The Blog: Cogito Ergo Blogo
What Is (This Thing Called) Love?
21 April, 2012, 09:19 pm
Posted by LM.
Many of us have been in love, and there have been countless great poems and popular songs written about it. So you’d think we’d all know what it is. Yet a lot of what has been written points to a deep mystery. So—as Cole Porter famously asked—what is this thing called love?
Love is often portrayed as a powerful force, something that can inspire greatness in the lover. Alternatively, it is something that can make the lover act like a fool. Love can be the greatest feeling in the world, but it can also be utterly devastating when it doesn’t work out. How many love songs are really about heartbreak over love lost? Listen to a few, and it’s a wonder we ever love at all.
Given these observations, we might be inclined to think that there’s a significant element of irrationality to love. But we should be careful here, as perhaps love can have reasons too. For example, if you have a significant other, you could probably list off a bunch of reasons for your love: your partner is kind, intelligent, funny, and so on. If you loved someone who was mean, stupid, and boring, that would be irrational. But, presumably, many of us have great reasons for loving who we love, which shows that sometimes love is actually quite rational.
It would be wise to pause, though, to consider whether or not we ever actually love for the reasons we give. Perhaps the truth is that we first find ourselves in love, and then come up with reasons to justify our feelings. Just because we can provide reasons for feeling the way we do about a particular person, it doesn’t follow that we see reasons for loving first, and then develop feelings based on those reasons.
Think of it this way—falling in love because you’ve come up with a list of good reasons doesn’t sound very romantic. It sounds cold and calculating, not something we might even want to dignify with the label “love.” Moreover, it paints a picture that suggests we can rationally deliberate and decide who to love, but for most people, I’d bet that’s not how they actually experience love.
While this might not be how most people experience love, of course, it doesn’t follow that it’s not possible to fall in love for reasons. After all, what we consciously experience does not necessarily reveal the true underlying mechanisms at work. It would be surprising, for example, if the reasons you came up with for loving your significant other—the qualities that make this person so lovable—turned out to be completely irrelevant to your feelings.
Even if we don’t consciously decide to fall in love, it makes sense to think we respond to particular qualities we perceive in others, and we fall in love because of those qualities. That seems to suggest that love is at least potentially rational. However, we should also point out that even if we admit that love can have causes, and that a person’s particular qualities can explain why we love that person, it doesn’t follow that love is therefore rational. An avalanche has causes too, and those causes explain why the avalanche happens, but that doesn’t make an avalanche rational.
So there’s a lot to talk about on this week’s show. What exactly is love? Why do we love? Can we decide whom to love? Is love ever rational? Would we be better off without it?
Those are just some of the questions that come up when we’re talking about romantic love. I haven’t even mentioned any other kinds of love. We can love our friends, our children, our community, even our country. We can also talk about loving more abstract things, like justice, beauty, or wisdom, which raises even more issues. Is there something that all of these different kinds of love have in common? And which kinds of love are most essential to a well-lived life?
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Comments
It may be difficult to surpass the words of wisdom of Bertrand Russell on this topic: "Love at its fullest is an indissoluble combination of the two elements, delight and well-wishing. The pleasure of a parent in a beautiful and successful child combines both elements; so does sex-love at its best. But in sex-love benevolence will only exist where there is secure possession, since otherwise jealousy will destroy it, while perhaps actually increasing the delight in contemplation. Delight without well-wishing may be cruel; well-wishing without delight easily tends to become cold and a little superior. A person who wishes to be loved wishes to be the object of a love containing both elements ... (What I Believe, 1925).
GIVING LOVE
1. Love of, and by, a person is distinguished from all other uses of the word “love.”
2. There is bestowing love, and receiving love.
3. The power of love is felt by everyone, except almost by definition, the sociopath.
How is it “felt?” As an awareness of the wonderful-ness that we have the ability - the blessed gift – to give our love to another. We can only bask in the warmth of another’s love of us, because we know what love is as an awareness of something we possess to give.
Note: Philosophers should not get caught up in taxonomies of consciousness: trying to define and quantify the concepts: emotions, feelings, beliefs, intentions. When our hosts say love has all these qualities, they are just showing the hopelessness of this kind of taxonomic inquiry. Another example is using love to include as objects: sex, flowers, music, exercise, pancakes, etc. “Consciousness” is the only term we need; forget “science”; now, get on with philosophizing.
