Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage How is love different from lust or infatuation? Do love and marriage really go together “like a horse and carriage”? Does sex have any necessary connection to either? And how important are love, sex, and marriage to a well-lived life? In the Second Edition of this lively, lucid, and comprehensive book, Raja Halwani explores and elucidates the nature, uses, and ethics of romantic love, sexuality, and marriage. It is structured in three parts: • Love examines the nature of romantic love and how it differs from other types of love, such as friendship and parental love. It also investigates the relationship of love to morality and asks what limits morality puts on romantic love and even whether romantic love is inherently moral. • Sex demonstrates the diffi culty in defi ning sex and the sexual, and examines what constitutes good and bad sex in terms of pleasure, “naturalness,” and moral permissibility. It discusses the nature of sexual desire and its connection to objectifi cation and virtue, all the while looking at specifi c sexual engagements such as pornography, BDSM, and raced desires. • Marriage traces the history of the institution and describes the various forms in which marriage exists and the reasons why people marry. It also investigates the necessity of marriage and ways in which it requires reform. Updates and Revisions in the Second Edition • Expands the coverage of love and morality from one to two chapters, incorporating much of the recent literature on love as a moral emotion. • Includes a new chapter on sex and virtue ethics. • Ends each of the chapters on sex with an “applied” topic, such as pornography, BDSM, prostitution, racial sexual desires, and adultery. • Increases coverage of the nature and purpose of marriage, including debates surrounding same-sex marriage, but also moving beyond these debates to include issues on minimal marriage, temporary marriage, polygamy, and other forms of marriage. • Updates the Further Reading and Study Questions sections at the end of each chapter and provides an up-to-date comprehensive bibliography at the back of the book. • Includes new discussions of topics on the nature of love; love and reasons; distinctions between two types of romantic love; love and its connections to moral theories; defi nitions of crucial sexual concepts; objectifi cation; virtue and sex; racial sexual desires; and the defi nition of marriage and whether it is important as an institution. Raja Halwani is Professor of Philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the lead editor of The Philosophy of Sex, Seventh Edition (2017), a co-editor of Queer Philosophy (2012), co-author of The Israeli–Palestinian Confl ict (2008), the editor of Sex and Ethics (2007), and the author of Virtuous Liaisons (2003).
“ Raja Halwani tackles these important subjects with characteristic energy, incisiveness, and wit. Even where you disagree with him, you learn from him. This book deserves a wide audience. ” — John Corvino, Wayne State University “ Skillfully combines meticulous philosophical analysis of contemporary romantic and sexual mores with vivid, earthy examples of the problems and permutations of actually living them. ” — Jane O’Grady, City University London, Times Higher Education “ A provocative and immensely helpful introduction to this area . . . I recommend it. ” —Christian Perring, Metapsychology Online Reviews Praise for the First Edition
Praise for the Second Edition “Halwani’s book is rigorously argued, admirably comprehensive, and unafraid to explore the darker sides of love and sex. In this updated edition, he brings his astute critical sense to bear on the last decade’s rich crop of new work on sex, gender, polyamory, and marriage. The result is fi rst rate.” —Ronald de Sousa, University of Toronto
Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage An Introduction Second Edition Raja Halwani
Second edition published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Raja Halwani to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2010 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-28014-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-28020-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27239-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 PART I Love 7 1 What Is Romantic Love? 9 Outline of the Chapter 9 Preliminaries 9 What Is the Nature of Romantic Love? 10 RL1 and RL2 20 Is RL1 Infatuation? 23 Love and Reasons 26 Summary and Conclusion 43 Study Questions 43 Further Reading 44 2 The Characteristics and the Object of Love 47 Outline of the Chapter 47 The Characteristics of Romantic Love 47 The Characteristics of Romantic Love and Other Forms of Love 77 The Object of Love 81 The Different Bases of Love 86 Summary and Conclusion 89 Study Questions 89 Further Reading 91
viii Contents 3 Love and Morality 93 Outline of the Chapter 93 Love and Morality 93 Love and Moral Theories 97 Moral Restrictions on Love 107 Summary and Conclusion 115 Study Questions 115 Further Reading 116 4 Is Love a Moral Emotion? 118 Outline of the Chapter 118 Preliminaries 118 Romantic Love as a Moral Emotion 119 Love as Robust Concern for Moral Well-Being 138 The Prudence of Love 143 Summary and Conclusion 151 Study Questions 152 Further Reading 153 PART II Sex 155 5 What Is Sex? 157 Outline of the Chapter 157 Some Sexual Defi nitions 157 Defi ning Casual Sex, Adultery, and Prostitution 175 Summary and Conclusion 188 Study Questions 188 Further Reading 189 6 Sex, Pleasure, and Consequentialism 191 Outline of the Chapter 191 Sexual Pleasure and Other Values of Sex Acts 191 Sex and Morality 199 Consequentialism 200 Summary and Conclusion 217 Study Questions 217 Further Reading 218 7 Sex and Virtue 220 Outline of the Chapter 220 Virtue Ethics and Sex 220
Contents ix Racial Desires and Virtue 232 Summary and Conclusion 237 Study Questions 237 Further Reading 239 8 Sexual Objectifi cation 241 Outline of the Chapter 241 What Is Sexual Objectifi cation? 241 What Is Morally Wrong With Sexual Objectifi cation? 243 Kant and Objectifi cation 245 Pornography and Degradation 259 Summary and Conclusion 274 Study Questions 275 Further Reading 276 9 Sexual Perversion and Sexual Fantasy 280 Outline of the Chapter 280 Sexual Perversion 280 Sexual Fantasy 303 Sexual Desire, Sexual Fantasy, and BDSM 308 Summary and Conclusion 318 Study Questions 318 Further Reading 320 PART III Marriage 323 10 What Is Marriage? 325 Outline of the Chapter 325 Preliminaries 325 Defi ning Marriage 326 New Natural Law 330 Marriage’s Purposes and the Slippery Slope Argument 339 Forms of Marriage and Monogamy 350 Summary and Conclusion 359 Study Questions 360 Further Reading 361 11 Is Marriage Necessary? 364 Outline of the Chapter 364 Preliminaries 364 Arguments Against Marriage 367
x Contents Reforming Marriage 375 Summary and Conclusion 389 Study Questions 389 Further Reading 390 Concluding Remarks 392 Bibliography 397 Index 413
Preface The second edition of Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage: An Introduction is much improved from the fi rst. The style, for one thing, is less verbose and more to the point. The part on love (Part I) now contains two chapters on love and morality (as opposed to one in the fi rst edition), given the growing literature on love as a moral emotion. The part on sex (Part II) contains fi ve instead of four chapters, with a chapter devoted to the treatment of sex and virtue ethics. In Part II, I also devote space at the end of each chapter to a specifi c “applied” topic, such as pornography, BDSM, prostitution, racial sexual desires, and adultery. Part I, on love, has four chapters: the fi rst deals with issues surrounding the nature of romantic love and the thorny issue of whether love is reasonresponsive. I introduce a distinction between two forms of romantic love (what I call RL1 and RL2) that play an important role throughout the discussion of love, and I use the distinction to address the issue of whether love is reasonresponsive. In the second chapter, I explain and evaluate those characteristics of romantic love thought to be true of it, such as constancy, exclusivity, sexual desire, union, and intimacy, with an eye as to whether they are indeed true of it. I end the chapter by discussing what the object of love is and the bases on which people love others. The third chapter deals with love and morality, specifi cally, with how romantic love fares on the major moral theories, and what moral restrictions there are on love. In the fourth chapter I discuss various recent philosophical attempts to argue that romantic love is a moral emotion (that it is inherently morally good) and fi nd them all defi cient. I end the chapter by suggesting one way to think of romantic love as moral. The fi rst chapter in Part II, on sex, is retained almost intact from the fi rst edition; in it I discuss and evaluate attempts to defi ne central concepts such as “sexual desire” and “sexual activity.” At the end of the chapter I use adultery, prostitution, and casual sex as examples of sexual concepts that resist easy defi nitions. Chapter 6 is about sexual pleasure and sex and morality, in which I discuss sex and sexual pleasure in connection with the moral theory of consequentialism. At the end of the chapter I use prostitution as an illustration of applying consequentialist thinking to a particular sexual practice. Chapter 7 addresses sex and virtue ethics, another moral theory that has gained traction
xii Preface in the last 30 years or so. I use the example of having or not having desires for members of a racial or ethnic group to discuss whether such desires tell against the virtue of the person who has them. Chapter 8 discusses sex and Kantian ethics, with a focus on the concept of objectifi cation. I use pornography as a type of sexual practice to illuminate further debates about sex and objectifi cation. In the fi nal chapter on sex, I discuss sexual perversion and why attempts to defi ne the concept have failed. I then turn to the ethics of fantasy and use the desires of BDSM as an illustrative type of practice. Part III, on marriage, consists of two chapters. The fi rst deals with what marriage is, whether it has any essential characteristics, whether it has any shared social meaning, and whether it should extend to include polyamorous groups. The second chapter raises the question about the necessity of marriage given that the state is a third party to it—given that marriage is a legal institution. I removed a direct discussion of the arguments for same-sex marriage now that same-sex marriage is the law of the land in the United States and now that it has become either socially accepted or tolerated. I do refer to these arguments every so often in service of the broader discussion of what marriage is. With the exception of Chapter 5 , every chapter is signifi cantly different from—and an improvement upon—its counterpart (if it has a counterpart) in the fi rst edition. Some of the chapters retain some of the same paragraphs from the fi rst edition, but they are integrated in the chapter differently and are likely to have been edited to some extent. Some explanations of moral theories appear both in Part I and Part II in case the reader decides to only read Part II or to read it fi rst. I apologize for the repetition, but the explanations are also somewhat different in that each stresses different points relevant to the discussion. The fi eld of the philosophy of sex and love is vast, containing many topics and branching into related ones, such as the family, friendship, procreation, commitments, faithfulness, and practical rationality. Sexual practices are also numerous, and my use of certain examples (adultery, BDSM, pornography, prostitution, for instance) only scratches the surface. Indeed, a comprehensive treatment of the conceptual and moral aspects of many sexual practices, especially the lesser-discussed ones (e.g., pedophilia, zoophilia, and necrophilia) is long overdue—perhaps this will be a future project. At the end of each chapter there is a section of “Further Reading,” containing suggestions of additional essays and books on some of the topics discussed in the chapter. These sections, revised from the fi rst edition, are meant to include additional readings to the ones in the endnotes (only on occasion do I repeat in the “Further Reading” sections the essays and books cited in the endnotes). At the beginning of the bibliography, there is a list of anthologies, to many of whose essays I refer in the book. These anthologies constitute further additional (and crucial) readings for anyone interested in pursuing the themes of this book. At the end of each chapter, there is also a list of study questions (thoroughly revised from the fi rst edition) meant to encourage the reader to think more about topics discussed in the chapter or merely touched upon. Some of the questions embody implicit criticisms of what I have written
