object's happiness, and respect for their choices.
I guess I'd claim that the word has wider meanings than this. -- I'd agree with you and Damo that it's very vague...
Dear Cibby,
This may be true, but if Humbert Humbert and Craig Schwartz weren't acting out of love, then what were they acting out of?
There is a complexity here about philosophy of mind in general and the meaning of words like "pain". Can pain be explicated purely in terms of behaviour? Or is it meaningful to talk about the mental state apart from the behaviour?
"Love" faces similar issues. Can love be treated as completely separate from actions?
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
I found the meaning of love through my mother, who, even though can get very disapointed in me over and over and over, still manages to call me her son and accept me into her home.
If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
And now these three remian: faith, hpe and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1 - 3, 13)
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Two comments in reply that won't do justice to your comment...
1. I find love and family relationships difficult to talk about... I mean, it's a vague concept to begin with. But, in a family context, as an impulse it's difficult to separate from piety/morality, and from instinct. Whereas I think that the concept of love is supposed to be distinct from these.
2. Re the Bible passage, the meaning of "love" there might be something like "charity". Wikipedia reckons: "Agape received a broader usage under later Christian writers as the word that specifically denoted 'Christian' love or 'charity' (1 Corinthians 13:1–8)".
Comment by Damo
No one could ever describe it fully.
And yet it is the only thing worth living for.
"Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend." Moody Blues.
I have to say that AE quote is one of my favorite.
We may know love from the time we are born but we learn it meaning over a lifetime.
Ask a you man if he knows what love is, then ask an old man.
Doing evil things in the name of love is a perversion. Like doing evil in the name of patriotism or doing evil that good may follow.
Most successful relationships work if the partners love each other equally. An unbalance love creates an unbalance relationship.
If love is terrible or essentially flawed then it should outlawed.
To imagine a world without love is to image what Hell must be like.
Comment by JoshZ
thanks for the inspiration......
JZ
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
If he'd been acting out of love, surely he should have put Lolita's needs first and given into desires. But his obsession with her won out.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Thank you for the comment.
Dear Kylie,
Well, eventually he did. He leaves her alone, wills her all his possessions, and goes off to do the suicidal revenge thing.
I think I'd probably agree with you that there's a potential difference between love and obsession. But I wonder whether, in practical terms, it's almost impossible to tell the difference.
Hey Damo,
I've just been listening to a Moody Blues song -- "Go now".
Here's another thought: maybe we never learn it, but it's only ever a "regulative ideal".
Trying to explain this idea... Kant talks about things called "antinomies", which are irresolvable discussions. There are good arguments for saying both that the world is finite and the world is infinite. But both assumptions are false. It's just that reason HAS to operate in terms of the one or the other.
Ie reason is "regulative" not "constitutive". It's a guide to how the world works, and is useful for operating in the world, but doesn't correspond to the world. Once you go beyond experience into the realm of pure ideas and start talking about issues like finite or infinite, caused or uncaused, then you pushing the instrument beyond where it's supposed to be applied.
Anyway, love might be the same -- regulative, not constitutive.
And you might get the same response! Gore Vidal maintains that he doesn't know what "love" means. He's experience like and lust, but not love, if it's supposed to be something distinct from these.
Well, in the case of Humbert Humbert, "love" is the label that the audience gives, rather than the character. We understand that his actions come out of love -- so it's not that he's hiding behind the word.
Don't you believe that love CAN lead to evil things? Why shouldn't it?
Some feminists doubt the existence of love, so I'm told. They think it's just a patriarchal lie designed to make women subservient.
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
- love (between man and women): is the selfish feeling of need for the other...
Remark, there is somethiing to do with the feeling you have for the people you care about (if you need, you care about...), but it is not the same....
cheers
Comment by Damo
Okay I've just come home and read your reply.
You quote Gore, Vidal, Kant, Humbert impressively but then you blew it with the statement of 'some femanists think'. You lose 2 points for not naming the femanists you are refereing to. Sorry but my teacher were just as harsh with me and I learn fast.
Anyway I make no claims about my knowledge of these people's teaching any more than I know about Taoism or Shintuism. So I can only address what you have given me.
Love is an emotion not a projection of logic. Taking a ratioinist approach to emotions is very irrational. You feel emotions, you experience emotions and then you decide if they are good. Love is like the greatest of all addictions. Once you have had it you would do anything give up anything to protect it. Love can be craved by those who want it and rejected by those that have it.
For me it is perfectly rational to chose to enjoy the irrationality of Love. If it is just a dream or a trick I am happy to be tricked.
Anyone can say that they do not believe but love is an assassin that can strike without warning. It comes hunting and you cannot escape.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I reckon your teachers should have taught you that source often doesn't matter.