Ken’s “Marriage is a theater of commitment,” born of love, maybe, but which survives its absence, is a very good definition in these days when marriage needs a definition. Excellent, Ken; thank you.
"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends" (1 Cor 13:4-8).
Love is a self-less rejoicing in the goodness of another, which goodness reflects truth. And this truth encompasses all aspects and modes of being of that other. Moreover, it seeks to bring about that goodness, to separate it from anything which hinders its manifestation, and share it; thus the end of love is a friendship or community of complete charity. Love does not seek reciprocality but must remain a fundamental act of giving. Yet true love, love which abides by all the traits above, always yields a friendship in which we might participate in the ultimate goodness and truth of life, viz. God, who is, as metaphysics states, pure life-giving act and the first cause of all being. God is love, essentially as existentially. This love is always rational, as it comes about from a rational being, the human being. It neither is attributed to either the intellect or the will alone, but a conformity of the will to the intellect, which recognizes the goodness and truth and which commands the will to desire. In this sense, we are generally attracted to good and true things, but we must also choose them and act upon them. But not all desires are love, nor is love simply a desire. This notion of love must be separated from lust, concupiscence, and lower forms of friendship (such as utility or circumstantial). True love is unconditional, rational, selfless, and romantic. True love is evoked because of the goodness and truth in being itself, which being is fundamentally an act (from biology to psychology) of self-giving (from cellular respiration to shared contemplation). True love is a participation in divine goodness and being.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (1 Co 13:4–8). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Love is the energy of truth
Light
True Love
=
Love is preservation of the species. Any species. At any level of consciousness. It is, what?---elemental to survival? I think so, but greater minds have said so. Love may be, in some degree, an extended phenotype, and if so, would support Dawkins' notion(s) regarding such. But, on reflection, love---whatever it is---probably existed before any extended phenotypes ever manifested themselves. This may be another chicken/egg kind of argument---but no, I think not. Is love the energy of truth? Is it light? I cannot say. But it seems essential. We are, after all, still here... Hmmmmph.
I have always subscribed to the idea that 'Love is a Verb'. Where does action fit in with intention, emotion, and cognition?
Very interesting comments.
It seems Thomas S. has fallen victim to a horribly mangled translation of St. Paul (indeed, any appearance of the word "love" in the New Testament points to a mistranslation since the Greeks had no equivalent). Love depends on a proper balance between selfishness and unselfishness. Can anyone honestly say that they loved someone without wishing to be loved in return?
The connection between love and light is intriguing. Love and sunlight are essential for life and happiness, yet neither exists (just as a pile of rocks does not exist without the rocks). Sunlight has no identifying wavelength or frequency of vibration; however, each of its components does. For example, each color of the rainbow has its own measurable properties (although, while I was still in high school, the physicists were disputing whether indigo, between the blue and violet, is a color in the rainbow).
Michael is a dreamer; a hopeless romantic, I'd venture...Neuman is a cynic; scientific in approach, but a cynic nonetheless. But all is well. Because the world fosters and encourages both, without so much as a twitch. And this is how it must be, I think, because we are all equal parts cynic and hopeless romantic. I am intrigued by Neuman's reference to Dawkins' extended phenotype notion. The whole concept of extended phenotype is fascinating, if not brilliant. Dawkins tends to elicit these sorts of reactions from thinking people. And just so, then---love is just what it is. We learn it. Continue to learn it, ergo, it must be important. Is it important, yea, crucial, to the survival of species? It would seem so. Why else would we make such an ado over an emotional response?
Why, indeed... Maybe it IS in our genes, and if so, well then, why not? How on Earth did this all happen? Well...
As Mirugai has aptly pointed out, taxonomy has its place(s). Biology is a good one. Philosophy? Not so much. Neuman's assessment might be best, to date. Much research on beings human and those not appears to substantiate the need for love. Or attention. Or, at least, interest. Living species that have survived (discounting the more simple life forms, of course) have required some variant of 'attentiveness' in order to prosper and continue to reproduce. I have read Dawkins, Wilson, Diamond, SJ Gould and many others. They all have their particular attributes as scientists and investigators. And, they all have their particular biases. And, you know, that is how we are.
Let's not forget the poets; Shelley, for instance:
"All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever ...."
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