Preface xiii or point to gaps in my discussion, thereby enabling the reader to evaluate the points I make. There are many reasons for the deep changes in the chapters, some owing to a different style of writing, and some owing to the need to discuss new philosophical views, but most owing to the change in my own views of these topics. My views on the issues of this book have changed over the years. This is due to the change in my own thinking about them, of course, which itself has been partially shaped by the numerous discussions I have had about them with colleagues and students who have impressed upon me how different from each other sex, love, and marriage are (changing social attitudes seem to refl ect this view), and how all three are morally problematic in many ways. My personal observations of the numerous personal relationships around me have in their own way confi rmed all this. Although I do not see romantic love as a bad thing, I do see it as being in need of serious moral scrutiny and nowhere as good as some other philosophers think. I continue to think that friendships and other deeply caring relationships deserve the kind of cultural, social, and possibly, in the guise of marriage, legal recognition that romantic love often receives. I have no illusions anymore about the objectifying nature of sexual desire, no matter how much philosophers try to make it seem benign. I have come to realize that we cannot do without state regulation, to some extent or in some ways, of some types of intimate relationships. Whether this means that marriage should not be abolished is an open question, though for sure it is in need of serious reform. The issue then is which relationships require the support of the state and how this support should manifest itself. I strove in this book to strike the proper balance between raising in a clear and fair way the important themes of each topic while also clearly and plausibly defending my own views on them. To be sure, I do not have views on every issue I discuss in this book, but I do have views on some, and I hope that in those cases I was able to defend them moderately well while also fairly and clearly explaining the opposed views. It goes without saying that the literature on all these issues is vast, and I hope that I have not neglected to treat an important work or view. A note on the use of terminology: I use “lover” to refer to the agent or the active party in a relationship and “beloved” to refer to the receiving party, the object or the recipient of love. I do not use these terms to refer to a specifi c gender, whether cis or trans. And I do not mean to imply that a beloved is not also a lover or that a lover is also not a beloved. But using them in a unidirectional way makes for a simpler discussion. I apologize to the readers for my use of the pronouns “he” and “she” and not “they” (in the singular). No discrimination of any sort is meant on my part, and the use is purely stylistic. Almost 95% of this book was written at Peet’s coffee shop, at the corner of Halsted and Cornelia in Chicago. I spent almost every weekday of the summer of 2017 there, from morning to evening, writing and sucking down soy lattes. I have come to know the baristas on a fi rst-name basis, and I want to thank them all for their sunny natures, their cheerfulness, their helpfulness, and, every so
xiv Preface often, their rambunctiousness. So thank you, Amber, Becky, Corina, Hayes, Jerrad, Maggie, Nick, Nicole, Nina, Sam, Shane, and Wes. I wish to thank Andrew Beck at Routledge for encouraging me to write a second edition of the book, and Vera Lochtefeld, also at Routledge, for her support and assistance during the last stages of the book. I also wish to thank all my friends and colleagues with whom I have discussed these topics over the years. Thanks to Lisa Wainwright, the Dean of Faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, for a research grant that helped me write this book. Thanks to Elizabeth Brake and Shaun Miller for discussion of specifi c points in the text. Thanks to Alan Soble for his care, wisdom, generosity, honesty, and experience. He has been the teacher in my life. Thanks to Elliot Layda for discussing many of these issues, especially love, with me over the years. Thanks to all my other close friends, with whom I include my brothers, my cousins, my nieces, and my one nephew: thank you for easing the burdens of life and even making it enjoyable. And thanks to Helkin Rafael Gonzalez Tovar for loving me (which includes putting up with me), and for showing me on a daily basis what moral goodness looks like.
Introduction Philosophy is a refl ective, higher-level fi eld: it seeks to answer questions about other fi elds and human practices. Moral philosophy, for example, raises questions about ethical human conduct, seeking to fi nd out what are right and wrong actions, good and bad people, and good and bad policies and institutions. Philosophy of art raises questions about the practice, evaluation, and defi nition of art. The same is true of the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage. The value of philosophy, however, does not lie only in the answers to the questions it raises. It lies also in the very questions it raises and how it attempts to answer them. Asking, for example, why art is important, what is the nature of mathematical entities, or whether marriage is a necessary institution is to raise important questions about the topic in question by stepping back and looking at the topic from a critical distance, and, crucially, by raising two broad questions concerning the nature or existence of something or its value. On the way to answering these broad questions, philosophers often answer smaller ones and clarify our thinking about additional, related issues. Philosophers often self-consciously use explicit arguments to answer these questions, and people who practice and study philosophy often become clearer thinkers, seeing distinctions and problems that others do not. We can then say that philosophy’s value lies in the questions it raises about the value or nature/existence of things, and how it answers the questions. Like other fi elds in philosophy, the issues involved in philosophizing about love, sex, and marriage fall into two groups: conceptual and evaluative. The fi rst are concerned with defi ning and clarifying concepts, the second with assessing whether particular actions and practices are good or bad, in the moral sense, but also in other senses (e.g., aesthetic). Some of the main conceptual issues found in the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage are the following: (1) What is the nature of love, and romantic love specifi cally? Does romantic love differ in important ways from other types of love, such as love between parent and child and love between friends or siblings? Is romantic love an emotion similar to others, like hate, compassion, envy, and anger, or is it something else altogether, like a desire or attitude? Does romantic love have some properties essential to it—is it exclusive or constant by its nature? Does it involve concern for the beloved, and is the concern ultimately selfi sh, redounding to
2 Introduction the benefi t of the lover? Is romantic love based on reasons having to do with the beloved, or are its reasons based in the lover? Does love even have reasons? (2) Can we defi ne sex and sexual activity? Why is the same behavior in one context sexual but in another context nonsexual? Can we defi ne other, more specifi c sexual practices and actions, such as adultery, casual sex, prostitution, cyber-sex, and promiscuity? Is there such a thing as perverted sex or sexual perversion? How do we defi ne them? What is sexual desire? Is it a good desire, one that joins human beings together, or is it a vicious desire, one that reduces us to our animality? How important is fantasy in sex and sexuality? (3) Can we defi ne marriage? Is it true, as some say, that it should be confi ned to one man and one woman, or could it be defi ned to include spouses of the same gender or sex? Could it include more than two people? Does marriage have a purpose (or a few purposes) that is universal, not bound to culture and time? Is marriage a completely social institution, or is it part of our human “nature”? Some of the main evaluative issues found in the philosophy of love, sex, and marriage are the following: (1) Is romantic love immune from moral evaluation and criticism, or are lovers bound by the dictates of morality in their relationship to each other and to other people? Do people have a moral responsibility to fall in love responsibly? Should people love others for particular reasons but not others, and are some cases of romantic love better than others because of the reasons on which they are based? What do the main moral theories, such as Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, have to say about romantic love? Is romantic love necessary or needed for someone to lead a good, fl ourishing life? If romantic love brings lovers not only happiness but also pain and suffering, is it prudent to fall in love? (2) What is good sex and what is bad sex? What are the different criteria (morality, naturalness, and pleasure) we can use to evaluate sex? What do the main moral theories have to say about sexual acts and particular sexual practices, such as adultery, casual sex, and prostitution? What role do the virtues and vices play in the evaluation of sexual acts and sexual desires? What does sexual fantasy tell us about people’s moral characters? What is sexual objectifi cation? Does sexual desire by its very nature objectify people? Does it objectify women more than men? Is leading a life revolving around sex compatible with human dignity? How much importance should people give sex in their lives? (3) Should marriage be confi ned to only two spouses? Is there anything wrong with polygamous or polyamorous marriages, and are they even better than marriages between only two people? Should marriage involve only spouses of the opposite sex or may it also involve same-sex ones? Why should same-sex couples not be allowed to marry? Why should they be allowed to marry? How important is marriage to our lives? Is it even a bad institution we should abolish or at least reform? These are some of the main issues addressed in this book. My hope is that refl ecting on them not only clarifi es our thinking but also affects our values, orienting us to make changes in our actions and lives so that we treat others more justly, think of them more openly, and place the proper values on love, sex, and marriage.
