On Love and Loving

    Love is a bizarre concept (and by love, I mean romantic love, not familial love). At its heart is the strange idea that the object of your love is somehow unique and thus, uniquely deserving of your love. Our love for a particular individual cannot be reduced to set of characteristics, or, at least not very easily. Consider the person you love, then imagine they were abducted by aliens, dissected, and a complete and perfect copy was returned to you. Would you feel the same? Almost certainly not. We are stuck in the situation where we the fundamental reason for our action is "Jane is Jane."
    It is this aspect of love that, I think, gives rise to the widespread idiocy...er, belief in fate, destiny, and "the one." Love cannot really operate if you say, "meh, you are simply one among many, there has to be some kind of claim of specialness, of uniqueness (and we'll get into why that is in a moment)." But, looking objectively, it is hard to see what (beyond pheromones) could sustain that kind of claim.
    This fundamental mystery will only become enlightened if we first determine what love is. I think we can quickly reject the idea that love is simply an emotion. Emotions are fundamentally self-regarding. "I am afraid of X, or I lust after Y" have objects that we really don't care about, except insofar as they cause, or can relieve that particular desire or emotion. But love isn't like that because we care about the other person and what that person thinks. This is, I think, analogous to friendship, which really can't be reduced to a set of desires and emotions.
    So, we now move to the natural position that love is relational. That is, love is characterized by two people having a particular kind of relationship. Presumably, lovers have a certain history of behaving towards one another, taking one another's needs into account, and acting in a linked manner. I think this is the predominant philosophical view of love. Korsgaard remarks that love involves people becoming a "Kingdom of Two." Love involves an enmeshing of wills, a combining of projects. In fact, many critics of love often point to this aspect: the annihilation of the individual selves amongst lovers.
    While this is the predominant view of love and I think incorporates many correct intuitions about love, it is fundamentally flawed. Why? Because it is perfectly coherent to love someone and not be loved in return, which is not the case with friendship. In fact, there is often something pure and admirable about loving someone regardless of whether you are loved back. This is not the same as an emotion where you simply don't care about the object, but you are simply saying, "I understand and respect you not loving me, but it does change the fact that I love you." Keep this in mind later when we talk about stalking.
    My account is then fundamentally about attitudes. Loving is not  a matter of having a special kind of linked, historical relationship, but by taking up a special kind of attitude towards a person. In particular, you take up a special attitude of value towards another person. This may seem counter-intuitive since it does certainly matter whether love is reciprocated or not, but I do believe my theory can explain this.
    Importantly, my discussion of love can account for the fundamentally moral nature of love. And this is what separates stalking from unrequited loving. When you come to lovingly value someone, this involves an intensified respect of, and caring for (actually, I think there are interesting connections with this account and Stephen Darwall's Caring Theory of Welfare) the wishes and projects of your love. So stalking is the very antithesis of love, which I think is utterly the correct answer. Those people who say to their abuser or stalker, "But he really loves me" are simply wrong-headed or confused.
    But again, is it problematic to my account that love is generally more valued when it is reciprocated? I mean, if love is primarily an issue of valuing another being, then why should it be intensified if it is reciprocated? I think this objection is misplaced because it assumes that you are valuing is the same thing in the unrequited situation as you are in the reciprocated situation. When you love someone, you take up the attitude that your lover exhibits a certain, special kind of value (and this is different from friendship, which I think is importantly based on an historical relationship), but when that love is reciprocated you can come to additionally value the shared life, the particular relationship. But love is not simply reducible to that shared life ("I love the life we have had together" vs. "I love you").
    And has the mystery been solved? Kind of, but it has been resolved more by dissolution than by resolution. It is an empirical manner how we come to fall in love. But we can see that loving is not contingently connected to making that leap of faith about the unique value of others: it is a constitutive element of love. But it is not irrational (in the sense we have no reason to do it) to make that leap: love allows for an intimacy with other human beings that does not and cannot be common. Love allows us to move beyond ourselves (not completely) and engage in something above and beyond ourselves.
    This is, of course, rather bloodless and analytical. Let me just say that I have been in love (for certain) only once in my life. It was euphoric, and it reflects the only time I moved beyond pleased and content to glowingly happy. I am sill feeling the psychic effects of those few months.
    I find it impossible to imagine that this is a common experience. And I do not comprehend someone cheating on a person they love or those who say that it comes instantly, but whatever. If this post reveals anything, it reveals that I am somewhat confused about love. What I am not confused about, or at all uncertain, is that the tern is bandied about far too often and far too recklessly. Loving is not common; it is extraordinary. And those who will cheapen it with insincerity are deserving of contempt. All I want to do is to think about it seriously.

Comments

[Surly the Hamster]

I love cookies.

[Caligula]

FOR KATHLEEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE
by sgi

Love
Is a condition of grace,
A gift
From higher sources
Melded with the better instincts
We always carry within ourselves,
But often suppress
To survive an imperfect world,
And it allows us mortals
To tread
At least some moments
In our ragtag lives
Along the path
Of the gods.
--December 24, 1987

[CP]

Great post. I've always wanted to write something on love (did attempt but failed). I would always get overly attached to the defense of what is commonly portrayed as love that a logical argument cannot possibly form.

1. That's interesting how you described love as an attitude rather than a relation. But first of all, what is an attitude? If attitude is a type of value ("a special attitude of value towards another person") I think that it brings you back to what is "relational." Relational isn't only history or a link between two persons but also the value it has been built into. Just like the effect of being a social entity, a previously or naturally non-existed value(s) rise up. A certain "goodness" is attributed to the lover.

2. Would you also consider this?: Love as an emotion via extension of 'likeness'. A degree of likeness? In this case, not being loved but still loving makes sense because it is self-regarding. If you're lucky, both share the likeness for each other. Or maybe this is the step before love, what is attraction. ;-)

3. What about the fading away of love? Is it the disappearance of the value? Or an additional value that lessens to first? How about true love doesn't go away like a stuckup Republican value?

4. Now this leads to my argument as love being socially constructed, doesn't it? Well, now I reject everything I said above because love is innate and fundamental, and eventually the source of all power.