Well, I think we mostly agree. My detour into the Kantian discussion of reason was to make the regulative vs constitutive analogy, rather than to draw a link between love and reason. Another way to say this is: love is an ideal (or as you've said, a dream or a trick), just like perfect happiness is an ideal -- it's something to aim at, or which you use to guide your actions, but it might not be something you can ever get.
"What is an emotion" is perhaps a discussion for another time, but one reason to be skeptical that love fits neatly into the category is that there's various ways in which it's unlike paradigmatic emotions like joy, sadness, fear, anger. For instance, these other states sweep over you, and are gone; whereas love is, among other things, supposed to be a connection that can last years.
A thought...
You talked about philia, agape, eros... Well, there's no room in this category system for romantic love. I've never read CS Lewis speaking about "the allegory of love" or the four loves, but I imagine he makes the same point.
If the Greeks operated without a concept of romantic love, and if the Japanese still do, this might raise a suspicion. Perhaps romantic love doesn't exist; or perhaps, it's not a "natural kind" in the same way that gold and fig trees are natural kinds.
In this case it could be many things. It could be a shorthand way of talking about a complex mix of affection, tenderness, attraction, etc. Or some feminists could be right, and it could be sheer imagination, in the same way that talk of ether, phlogiston, and the four humours has been discarded as imaginary.
Comment by Damo
In response to this statement I can ask what makes a femanist more qualified than a non-femanist? Do all femanist agree with this assertion? Also I would say that they cannot prove this assertion, let alone gain any popular support for the concept. Overwhelmingly the world does believe in Love and believe that it is the most crucial thing in life.
I will make the distiction between someone being inLove with Love in general. Dostoyevski, one of my favorite writters, argues that being in love is real. A person does not believe that they are in love, they do not guess it, but they know it beyond all question.
Other kinds of love do exist and are just as powerful but not as confronting as eros. Yet all forms have a special status as being both real and crucial. Some people have tried to argue that it is just a FIF (funny inner feeling) yet I would side against such people. Yet I am without evidence to prove my case. It is its own proof and cannot be measured rationally. Nor can it be disproved rationally.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
There's a lot to respond to in your comment, and I'm fearfully short of time. I'm mainly going to write some thoughts about evidence.
Arguments for denying love I want to leave for another time, partly because they're weighed down with prior issues of defining love. But I'll just suggest here: (a) that "eros" refers to sexual desire; (b) that popular belief and the number of people one convinces are irrelevant to the truth of whether love does or doesn't exist; (c) that love can be denied for the same reasons God and unicorns can be denied; and (d) that if your position is that love "is its own proof and cannot be measured rationally", then I'd suggest that you'd have to grant that it's a reasonable position to be atheistic with respect to love.
One reason I'd like to dwell on this point is that I think it's important for understanding this blog.
Basically, I don't think the statement "Some feminists believe love is a patriarchal lie" should be treated as evidence! I think you're reading it the wrong way.
And similarly, whenever I quote anyone, the name is irrelevant to the argument or the idea. The speech should be considered distinct from the sayer. Philosophy doesn't argue from authority. It doesn't say Kant was a genius, and therefore whatever he said is persuasive. It doesn't use arguments along the lines of, "The majority of philosophers believe x, and so x is the better view." It worried me that you spoke earlier about quoting "impressively".
If there is no empirical matter stated, then a claim about the non-existence of love belongs at best to the pre-empirical, or even the non-empirical -- it's not a factual claim, but an idea to be toyed with.
It's not the same sort of statement as "Most scientists believe that water is H2O." But it's closer to, "The other day, I was listening to some Italians, and they believed that the recent proof of Fermat's theorem was mistaken. Their argument was..." The fact of Italianness is irrelevant, incidental. The point is the argument -- or, as in the feminist case, where no argument is given, the idea.
The "Some feminists" part might just as well have been omitted from "Some feminists believe love is a lie". "Some feminists" was not an appeal to authority (such that one can ask "which scientists?" "what were their methods?"). The "some feminists" amounts to vague additional information, just like Italianness, that's irrelevant to the idea itself (so that there's no point asking whether a feminist is more qualified than a non-feminist, or whether all feminists believe this).
But if you're curious to follow up who actually says this, and how they make their case, I have one reference to hand. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy has an entry on love by Dr Paul Gilbert (University of Hull):
He gives no supporting references, apart from a referral to the entry on feminism, and a mention of the book "The nature of love" by Irving Singer (Chicago, 1989).
Comment by JoshZ
I found this poem. Hound Of Heaven by Francis Thompson. Thought you might like it.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet I was sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden - to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover -
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet: -
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat -
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at had the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherfore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I make much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited -
Of all man's clotted clay, the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come."
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
JZ