Introduction 3 The three themes of this book are crucial aspects of our lives. People pursue all three with great zest and energy, an interesting phenomenon that should lead us to wonder why they do so: Is sex important? If yes, why? Why is love important? Why marriage? Do they have any value? If yes, how deep? These questions are not about particular cases of love or sex or marriage; they are not about whether having sex with Orlando is valuable, or whether marrying Melissa is a good thing. They are about the value of these three themes to humanity in general. What, then, is the word on the philosophical street regarding these three? Romantic love has an important place in human life (and no, it is not a social construction, confi ned to only some societies and periods, as some think—though how much importance it is given surely is). On the one hand, the feeling of being in love is delicious, euphoric, and powerful. Being with the beloved provides the lover with the most wonderful and pleasurable moments in life. Love also inspires art and literature, and it propels people to do wonderful things. Love provides us with a companionship of a deeply intimate sort that can last for a lifetime. In doing that, it structures our lives and gives them meaning and purpose. It also makes people happy: “Because you make me happy” is one of the most common answers to the question, “Why do you love me?” Romantic love is one of the most crucial aspects by which we measure whether a life is successful or not. But romantic love has its ugly side: when in its power we become obsessed, and we do things for the beloved that we would not under normal, (usually) sane conditions. The beloved becomes the center of our world for no earthly obvious reason, and only the strong few can maintain their moral standing and reason during this emotional hurricane. And when the passion of love calms down, and love becomes more like companionship, it resembles friendship more and more, thereby losing its edge as romantic love. And insofar as love insists on prioritizing the beloved, on exclusivity, on sexual fi delity, on domesticity, it can become a psychological, physical, emotional, and social prison— “domestic gulag” as Laura Kipnis refers to it. Love also discriminates against those who reject it or don’t have it. Single people can feel left out, and are made to feel like losers. Thus, love has its values and its disvalues. Sexual desire and sexual activity provide us with a number of valuable things. First, sexual pleasures, especially those of the orgasm and of physically interacting with—seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing—the body (or bodies) of someone you fi nd attractive are incredibly powerful pleasures and sensations. Pursuing them successfully is very rewarding and deeply pleasurable to people. Second, the physical intimacy found in sexual activity can be a very powerful and affi rming bond: it can bring people together, it can help them fall in love or cement the love they already have by affi rming it or expressing it through sex. Third, sex is the way that we procreate, and to those who consider having children important or who believe that the continued existence of the human species is good, sexual activity, at least under the
4 Introduction current technology, is indispensable. Fourth, sexual activity is an important form of recreation and provides people with release that enables them to pursue further things with more ease; a sexually frustrated person is generally an unhappy person. But sexual desire and activity have their negative aspects: sexual desire objectifi es—it reduces people to their bodies, and the pleasures of sex often rise in direct proportion to its objectifying activity. Nothing can dampen sexual pleasure more than the intrusion of moral considerations for the other. Sexual desire can be oppressive: loud, insistent, obnoxious, distracting, overpowering, self-degrading. And the physical intimacy of sex can be crushing: after the sexual act, people see each other for who they are and realize that they do not want to have sex with that person again. The vulnerability associated with sexual activity is a double-edged sword: it can breathe in you a newly found confi dence, or it can lay you to waste, like a battlefi eld littered with bloody corpses. And to those who believe that we should not continue the charade of human existence—who believe that bringing human beings into existence, far from being a “miracle of life,” is condemning them to a life mostly of suffering that they would otherwise have been spared—sexual desire and activity stand guilty of this moral crime. When we remember that in existence we bring tremendous suffering to each other and to non-human animals, the crime becomes nauseatingly hideous. Thus, sexual activity, otherwise a merely biological activity, becomes infused with both value and disvalue when it exists among human animals (maybe among other animals also). Marriage, on the one hand, is valuable because it formalizes the commitment that two people have for each other or that one person has for two or more others (in polygamy) or, in the future perhaps, that members of a group of people have for each other. It sends the message to the rest of the world that the spouses are together and committed to each other. It provides stability for the spouses and for children, should there be any. It removes from the state the burden of taking care of people when they are old, relegating that job to the spouses (this is perhaps one reason why the state encourages marriage by providing the spouses with a lot of benefi ts). It legally (and under ideal conditions) regulates (or should regulate) intimate unions that are in need of regulation in fair and equal ways, ensuring that, say, women do not get the bad end of the deal. On the other hand, marriage, insofar as it involves the state in intimate relationships in deep and complicated ways, given all the laws and legal regulations surrounding it, is not always a good thing. It makes divorce a nightmare of a process, often forcing couples to stay together when they should not. Marriage also normalizes people, straitjacketing them into specifi c ways of life. Marriage also socially discriminates against single people, against people who are in deep, supporting relationships that as of yet receive no help from the state—in the United States: no tax breaks, no zoned housing, no hospital visitation rights, no immigration rights, no health benefi ts. Marriage is an institution that (unwittingly perhaps) discriminates against singles, against friendships,
Introduction 5 against other caring relationships. Yet if we reform it to the point of making it just, it becomes unrecognizable. It loses its edge and specialness as marriage. There are, then, different views and approaches to the good and the bad about love, sex, and marriage. Anyone who wishes to think through and possibly resolve these topics has his or her philosophical work cut out. I will address in this book questions concerning both the nature of love, sex, and marriage, and their value—thereby abiding by the basic questions of philosophy. Moreover, the two questions are connected, in that addressing the conceptual issues helps clarify the normative ones, and vice versa. For example, if romantic love is closely allied to friendship, this allows us to better judge its value. If romantic love is valuable, this affects how we deal with the (possible) fact that it is often not responsive to reasons—that no matter how handsome and morally good x is, y simply does not love x. So let us begin.
Part I Love
1 What Is Romantic Love? Outline of the Chapter In this chapter, I explain and evaluate a few theories about the nature of romantic love. I then distinguish between two forms or types of romantic love, a distinction that we need for much of the discussion of this part of the book. After making the distinction, we take a short detour to discuss the differences, if any, between love and infatuation. Finally, I explain and solve an important puzzle about romantic love and value, encapsulated in the question, “Do we love someone because they are valuable or are they valuable because we love them?” Preliminaries Love is a phenomenon that is ever-present and universal to human beings (and probably to many non-human animals). It can take on different types of objects, that is, human beings can love other human beings, animals, nonliving objects, including ideas and abstract things, activities, and sensations. One can love one’s friends, one’s children, animals (including one’s pets), one’s country, one’s collection of superhero comic books, art, the elegance of proofs, playing football, and the pleasures of eating a delicious veggie burger. Moreover, the love of other human beings has different types: philosophers distinguish among the love we have for our signifi cant others, be they boyfriends or girlfriends, long-term partners, or spouses; the love we have for friends; the love for siblings and close family members; the love for children; the love for parents; the love for colleagues and acquaintances; and the love for humanity at large. The focus of this part of the book is only on romantic love, and I will refer to other types of interhuman love only in the service of better addressing issues concerning romantic love. The question we need to now address is, “What is romantic love?” This question is ambiguous. For instance, it could be a question about the defi nition of the concept of “romantic love,” which would provide necessary and suffi cient conditions for the application of the concept. It could be a question about the essence of the phenomenon of romantic love—whether romantic love has certain essential properties without which it would not be romantic love (it is not a
10 Love problem whether these properties are shared by other types of love). It could be a question about the list of the general characteristics or features that romantic love has. It could be a question about the type of thing that is romantic love—whether it is a desire, an emotion, an attitude, or some other thing altogether. It could also be asking about the underlying mechanisms of romantic love—whether it is primarily a brain or neurological state, a psychological one, or a purely social phenomenon (a “socially constructed state,” to use an academically popular term). Although the question, “What is romantic love?” could seek an answer to one or more of the above questions (there might be more), and although we can agree that the above questions are legitimate variations of “What is romantic love?,” philosophers might disagree about the connections between them. 1 Some, for example, might argue that the question about the essence of love is the same as the question about what type of entity romantic love is (that is, to ask whether romantic love is, say, an emotion or a desire is to ask about its essence). Others might claim that to ask about the essence of love is to ask about its underlying mechanisms. These disputes will arise because there is no consensus among philosophers about how to understand romantic love (or the connections between the above concepts—essences, defi nitions, etc.); it is a question that is not widely addressed by philosophers and, when it has been broached, has not been looked at from all these angles. We are not going to concern ourselves with the connections between these questions (but see Jenkins 2015b for some help), and we are not going to answer the one about defi ning “romantic love” for the reasons that, fi rst, any such defi nition is bound to face counterexamples (as we will see below in discussing the characteristics of love), and, second, that we don’t need a defi nition to understand romantic love in the ways necessary to understand it. Listing its crucial features (a question that I will address) and investigating whether any of them are essential to love is enough for this purpose, and so is addressing the question of what type of thing it is—romantic love’s nature, so to speak. Moreover, I will shortly distinguish between two forms of romantic love, the passionate or sexual form and the settled or companionate form. Although many philosophers note this crucial distinction when explaining the different types of love, they soon abandon it and discuss romantic love as a unitary phenomenon. However, not maintaining the distinction between these two forms of romantic love can lead, and has led, to the many entanglements we see in philosophical discussions about love, such as whether it is involuntary, whether it is responsive to reasons, and whether it is a selfi sh emotion. We will then need this distinction. Let us start with the question as to what type of thing romantic love is. What Is the Nature of Romantic Love? A common answer to this question is that romantic love is an emotion. Yet some philosophers have denied this and have given different accounts of love’s nature. In this section, we will look at some of these accounts, starting with the one that identifi es, or strongly connects, romantic love with brain activity.
What Is Romantic Love? 11 Science It has become recently fashionable to discuss romantic love in terms of chemical and neurological processes to try to understand what happens to us when we are in love. Basically, the idea is that when we fall in love, the brain signals to some glands to produce hormones (such as adrenaline and cortisol) that can make the experience of being in love a mixture of anxiety, excitement, and pleasure. 2 The experience, especially of pleasure, makes it rewarding to be in love. Our brain is thus an enabler of love of sorts—it enables love by pumping hormones into our blood that make us want to continue to be in love. One interesting angle to this chemical aspect of love is possible medical intervention to, say, pharmaceutically either enhance or block the experience of love, and the moral questions this possibility raises. If one, for example, fi nds being in love to be oppressive, one might have recourse to drugs that would block the release of certain hormones, thereby helping one discontinue the love (or even preemptively help one not fall in love to begin with, like an immunization shot against it). Or, if one is fi nding it hard to keep one’s promises to “love and to hold forever,” one can take drugs to enhance one’s love in order to keep one’s promises. 3 As fascinating as this discussion is, I would like to set it aside for a few reasons. First, even if love is a chemical process of sorts, this does not exhaust all the scientifi c questions about it, questions that are more important in their own ways than the chemistry of love. As the philosopher Ronald de Sousa puts it, “[O]ther perspectives are needed to explain why these mechanisms exist in the fi rst place and what role they play in our lives. That calls for evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, sociology—none of which reduce to chemistry or physics” ( 2015 , 78). Put slightly differently, chemical processes do not explain why nature has “designed” us in such a way so as to love; for that we need evolutionary biology and related fi elds. In addition, given that romantic love has always been clothed in different social and cultural mores, we need social scientifi c and cultural theories for a complete explanation of it. In this regard, the philosopher Carrie Jenkins claims that romantic love has a dual nature: “it is ancient biological machinery embodying a modern social role ” ( 2017 , 82; emphases in the original). She uses the analogy of an actor playing a character to point to the relationship between love’s biology and love’s culture ( 2017 , 82): for example, the actor Uma Thurman plays the role of The Bride in Kill Bill . When she has that wry smile on her face as she says to her enemies, “You and I have unfi nished business,” that smile is both Thurman’s (biology, chemistry) and the Bride’s (culture). Thus, whether two gay women in the twenty-fi rst century express their love publicly by holding hands or whether two gay women in the nineteenth century express theirs secretly by writing furtive love letters to each other, it is the same biology at work but expressed culturally differently. It is instructive in this sense to think of other phenomena with a dual nature: most, if not all, of our emotions are probably rooted in some way in brain activity, yet are expressed, evaluated, and taken up differently depending on
12 Love the culture and the time period. Ditto for sexual desire: it is a biological appetite, yet one that is always robed in cultural and social expressions and values. Ancient Roman men did not sexually desire women wearing stiletto heels simply because there were no such heels back then. How desires are felt, formed, and thought is deeply shaped by culture and social mores. Something similar surely happens with romantic love, though how to explain the connection between its biological aspect and its cultural one is the task that needs completion. So Jenkins is probably correct that romantic love has a dual nature, but the question is how to explicate this dual nature (I will return to her view shortly). Note that once we agree that romantic love is usually expressed in particular cultural formations, we must ever be on our guard on how inequalities in society seep into romantic love itself. For instance, because of gender inequality, the way men and women love might be different, even to this day. 4 Now, because scientifi c investigators of romantic love are likely to agree with the claim that science does not provide a full explanation of love, we need to marshal other reasons as to why such scientifi c explanations are irrelevant. This takes us to the second reason for setting aside scientifi c explanations of love: given that all human (and mammalian) emotions are likely to be connected to some brain and chemical activity, and, given that some of these emotions might have a feel to them that is very similar to being in romantic love, science needs to better isolate whatever chemical and physical processes that are correlated with, cause, or are caused by being in love ( Brogaard 2015 , ch. 2). For example, if the prospect of seeing one’s beloved is exciting, anxiety-inducing, and pleasurable all at the same time, think of what the prospect of expressing your anger feels like; it, too, is exciting, pleasurable, and anxiety-inducing. Thus, to pin down romantic love’s chemistry we need a proper isolation method. A third reason is that these scientifi c claims about love focus on people who are in love in its early passionate stages. Whether romantic love in its later, settled stages has such corresponding chemical actions and reactions remains to be seen. Although a study in 2012 involving the brain scans of 17 people who have been married (not to each other) for an average of 21 years showed that their brains exhibited activities similar to those activities exhibited by the brains of new lovers, more studies such as this are needed. 5 A fourth, crucial reason for the irrelevancy of the scientifi c explanation of romantic love is that a proper understanding of romantic love might not require a scientifi c explanation at all. We can easily imagine, for example, an alien race whose chemical makeup is nowhere near our own, yet whose members seem to exhibit the same signs of love as we do: seeking each other out (as a pair or more), snuggling, taking care of each other, and so on. Upon discovering that their physical composition is not like ours, we are not likely to say, “They exhibit all the symptoms and behaviors we associate with human romantic love, but because their physical and chemical makeup is not like ours, they do not love.” Instead, we would agree that they love but that their love has a different chemical and physical correlation than our love does.
What Is Romantic Love? 13 Indeed, we do not need to go to alien races to see this point. Suppose that your friend Melissa claims to have fallen in love with Sam and that she exhibits the range of all the usual symptoms and behaviors of human romantic love: lack of focus on things other than Sam, lack of appetite, impaired judgment, longing to be with Sam, giggling when with Sam, thinking that God broke the mold after creating Sam—the works. But suppose we discover that Melissa has none of the brain activity that scientists tell us are the neurological correlates of being in love. We would not change our minds about Melissa’s being in love. We would, I suspect, believe that Melissa’s love has different correlate activities in her brain. Finally, a fi fth reason is that even if we discover that love is connected to a certain type of brain or chemical activity, it is an open question how much this helps us understand love, as opposed to be able to control it, medicate it, and redirect it, for example. How would knowing that love is connected to a series of synapses fi ring an explanation of what love is, even a partial one? This is true of most psychological states: knowing that anger is connected to brain activity might leave us completely in the dark about what anger is. For all these reasons, I will set aside the scientifi c discussion of love and move to other accounts of love’s nature. Social Construction In the previous section, I referred to Jenkins’s view that love is partly socially constructed. Explaining the relationship between the two sides of love—the social side and the non-social side—is important, especially for Jenkins’s view since she rejects the idea that society or culture shape how love is expressed . She claims, mysteriously, that this “downplays the importance of the social side of love . . . relegating it to mere expression” ( 2017 , 81). The word “mere” is unfair to the concept of “expression,” since how things are expressed can be complicated and deep (as any quick look into the discussion of expression in the philosophy of art reveals). So what else is left for the social part to do other than (complexly) express love’s biology, if love is to have the dual nature of biology and society? Jenkins calls the view that love has a dual nature (which she tentatively accepts) “constructionist functionalism” ( 2015b ). The idea is that this view captures two things about love: its role and what makes someone play the role of love (“realizes” the role of love, as Jenkins puts it). In other words, when x loves y , love prompts x to do certain things with respect to y , such as courting y , feeling affection for y , valuing y , and marrying or committing in some form to y ( Jenkins 2015b , 360). Now, some of those things that x is prompted to do are socially constructed: marrying y out of love, or courting y , are probably things that are specifi c to certain times and societies. Others are not socially constructed, such as feeling affection for y and valuing y . So far so good. However, we are left with the question: What makes x undergo or experience the things that x does towards y , whether socially constructed or not? To quote Jenkins:
14 Love “What is it that prompts people to date, care, write heart-shaped letters, form new family units and marriage-like bonds, and so on?” ( 2015b , 361). According to Jenkins, what realizes the love could be brain states, mental states, or “a drive best understood by studying our biology and/or evolutionary history, and so on” ( 2015b , 362). That is, we still need to fi ll in the part of, well, what love is ( 2015b , 361–2). If it is love that prompts x to do and feel all these things, we still need to know what it is that is doing all this prompting. What Jenkins has done is to provide a schema, so to speak, of how to understand the nature of love: love is the kind of thing that prompts the lover to engage in certain actions, to feel certain things, and to value certain objects (people, in the usual case). Although the schema is correct, it is unfortunately not very informative. What I mean by this is that it is likely to apply to virtually any desire, emotion, or state similar to romantic love (that is, a state we are willing to consider grouping it with romantic love under the same category, be it emotion, desire, attitude, or something else). So, for example, consider the claims that x sexually desires y and that x is angry at y . Both sexual desire and anger will prompt x to do certain things, some of which are socially constructed and some of which are not. X ’s sexual desire for y will prompt x to court y (socially constructed) and to feel horny when thinking of y (not constructed—although if x uses the word “horny” to explain to x ’s self what x is feeling, x would be using a social construction insofar as we agree that a particular language is a social construction). X ’s anger for y will prompt x to feel, well, anger at the thought of y (not socially constructed) and to express it by, say, posting something nasty on Facebook (socially constructed). Virtually every mental state we have can be claimed to be both socially constructed and rooted in our nature, for lack of a better term. The issue is how the two connect with each other, and how to fully understand the nature of the thing that we claim is both socially constructed and rooted in something not socially constructed. Although Jenkins does not deny that this part needs to be fi lled in, and although she is explicit that she is merely providing a schema (or “map” as she calls it) of the metaphysics of love ( 2015b , 350), the real work in understanding the nature of love is precisely fi lling in the part that needs fi lling in. Indeed, there is one worry I have about Jenkins’s view, namely, that it is not a true social constructionist view of love or one that has bite. Here is why. According to Jenkins, love prompts lovers to do and feel various things, and some of those things are socially constructed. Thus, Jenkins locates the social construction part of the view in what the lover is prompted to do, and not in the very thing— love—that does the prompting, whereas I would have thought that a social constructionist view of love with oomph would locate the construction in the very thing that prompts us to do various things (some of which are, of course, themselves socially constructed). That is, an interesting social constructionist view of love would inject the construction in the very nature of the realizers of the love—much like other social constructionist views have located the construction in the very heart of the issue: the debate, for example, over whether homosexuality is socially constructed is not merely about how homosexuality
What Is Romantic Love? 15 manifested itself, but about whether the very phenomenon of same-sex and opposite-sex sexual desires are socially made (see Halwani 1998a ). If it is not possible to locate the construction in the very realizer of love, or if the idea makes no sense, we are owed an explanation of why not. Thus, the view of constructionist functionalism still requires fi lling in and seems to not be a genuine or deep social constructionist view. Romantic Love as a Desire Despite the popularity of the belief that love is an emotion, some philosophers argue that it is not an emotion, and that it is something else, such as a desire. These philosophers argue that emotions have important features that romantic love seems to lack. One crucial feature is that emotions are often caused by or made out of beliefs (the differences between “caused” and “made out of” don’t matter for our purposes). For example, if I am angry with John for insulting me, I must believe that John has insulted me. If I am sad that my grandmother has died, I must believe that she has died. Even if I am angry with John without further specifi cation, it is natural to ask me for my reasons. And the reasons I offer should explain, if not justify, my anger. Moreover, as soon as the underlying belief changes or is no longer held, we expect the emotion to change or disappear. If I fi nd out that I was wrong to think that John insulted me, my anger will go away, sometimes even immediately. Philosophers call this feature of emotions “intentionality.” How is romantic love different? A lover might claim that she loves her beloved but doesn’t have any beliefs as to why she loves him ( Green 1997 , 211). If love is an emotion, the problem is how this can be when in some cases love lacks intentionality. Furthermore, it is common that the reasons for which we often love another person change without our love changing. For example, Cleo may have fallen in love with Mark because she believed he was a go-getter, good-looking, and dizzyingly witty. Over the years Mark grew ugly and became a couch potato and a dullard. Yet Cleo still loves him. If romantic love is an emotion, and if like other emotions we expect it to change once the beliefs on which it is based change, why has Cleo not stopped loving Mark? Or does she still believe, contrary to what her eyes and ears tell her, that Mark is a go-getter, handsome, and witty ( Green 1997 , 211)? If romantic love is not an emotion, what is it? One suggestion is that it is a set of desires . Now, desires are often parts of emotions—being angry with John, I want him to apologize or I desire that he apologizes—but they are not identical with emotions—there is more to being angry with John than desiring that he apologize. So to understand romantic love as a set of desires is not to understand it as an emotion. So what desires are love made out of? If Marlow loves Harlow, perhaps love is the desire to be with Harlow as much as possible, to have sex with Harlow, to want to maintain and increase Harlow’s happiness, to want Harlow to reciprocate the love, and so on. The list of these desires is up for grabs, although the four just mentioned would likely appear
16 Love on any list. The philosopher O. H. Green states, “Love is identical with a set of desires: desires are constitutive of love, not just caused by love; and desires are essential to, not just typical of love” ( 1997 , 216). And, more recently, the philosopher Glen Koehn writes that “the fundamental meaning of ‘x loves O’ is ‘x desires and delights in O’” ( 2011 , 728; Koehn does not confi ne his discussion to only romantic love). So love would be a set of desires on this view. Note that understanding love as desires avoids the “reasons” objection to romantic love; that is, if there are cases of romantic love that arise not because of reasons (“I don’t know why I love him, I just do”), understanding love as desire does not face this problem because many desires are also not responsive to reasons or reason-based: there is no reason as to why I want to have a chocolate croissant right now; I just do. 6 This would account for the widespread phenomenon of falling in love with someone inexplicably (sometimes in the face of massive evidence that the person is a scoundrel). In such cases, any reasons given to explain the love are given retroactively. No one ever says, “Haeun is a good woman?? Introduce her to me and I will fall in love with her!” If only. Insofar as there are two forms of romantic love, one being more passionate and sexual (which I call “RL1”) and the other being more about commitment, attachments, and companionship (“RL2”), it might be truer to understand the fi rst form of love as a desire or a set of desires, and the second as an emotion. Here are some reasons that support this idea. First, all the said desires of romantic love could be present in a case of a primarily sexual relationship between two people as long as they desire, to some extent, each other’s nonsexual company. This seems to resemble cases of RL1. Such desires do not seem to characterize RL2 especially because the desires themselves say nothing about the commitment that lovers have for each other in that settled form of romantic love. 7 Second, consider the issue of reason-responsiveness, which, recall, is that if love were an emotion, it would be based on the lover’s beliefs about the beloved. If the features on which the love is based change, we expect the love to change. Since love does not behave in this way, given that it outlasts the features of which it was originally based, it is not an emotion. This characterization is better suited to RL1, which does seem incredibly tenacious. Lovers in that type of love persist in their love often in the face of massive evidence that the love is bad for them, or corrupt, or that the beloved is just not a suitable target of love. RL2, on the other hand, seems to exhibit a wider range of possibilities. It (a) sometimes goes away soon after its supporting reasons go away. But it sometimes outlasts these reasons, either because (b) the lovers commit to each other (as we will see below) or because (c) RL2, like many other emotions, can outlast its reasons. Consider (a): there are many cases of love in which the love ceases to exist after its supporting reasons have ceased to exist; the love might continue for a while out of inertia, habit, or even “imprinting” (as the philosopher Nicholas Dixon [2007 ] calls it), but it eventually dies out. Here, it is crucial to not confuse relationships with love: many of the former
What Is Romantic Love? 17 continue for all sorts of reasons even though the love that birthed them and sustained them for a while no longer exists. Consider (c) next: many emotions outlast their supporting reasons; they are long-term emotions that survive their original beliefs. Three immediately come to mind: bitterness, resentment, and grief. Consider a case paralleling Cleo’s constant love for Mark. Suppose that Susie feels bitter because she believes that her friend, Jana, has tried in the past to emotionally exploit her. Suppose that Susie’s belief is true. Jana, however, has changed and become a better person and friend, and Susie knows this. It is nonetheless possible that Susie continues to feel bitter; she may even spend her entire adult life feeling bitter (she may be wrong to continue to feel bitter, but this is not the issue). Similar cases can be constructed about resentment. Even hate can behave like this: someone can hate another so intensely that the hate outlasts its supporting reasons. Yet how are we to explain love’s constancy in the absence of the original beliefs? One way is that even though the original beliefs on which it was based may no longer be held by the lovers, they may come to hold different, successive beliefs that keep the love going strong. But here (b) is another possibility; as I will explain more below, lovers commit to each other, which means that the basis of their love is no longer (directly) the potentially changing features of each other, but the commitment itself. In sum, RL2 can outlast its original supporting reasons because of the development of new ones or because it is undergirded by commitment. And there are cases in which a complete lack of supporting reasons does eventually cause the love’s demise. It is not, in this respect, as tenacious as RL1. That a desire account of love is more suitable to RL1 and an emotion account of love more suitable to RL2 can be seen from a third angle. Emotions have an interesting quality to them; in addition to being made up of beliefs (or thoughts, which are non-asserted beliefs) and desires, they are made up of feelings. When angry, sad, happy, and so forth, one feels a certain way. Yet emotions are not always felt: one can have an emotion and not feel it all the time. For example, I can hate a certain person yet not feel this hate at every moment. I feel it only when my hatred is triggered under certain conditions (e.g., when I see that person or am reminded of him). In other words, such emotions can be long term or dispositional—one is liable or disposed to feel or experience them under particular conditions. What has this got to do with RL1 and RL2? In RL2, we do not expect the lovers to feel their emotions all the time. Unless someone’s love is an obsession of sorts—which, incidentally, is more akin to RL1—he is not going to feel it every minute of his life. Dan can be in love with Leo, yet not feel the love when he is, say, absorbed at work, with friends, or engaged in his hobby. During these times, two things seem to be true about Dan: he is in love with Leo but he is also not thinking about Leo or feeling his love for him. Thus, it is more suitable to RL2 to describe it as a dispositional emotion (see Naar 2013 ). The above is also true to some extent of RL1. Yet RL1 is also characterized by much more attention and focus on the beloved than in RL2. This is why I
18 Love wrote above that it is akin to obsession: lovers are constantly thinking of each other to the point of distraction, and they constantly long to be with each other, to delight in and enjoy each other’s company, including sexual congress. Given that desires do not lend themselves as easily as emotions to a dispositional analysis, and given that in RL1 the lovers seem to constantly desire each other and each other’s company, a desire view of romantic love might be more accurate of RL1. 8 We thus have reason to accept both views about romantic love, that it is a desire (or set of desires) and that it is an emotion, as long as we confi ne the former to RL1 and the latter to RL2. A fully accurate account needs more nuance than this, but I submit that any such account must accommodate the two forms of romantic love and must do justice to our beliefs that it is an emotion closely connected to intense desires. Romantic Love as a Virtue The philosopher Robert Solomon (1991 ) defends the view that romantic love is a virtue. Is this a plausible idea? On an Aristotelian view of the virtues, a virtue is a dispositional state of character that allows its person to exhibit, in a particular situation, both the proper judgment and emotions, and to thereby act morally correctly (as we will see in more depth in Chapter 3) . For example, consider generosity. If virtues dispose their possessors to act correctly, a generous person is not someone who squanders her money (or whatever thing she is generous with). She spends it, as Aristotle says, “at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way” ( Aristotle 1999 , 1106b20). Moreover, if virtues exhibit not only proper judgment but also proper emotions (though not all the virtues need do so), and if pleasure or joy is the emotion connected with generosity, the generous person feels just the right amount of pleasure or joy when and in acting generously. The virtues are moral excellences ; they are not just any state of character, but states of character that dispose the person to feel and do the right thing. Indeed, this is the whole point behind them and why they contrast with vices , which are morally bad states of character. Given that virtues are moral excellences, the implausibility of the suggestion that romantic love is a virtue becomes obvious. Romantic love, as such , is neither moral nor immoral. Depending on a host of factors (such as whether the lover is himself moral or immoral), it can be either. With all due respect to the popular view that love makes people better, this is not guaranteed. Indeed, insofar as love, at least in its initial euphoric stages, tends to make the lovers absorbed in each other and oblivious to the world around them, they tend to neglect the moral demands or claims that others (friends and strangers) have upon them. Put simply, romantic love is not in itself a moral excellence. This fact is suffi cient to rule it out as a virtue on the grounds that virtues are, by defi nition, moral excellences. In this respect, romantic love is like all other emotions and psychological states, none of which is in itself good. Whether an emotion is good or bad
What Is Romantic Love? 19 depends on the justifi ability of its beliefs and desires, its object, and how it is conducted. Even good emotions, such as sympathy and compassion, can be bad if not directed at the right objects and conducted in the right ways—a major and reasonable worry that many philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, and Kant had about emotions. Love, especially RL1, is similar: A can love a thoroughly bad person (and A himself can be bad), and A ’s love can make A think that the beloved is not so bad or even good. And even if A loves a good person, A can exhibit A ’s love in all sorts of immoral ways (e.g., selfi shly, neglecting the rightful claims of others). Moreover, we do not need an Aristotelian view of the virtues to accept the above argument. No matter which theoretical conception of the virtues we adopt, common to all of them is that they are good, ethical traits of character. Given that romantic love, especially in its passionate stage, need not exhibit any ethically praiseworthy characteristics, it cannot be a virtue. 9 Love as a Condition or Syndrome Giving up on thinking of romantic love as something as simple as an emotion or a desire, de Sousa thinks of it instead as a (non-medical) condition or syndrome. He writes, “Contrary to what is often assumed, love is not an emotion.” Why not? His reasoning is that what leads us to think of love as an emotion is its association with tender and sweet emotions. But these emotions are not the only ones to make up love: “Depending on circumstances . . . love might be manifested in sorrow, fear, guilt, regret, bitterness, gloom, contempt, humiliation, elation, dejection, anxiety, jealousy, disgust, or murderous rage . . . [T]hink of love as a condition that shapes and governs thoughts, desires, emotions, and behaviours around the focal person who is ‘beloved’ . . . I will call that a syndrome : not a kind of feeling, but an intricate pattern of potential thoughts, behaviours, and emotions that tend to ‘run together’” (de Sousa 2015, 3–4). De Sousa is right that love can be a complicated business, but what he writes does not justify our overhauling the claim that love is an emotion. Consider that someone’s hatred (or envy, or jealousy, or grief, and so on) might be “manifested in sorrow, fear, guilt, regret, bitterness, gloom, contempt, humiliation, elation, dejection, anxiety, jealousy, disgust, or (for sure!) murderous rage.” Virtually any emotion, if unchecked, and depending on the circumstances, can manifest itself in tandem with a host of other emotions. The thing about emotions is that they are generally social creatures; they rarely work individually. But even though emotions work together, in each case there is a primary emotion that expresses itself in different ways or leads to the person feeling other emotions. For example, in a case in which envy is the primary emotion, it can express itself on occasion as anger (or it can lead to anger). In a case in which anger is the primary emotion, it can express itself on occasion as envy (or it can lead to envy). Any absorbing and passionate emotion can be implicated in a network of other emotions, so relying on this network is not going to show that the emotion is a syndrome rather than an emotion. So the fact that romantic
20 Love love manifests itself in this way does not license the claim that it is not an emotion; at best, it licenses the claim that it is more “socially” active than others. Love as a Sentiment or Disposition to a Range of Emotions Recently the philosopher Aaron Smuts (2016 ) has argued that love is not an emotion but a sentiment or a disposition that leads to a range of emotions (this is reminiscent of de Sousa’s view). He argues that love or care are states that underlie emotions—they themselves are not emotions but give rise or provide a basic condition for other emotions to make sense. The other emotions are based on them. The idea is that I would not feel anger, jealousy, fear, or any other standard emotion if I did not care or have some concern about the situation in question ( 2016 , 4–5). For example, I will not be angry about the treatment of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis if I did not care about the region in historic Palestine. (Whether on Smut’s view the care can be indirect—I don’t really care about Palestinians but get angry because I care about my friend Rima who herself cares about the Palestinians—is not clear.) Smuts is correct that care or concern underlie our emotions (indeed, I elsewhere argue that care is a virtue; Halwani 2003 , ch. 1). Yet he carelessly moves between “care,” “concern,” and “love” as if the three were the same. Although the fi rst two might be the same, love is surely different. I need not be angry at the treatment of the Palestinians because I love them (I’m not sure what it means to love an entire people), and I need not love my life or love myself to feel fear when confronted with a rabid, angry pit bull. Love in general, and especially romantic love, simply does not work this way—it is not a precondition for other emotions. So we have no good reason still to dislodge romantic love from its status as an emotion. We can then tentatively conclude that romantic love admits of two forms, the passionate and the settled, RL1 and RL2, such that it is more accurate to characterize the former as a desire (or set of desires) and the latter as a dispositional emotion (which includes desires, though the desires of RL1 might be fundamentally different from those of RL2). Moreover, and although love, in both its forms, might be rooted in our biology or, more generally, in our physical makeup (in case there are creatures who love yet whose physical makeup is nothing like ours), it always takes particular social and cultural forms, though the accurate explanation between the physical and the cultural sides is yet to be articulated. 10 The distinction between RL1 and RL2 has played a crucial role so far in our discussion. It is time to make the distinction clearer. RL1 and RL2 RL1 is the familiar stage that many people crave and that is perhaps the most euphoric. Suppose that Qais and Leila, the names of two famous lovers from pre-Islamic Arabia, are RL1 in love with each other. When Qais loves Leila at this stage, Qais intensely sexually desires Leila (to the point often of not
What Is Romantic Love? 21 sexually desiring others), he intensely desires to spend much time with her, he is often consumed with thoughts about her, and (among other things), much of what Qais does is for Leila. In all this, Qais experiences pleasure or happiness in or at the prospect of being with Leila, and a sense of listlessness and being lost when he is not with her. This is the stage of love that is usually the theme of many Hollywood and Bollywood fi lms, the theme of most (wholesome) fairy tales, and most pop musical songs. It is the stage that leads to “And they were married and lived happily ever after.” If Qais and Leila’s RL1 goes well—if after its magical moments are over they still like and want to be with each other—a new stage gradually sets in, when the passions calm down and Qais and Leila return to the humdrum of daily existence, attempting to build a stable, intimate life with each other. In this life, they still love each other, though the love between them might feel different than it did in RL1. They might also lose sexual desire for each other, as the phenomenon of “bedroom death” sets in, when couples stop fi nding each other sexually desirable, or, at least, when they no longer sexually excite each other as they used to. (Sad to say, some even fi nd each other sexually undesirable, if not downright repulsive.) This is not surprising if sexual desire is basically the same as any other desire: Once the desire possesses its object, it enjoys it for a while, but then gets bored with it. Clearly, the death of sexual desire need not occasion the death of the love itself (or of sexual activity, which is not the same as sexual desire). The love exists, and it might be quite powerful, but it is different from that of RL1. Note that RL2 need not come as a stage after RL1; some couples might go into it directly. Note also that in many cases couples stay together out of habit, for the sake of children, or for other reasons (economic, fear of social reprisal, etc.). Sometimes the relationships in such cases are on automatic pilot. They are neither loving nor hateful. But sometimes they are bitter, full of recrimination, or contain estrangement and alienation. In what follows, I intend none of these cases to be examples or types of RL2. For a relationship to exemplify RL2, it must, on the whole , be a successful case of RL2. It must, say, lack bitterness, estrangement, fi ghting, aloofness, coldness, and so on. It must also refl ect love for each other on the part of the couple (or the lovers, if there are more than two), including a high degree of emotional intimacy and affection for each other, and the desire to want to be with the other, and to want to continue to want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. Thus, I use “RL2” to refer only to successful cases of RL2, whatever the criteria are for distinguishing successful from unsuccessful cases of relationships. To be clear, successful cases of RL2 can contain the occasional bitterness, fi ghting, and so on, that is normal in romantic love relationships (or in any other type of love relationship), and they are subject to luck, especially with respect to the world and its misfortunes, which often short-circuit what would have been a long and successful romantic love relationship. Thus, a love can still be successful even if the lover or the beloved, say, dies in a tragic car accident.
22 Love Both RL1 and RL2 are forms of romantic love. This is refl ected in popular opinion, common linguistic usage, and general social and cultural mores. For example, we say that “John and Lisa love each other” to refer not only to the budding emotion between them (RL1), but also to the emotion after they have been together for years (RL2). Moreover, philosophers and others have come to accept this distinction. Brogaard calls them “passionate” and “compassionate love”: “The former category encompasses romantic love and . . . lust. The latter category comprises companionate love, attachment love, parental love, friendship love, and ‘other-love,’ also known as ‘altruism’” ( 2015 , 45). Relying on other philosophers, she characterizes “companionate love” as “the kind of warm and secure and steady love that’s left when the initial fi reworks have faded” ( 2015 , vii). Similarly, de Sousa, relying on the psychologist Helen Fisher’s views, divides erotic love into three “syndromes”: lust (which is roughly intense sexual desire), limerance (love in its “most extreme, obsessive, anxious, and passionate romantic form” [ 2015 , 3]), and attachment, the stage of love which can be sexual but need not be, which feels secure and calm, and which, as he nicely puts it, “is often felt much more intensely in the pain caused by loss of the beloved . . . than in pleasure afforded by her presence” ( 2015 , 90–92). De Sousa notes accurately that whether romantic love is forever, as one of its cultural beliefs claims, depends on whether we are referring to limerance or to attachment ( 2015 , 92). For a fi nal example, the philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev (2014) also notes the distinction between enduring and intense love and companionate love, the latter of which is characterized by the death or at least the serious waning of the couple’s sexual desire for each other (see also Halwani 2016, and Halwani forthcoming). To recapitulate, what characterizes RL1 and RL2 (and sets them apart from each other) is the following: RL1 (1) is a deeply passionate, almost obsessivelike state with the beloved; (2) the lover’s attention and focus is concentrated on the beloved; and (3) the lover has intense, frequent, even exclusive, sexual desire for the beloved. RL2, on the other hand, (1) is settled, calmer, and less passionate; and (2) the sexual desire for the beloved is weak (or infrequent), nonexistent, or not exclusive. Further below, I will defend an additional two characteristics: (1) that in RL1 the concern for the beloved is not necessarily for the beloved’s own sake (it is not robust), while in RL2 it is, and (2) that in RL1 there is no necessary commitment for the relationship and the well-being and happiness of the beloved, whereas in RL2 there is. Both RL1 and RL2 are forms of romantic love because of the physical and other forms of intimacy in both of them. In this regard, we have to be careful to not fully assimilate RL2 to some sort of friendship love. Both Brogaard and de Sousa, for example, too easily do so (calling it “companionate” or “compassionate” love does not help). Both RL1 and RL2 are forms of romantic love not only because sexual activity continues to occur in many cases of RL2 but because of the kind of physical, emotional, and practical intimacy that exists in RL2 that is characteristic of romantic love but not of other forms of companionate love. For example, couples in RL2 cohabitate; they usually share
What Is Romantic Love? 23 a bed; they physically snuggle with each other (in that same bed or on the sofa while, say, watching television); they relinquish their privacy with each other—romantic couples take physical liberties with each other not taken with friends, family members, and so on; they make joint plans, and they coordinate their daily activities together; they feel each other’s emotional states in deeper and more empathic ways than in other forms of companionate love; and, to give a fi nal example, they have diminished autonomy, which is a form of mental or moral intimacy, so to speak (even if it is an intimacy that not many people value). None of this denies that some or all of the above features might be found in some friendships, sibling relationships, and other companionate love. But it is to say that they do not characterize them. Thus, in these respects, RL2 is defi nitely a form of romantic love, and though it has “companionate” aspects it should not be lumped with other forms of companionate love. The intimacy can be different in both forms of love, but its physical aspects are common to both (I will elaborate this more in the next chapter). An interesting question is why some cases of RL1 transition successfully to ones of RL2 while others do not (indeed, from what we see around us, most cases of RL1 fi zzle away and never proceed to be cases of RL2). Ben-Ze’ev offers the suggestion that the more complex the beloved is, the more profound the love is likely to be. He gives an analogy with music: “Too much familiarity is prone to produce boredom, especially if the composition is simple. The more complex the music, the less likely it is for boredom to set in . . . The complexity of the beloved is an important factor in determining whether love will be more or less profound as time goes on: a simple psychological object is liked less with exposure, while a complex object is liked more” ( 2014 ). Although this captures something about why some RL1s becomes RL2s, more is needed, because many failed cases of RL1 surely involve complex and interesting human beings. My suggestion—which I will elaborate in the next section on the reasons for love—is that given that RL1 is heavily characterized by sexual desire and by unsupported or exaggerated beliefs about the properties of the beloved, at some point the lover must fi nd some of the properties of the beloved valuable to him or her, not fi nd properties suffi ciently disvaluable, and then commit to or endorse the love. Something like this must occur in order for RL1 to transition to RL2. The complexity of which Ben Ze’ev speaks could be one of the properties of the beloved that the lover discovers and fi nds valuable. 11 Is RL1 Infatuation? 12 Given the description of RL1, it sounds a lot like infatuation. Both seem to be of rather short duration and both involve intense desires, such as longing to be with the beloved and sexual desire. Can we distinguish RL1 from infatuation? There are two general approaches to distinguishing between infatuation and romantic love. The fi rst is to consider them as different in kind, the second as different in duration. The second approach views infatuation as unrequited
24 Love or unfulfi lled love. If correct, it explains the short duration we tend to associate with infatuation. Thus, Mark Vernon writes, “unrequited love produces eros’ most exquisite passion—infatuation” ( 2005 , 34), and Robert Nozick states, “However and whenever infatuation begins, if given the opportunity it transforms itself into continuing romantic love or else it disappears” ( 1991 , 418). Strictly speaking, Vernon does not identify unrequited love with infatuation, but claims that it produces infatuation. However, identifi cation is more plausible, because it is not obvious why unrequited love causes infatuation instead of, say, bitterness, some other emotion, or no emotion at all. In any case, the suggestion that infatuation is unrequited love is intriguing and plausible. For it is tempting to think along the following lines: the emotion Bill is going through is clearly infatuation; if Chris were to reciprocate, it would blossom into full-fl edged love. That is, had Bill’s emotion been returned, it would have been love. But as tempting as it is, we should not identify infatuation with unrequited love, because then any instance of infatuation would be love if it was returned. But this is false: it is entirely possible that some cases of requited infatuations never blossom into love (some end in disaster). There is another reason why infatuation is not unrequited love: the word “infatuation” has particular linguistic associations—infatuation is short-lived, whimsical, immature, not serious, not rooted in anything potentially enduring. Taken seriously, these associations go against the idea that infatuation is unrequited love, because they imply that even if the emotion is reciprocated, it is not going to “work” (more on this below). RL1 might be crazy and obsessive, but it is successful love. The philosopher Susan Mendus suggests that we should distinguish between love and infatuation as follows: “[I]n the case of infatuation the lover’s error lies in wrongly evaluating the qualities of the beloved” ( 1989 , 240). Mendus is not suggesting that the lover’s mistake lies in thinking that his beloved has qualities she does not actually have, but in his having mistaken beliefs about these qualities. For example, if John “loves” Martha because he thinks she is a chess player whereas in fact she is not, then what John feels for Martha is not infatuation, but, according to Mendus, an “irrationally-based love” ( 1989 , 240). However, if John “loves” Martha because he thinks she is the greatest chess player whereas, in fact, she is at best mediocre, he wrongly evaluates her properties, so what he feels for her is infatuation. However, it is diffi cult to maintain the distinction between mistakenly believing that the beloved has a particular quality and having a mistaken belief about a quality that the beloved has. Consider the second chess example: we might as well say that John mistakenly believes that Martha has the quality of being the best chess player in the world; any mistaken belief or evaluation about a quality that the beloved has can be translated into a mistaken belief about a quality that the beloved does not have. So Mendus’s suggestion must boil down to the idea that infatuation is not true love because it is based on false beliefs about the beloved’s qualities. But because there are many cases of infatuation involving no false beliefs about the beloved, and because there are
What Is Romantic Love? 25 many cases of genuine love involving false beliefs, this way fails to distinguish romantic love from infatuation. Indeed, there are some theories of (true) love that require the lover to have idealized (hence false) beliefs about the beloved ( Stendhal 1975 , Book I). Moreover, as we have seen, there is no good reason to think that romantic love cannot survive changes in the lover’s beliefs about the beloved, including the discovery that what one thought about one’s beloved is actually not true (Newton-Smith believes that true love must survive such changes; 1989 , 214–215). If some loves survive such false beliefs, infatuation cannot be simply identifi ed with being based on these beliefs. Alan Soble suggests understanding infatuation in terms of the content of the desires that the infatuated person has: while the lover primarily has the desire to benefi t her beloved, the infatuated primarily has the desire to simply be with her beloved or to have sex with him ( 1989 , 197, n. 1). Soble’s suggestion is reasonable, but if true it would assimilate RL1 to infatuation (as we have seen, some philosophers characterize even all of love this way!). Insofar as we think that RL1 is not infatuation, then his account does not capture the distinguishing feature of infatuation. Moreover, it might not be correct to identify RL1 with infatuation, because “romantic love” and “infatuation” are used to refer to two distinct phenomena, one of love and one of something else. It might be, however, that infatuation is short-lived or failed RL1. One last suggestion is worth exploring. John Armstrong, relying on the novel Spring Torrents by the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, thinks that infatuation is having mistaken beliefs about the fi t between the qualities of the beloved and one’s own: “The fantasy [the infatuated person] elaborates is attractive, the problem is that it does not correspond with the reality of his personality and needs” ( 2003 , 78). Infatuation is “attraction to what we want, not to what we need” ( 2003 , 79). Infatuated people mistakenly think that the life they imagine with their beloved is suitable for them, whereas in fact it is not. If Armstrong’s view were correct, it would explain our intuitions that infatuation is silly, whimsical, and short in duration (could this be what Mendus is really claiming?). Armstrong’s view is plausible. One thought in its support is that insofar as we think infatuation to be foolish, temporary, and so on, we do so because we often think that the love is unattainable or will not work. We chide the poverty-stricken girl for falling in love with the prince, the high school student for falling in love with his teacher, and the wife for falling in love with her gym trainer. Yet unattainability due to lack of fi t may not be all that there is to infatuation, and it might be wise to not simply identify the two, because we can come up with counterexamples (there are moderately successful cases of love between people who are in many ways mismatched for each other). But Armstrong’s suggestion is interesting because it captures something crucial and common about our thoughts regarding infatuation, whereas the other accounts do not. Note that if this account is correct, then infatuation would be a subclass of RL1: those cases of RL1 that do not succeed or transition to RL2. So infatuation might be a type of unfulfi lled love after all, not because the emotion is unreciprocated but because, even if reciprocated, the relationship
26 Love would (probably) not work. Note what the claim is: infatuation is a type of love such that if it were to be translated into a relationship, that relationship won’t succeed. The issue is not that the lover has mistaken beliefs about the qualities of the beloved; indeed, his beliefs are true: the prince is charming, the gym trainer is hunky, and the teacher is beautiful and smart. The issue is that the lover has mistaken beliefs about whether he can be with his beloved. Love and Reasons Two Views of Love and Reasons People often claim that they love someone because he or she is smart, kind, or beautiful. This seems to indicate that people love for reasons or that there are reasons that can explain love. If we ask x , “Why do you love y ?” x can, in principle, give us reasons for x’s love. On the other hand, if this were true, it is a puzzle why x does not love z , who has the same properties that y has, if not even to a higher degree. This gives rise to the question of the role of reasons in love. The question is the following: Do we love because of the properties of the beloved, or is love not based on these properties, in which case it is either baseless or based, somehow, in the lover? Put differently, do we love someone because of reasons, or is love not based on reasons? Suppose that y has a number of properties that x fi nds valuable, and suppose that x loves y . Are y ’s properties the reasons for x ’s love, or does x ’s love have no reasons? Of course, x ’s love for y might have reasons, but these reasons have nothing to do with y — they might be connected to x ’s own nature or to something else entirely. But note that if this were so, those reasons would not explain x ’s love for y specifi - cally, so the love for y might as well be reason-less! If you answer “Yes” to the fi rst part of the question, you agree that x loves y because of y’s properties— y ’s qualities are the reason or the basis for our love. If you say “Yes” to the second part of the question, you agree that x ’s love for y is not based on reasons having to do with the properties of the beloved. The reason view of love, as we shall call it, is that x loves y because of y ’s properties: y ’s properties are x ’s reasons for loving y . The no-reason view of love, on the other hand, states that x ’s love for y is not based on y ’s properties. It might be based on x ’s own properties or it might be gratuitous, a gift-like form of love that x bestows on y . Note two things. First, strictly speaking, what explains x ’s love for y is x ’s belief that y has certain properties. X might be mistaken in x ’s beliefs. I shall assume for now that x has no such mistaken beliefs. Second, the reason view of love helps explain the connection between love and value: if it is true, then x loves y because of y ’s value—it is y ’s value (in the form of y ’s properties) that explain x ’s love for y . On the no-reason view, it is the love that explains y ’s value—because x loves y , y is valuable. In what follows, I shall set aside the question of value.
What Is Romantic Love? 27 Philosophers are divided on this issue. Alan Soble (1990 , ch. 1, 8) is very sympathetic to the reason view of love, and so is Irving Singer (1984a , esp. ch. 1), though he leans more towards a hybrid view. Troy Jollimore (2011 ) seems to give another hybrid view. Harry Frankfurt (2004 ), however, fully supports the no-reason view of love. He writes, “It is true that the beloved invariably is , indeed, valuable to the lover. However, perceiving that value is not at all an indispensable formative or grounding condition of the love . . . The truly essential relationship between love and value goes in the opposite direction . . . what we love necessarily acquires value for us because we love it” ( 2004 , 38–39). 13 The problem is that each view faces diffi culties. Before we can fully appreciate these diffi culties, it is important to keep in mind four commonly held beliefs about romantic love. First, romantic love is an emotion. Second, love is constant; it lasts for some period of time (how long is hard to tell), even “forever.” Third, romantic love is exclusive: when x loves y during time t, x loves only y during t. Fourth, the beloved is unique, though uniqueness is not a clear notion. 14 Let’s go back to the two views. The no-reason view faces the following diffi culties. First, it seems to turn love into an inexplicable phenomenon: “Why does x love y ?” becomes a question without an answer. If y ’s beauty, intelligence, wit, and so on, have nothing to do with x ’s love for y , then why does x love y ? Second, and connected to the fi rst, it turns love into an exceptional or an anomalous emotion. If other emotions—hate, sadness, grief, jealousy, anger, for example—are reason-based, why is romantic love any different? Third, the no-reason view puts constancy in danger: if love can appear for no reason, it can also disappear for no reason. Fourth, it puts exclusivity in danger: if x can love y for no reason, then x can love z (at the same time) for no reason. Fifth, it puts uniqueness in danger: if x can love y for no reason, then x can love z for no reason. Sixth and fi nally, the view goes against why people want to be loved. Imagine this conversation: Qais: “Why do you love me, Leila?” Leila : “No reason. I just do.” Qais : “Surely there must be some reason! There must be something about me because of which you love me!” Leila : “Nope. Nothing. No reason.” This is likely to leave Qais frustrated and demoralized for the simple reason that most people (reasonably) want to be loved for who they are, for their traits, properties, or something about them. Note in this respect that Christian-like views of love or the love of humanity at large are not versions of the no-reason view, because such views typically cite reasons for why all humanity is (or should be) the object of love: because we are all created in the image of God, or because we all have infi nite value, or because we have all rationality or dignity. X loves y because y is created in
28 Love God’s image, which means that y ’s property of being created in God’s image is x ’s reason for loving y (Soble 1990, ch. 1). Let us now turn to the reason view. Here are the diffi culties it faces. First, the view does not square with the fact that love outlasts its reasons: if x loves y because y has P, then if y loses P, x ’s love for y should stop, whereas this does not usually happen. Second, and connected to the fi rst diffi culty, this view turns love into an anomalous emotion, because with other emotions, when the reasons for the emotion are gone, the emotion itself goes (consider an example of being angry with someone). But now with love we are claiming that love is a reason-based emotion that nonetheless outlasts these reasons. Third, the reason view threatens love’s constancy: if the reasons for the love are gone, the love stands in danger of going away. Fourth, the view threatens love’s exclusivity: if x loves y because y has P, then X has as much reason to love z who also has P. Indeed, if x does not love z , then x is irrational . Fifth, it threatens the beloved’s uniqueness: people other than y also have P, so why is y unique or unique to x ? Sixth, and given that properties come in degrees (e.g., some people are more intelligent or more beautiful than others), the view faces the problem of “trading-up”: if z has P to a higher degree than does y , then x should replace y with z . This last problem, although it threatens the uniqueness of the beloved, is a different problem, because even if we believe that the beloved is not unique, we still do not think that lovers should exchange their beloveds for others who are better than them. Finally, the reason view seems to not square with the facts: people simply do not fall in love on the basis of reasons. Just because Janet is fantastic, even perfect, it won’t follow that Omar is going to fall in love with her. In this respect, love does not seem to be reason-responsive. Most of the problems that the reason view faces arise from the clash between, on the one hand, the beliefs about romantic love, and, on the other, what is called the “generality” or “universality” of reasons. If we have a reason to do something in one set of circumstances, then, when relevantly similar circumstances come up, we have the same reason to do the same type of action. A reason to do action A in circumstances C1 is also the reason to do action A in circumstances C2, as long as C1 and C2 are relevantly similar to each other. If one day on my way to work I decide to buy a newspaper because I should stay informed, then as long as things keep happening in the world, staying informed is a “valid” reason, so I should buy a newspaper every day. If I don’t buy a newspaper or seek other sources of information, either I am being inconsistent or other circumstances provide a different reason for not buying a newspaper (e.g., I don’t have enough cash on me to buy a newspaper and coffee, and coffee is a priority). So if x loves y for reason P, this reason should operate with other people who also have P and if it does not, we need an explanation for that. Both the reason view and the no-reason view are about explanation, not justifi cation. Reasons can be given to either explain a fact or to justify it (or both). For example, suppose someone asks me, “Why are you angry at John?” and I respond, “Because he thinks that contemporary art is great, whereas it sucks!” This would explain my anger at John but it would not justify it, given
What Is Romantic Love? 29 that the greatness or suckiness of contemporary art is not a very serious issue, let alone one I should take personally. If I had responded, “Because he thinks killing animals for their meat is perfectly fi ne!” then my answer would both explain and justify my anger. Because both the reason and no-reason views of love are about whether love can be tied in a coherent or understandable way to its object, they are about explanation, not justifi cation. Thus, for instance, the reason view does not explain why x does not also love z when z has the same properties because of which x loves y , and the reason view does not explain why x does not replace y with z . 15 Which view is more convincing? One reason to accept the reason view is that the idea of loving someone without any basis is a tall order, given that love is a form of valuing something, and valuation is usually reason-based. But advocates for the no-reason view often claim that love is gratuitous, and they model their view of romantic love on non-romantic forms of love. For example, parents’ love for their children seems to be a gift or gift-like form of love, and this might lead some people to believe that all love is gift-like. In addition, some philosophical Christian writings on love view it as gift-like. For example, in The Four Loves , C. S. Lewis makes a basic distinction between two types of love: need-love and gift-love. The fi rst is based, as its name indicates, on our needs: we love others because of their ability to meet certain needs of ours ( 1960 , 11–21). Gift-love is modeled on God’s love for us; it is not based on need because in God “there is no hunger that needs to be fi lled, only plenteousness that desires to give” ( 1960 , 175). In us, this divine gift-love allows us to “love what is not naturally loveable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior and the sneering.” It is the type of love that is “wholly disinterested and desires what is simply best for the beloved” ( 1960 , 177). 16 But perhaps the most crucial reason why the no-reason view is tempting when it comes to romantic love specifi cally is that people do not seem to love on the basis of reasons: why x falls in love with y and not z , even though y and z share a lot of attractive properties, is anyone’s guess. Indeed, x might know very well that z is a near-perfect person, yet the thought of being in love with z not only does not appeal to x , but might also repel x . So let’s not pretend that people fall in love based on reasons. However, the no-reason view seems to fare worse than the reason view because even though the latter faces the above-mentioned diffi culties, the no-reason view does so in a deeper way. It does not, for example, offer any guarantee for constancy. Whereas with the reason view, as long as y has the properties on the basis of which x loves y , we expect x ’s love to endure, with the no-reason view all bets are off. Moreover, and as we have seen, with the reason view, if x loves y on the basis of property P that y has, then if z has P, x has reason to love z also. However, on the reason view there might be some conceptual limits on x loving people other than y : it is likely that what x fi nds valuable in y are properties that not every other human being has (not everyone is witty, charming, or a fantastic chess player). With the no-reason view, the sky is the limit— x could love any and all human beings.
30 Love Moreover, the no-reason view of love is diffi cult to accept on its own merits, regardless of how it compares with the reason view. First, people want to be loved for a reason, because they think that there is something about them on which to base that love. Now, if our desire to be loved for who we are were not reasonable, this would not be a problem for the no-reason view, because we can shrug our shoulders and say, “Big deal. People want all sorts of things, but that doesn’t make what they want rational or acceptable.” But the desire to be loved for who we are is rational: within limits, it gives us a sense of self-worth, and makes us feel good about ourselves and deserving to be the recipients of such an important and positive emotion as love. There is nothing irrational about this and much that is reasonable. Note that this is true of the desire as a general human desire, not in particular cases—sometimes a person can be so bad that it is hard to see how that person’s wanting to be loved for who he or she is could be described as a rational want. Second, the no-reason view of love is anomalous in a vicious way: it violates our canons of rationality and makes love a bizarre emotion. With every emotion, people are able to provide reasons for why they have it. No-reason love is an exception. Although it is possible that sometimes an emotion, including love, is not based on reasons, this is not the norm for an emotion. Accepting the no-reason view of love turns love into an emotion that typically (not exceptionally) does not respond to reasons, thus making it profoundly anomalous. Third, the reason view allows us not only to explain a particular love but to also evaluate it or justify it. For example, if the properties on the basis of which x loves y are shallow ones— y is physically well endowed, has legs from here to eternity, and has long, gorgeous eyelashes—then x ’s love for y is a bad one or is not justifi ed. On the no-reason view, it is hard to see how such evaluation of love is even possible: On what basis might we evaluate someone’s love for another? 17 Although I believe that the reason-view is more plausible, I hope to show that both views are actually correct, except that the no-reason view is true of or better characterizes RL1 while the reason view is true of or better characterizes RL2 (but indirectly). Thus, the distinction between RL1 and RL2 is crucial for this discussion, and each view captures what is crucial about each form of romantic love. Let us fi rst briefl y attend to failed, yet instructive, attempts to salvage the reason view of love. Failed Attempts to Resolve the Diffi culties With the Reason View There are three types of attempts to solve the problem. The fi rst is to offl oad our entrenched beliefs about love: we declare them false, unjustifi ed, irrational. The second is to tweak the generality of reasons to remove the inconsistency between our beliefs about love and how reasons function. The third is to give up the view that reasons are—or always are—general. Let us look at the
What Is Romantic Love? 31 second and third attempts fi rst before we discuss giving up our beliefs on love (which we will do in the next chapter). Tweaking the Generality of Reasons There are two ways to tweak the generality of reasons: make them more specifi c or make them relational. Let’s start with the fi rst. Suppose that Rose asks Jeff why he loves her. He says he loves her because she’s smart and beautiful. He adds, “It’s more complicated, actually. It’s not only because you’re smart, but also because you have a way of seeing things, of connecting the dots, that makes you smart in a very specifi c way, like the time you noticed how Ted avoids eye contact with Michael. And it’s not simply because you’re beautiful, but because you have an amazing smile that makes your eyes twinkle, and because your teeth are just so white without looking fake!” Jeff’s answer, however, is not satisfactory. This is because there are, and certainly could be, other women who have these more specifi c properties; there are women who see things and connect the dots in just the same ways that Rose does, whose eyes twinkle when they smile in just the way Rose’s do. So Rose is not unique. We can also see why Jeff’s love for her is not exclusive: the same reasons he cites for loving Rose are reasons why he would love another woman who has the same properties as Rose. We can also see why another woman with the same qualities but to a higher degree would give Jeff a reason to trade up. Moreover, further specifi cation of the reasons won’t do, because, fi rst, people are not really unique in a way that is interesting or love-relevant. People are certainly unique in some ways: each person (except for identical twins) has her own genetic make-up and each person has her own, unique fi ngerprint (including identical twins), but these are not reasons for why people love others ( Soble 1990 , 55). When it comes to the usual reasons why people love each other, they are not unique, and their further specifi cation won’t make them unique either; at best, it makes them rare. People love others for their wit, knowledge, physical beauty, money, and fame, to give a few examples. Specifying these traits further—for example, when it comes to cat-dog relationships, knowledge about plant species, the physical beauty of the nose, money made (not inherited), and fame due to a history of speaking truth to power—helps a bit, but it is not going to make the beloveds unique and it won’t secure exclusivity. Second, the further we specify the properties, the more we may be able to make the beloved unique, but also we make the love more incomprehensible, harder to understand why x loves y on the basis of such highly detailed properties. Suppose that Jeff loves Rose because of the way she walks; specifi - cally, how she walks in fl ip-fl ops, on a particular sandy beach somewhere in Hawaii, between seven and eight o’clock in the evening, on the fi rst day of June. Now maybe Rose’s walk in these specifi c circumstances is indeed unique, and no other woman, clad in fl ip-fl ops, on that day, at that time, walks quite like Rose. The problem is that it is hard to see why that walk serves, or
32 Love can serve, as the reason for Jeff’s love. We might as well go with the unique fi ngerprint. So the more we specify—and we must be very specifi c to render the beloved unique—the harder it is to understand someone’s love. Third, even if somehow Rose is unique in that there is no actual woman who has the same properties that serve as Jeff’s basis for loving Rose, it is always possible for there to be such a woman. We might be able to secure Rose’s uniqueness and make Jeff’s love for her exclusive in actual fact, but not conceptually. Rose’s being special is an accident: had the world been different such that there were other women who had the same properties, her uniqueness and Jeff’s exclusive love for her go out of the window. So making the reasons more specifi c will not resolve some of the problems with the reason view. Let us then look at the attempt to resolve the diffi culties with the reason view by making the reasons relational. Relational Reasons Suppose that Jeff answers Rose’s question about why he loves her by saying, “Because you make me happy, because you’re patient with my mood swings, because you can sleep next to me even though I snore like a hippo, because your brown eyes mesmerize me, and because your wit dazzles me.” There is a crucial difference between the reasons Jeff gives in this answer and those he gives in the previous one. His new reasons are relational : they all incorporate how Rose’s properties relate to him (“Because you’re patient with my mood swings”; “Because your brown eyes mesmerize me ”). This is crucial because it blocks the generality of reasons. To see this, consider another example: John is the son of Micah, and Jonathan is the son of Mike. Both John and Jonathan have almost the exact, non-relational properties: they were both born on the same day and time, both weigh the same, both are equally tall, equally intelligent, both are the fi rst in their respective classes, and so on. Micah, however, loves John, not Jonathan. Suppose we ask him why, even though both have almost the exact same qualities. He answers, “Because he’s my son.” This reason seems to not be general: Micah is not forced, on pain of inconsistency or irrationality, to love every other boy who has the same properties as John, because one crucial property—the relational one—sets John apart from other boys. Similarly with Jeff’s answer: Rose makes Jeff happy, Rose is patient with Jeff’s mood swings. So can relational properties solve the problem, as some philosophers believe (e.g., Newton-Smith 1989 ; Nussbaum 1997 )? Go back to John and Micah. We ask Micah, “What happens if, somehow, you fi nd out that Jonathan is not really Mike’s son but yours?” Micah will probably (and reasonably) answer, “I’m not sure how this can be, but if he is my son, well, then, I’ll love him, too!” Here lies an important lesson: relational properties can also be general. That is, if x ’s reason for loving y is that y is x ’s son, then x has reason to love z if z is also x ’s son. Now go back to Jeff: if Flower can make Jeff happy, if she can tolerate his mood swings, and if she can sleep next to him while he snores like a hippo, then Jeff has as much reason to love Flower
What Is Romantic Love? 33 as he does Rose. Relational properties do not secure Jeff’s love for Rose exclusively. They also don’t make her unique as an object of love: people other than Rose can also have, for example, the relational property, “Makes Jeff happy.” Are we overlooking the fact that it is Rose who is related to Jeff in these ways, that what might be important to Jeff is not simply that someone tolerates his snoring, or that someone mesmerizes him with her brown eyes, but that Rose does? After all, we are talking about her and only her: Jeff loves Rose because her eyes and wit have these effects on him, not just anyone’s eyes and wit, even with these effects. These relational properties, then, are not general; they cover neither other actual people nor even possible ones, since no other person can be Rose. The relational properties make the beloved unique in a special way: if it is important to the lover that he or she experience these properties and their effects (being dazzled, mesmerized) not just at the hands of anyone but at the hands of that specifi c beloved, then that beloved is indeed unique. Relational properties also secure the exclusivity of Jeff’s love for Rose, because it is these effects as produced only by Rose that form the basis of Jeff’s love for her. This locks in exclusivity almost by defi nition, by the very way we have characterized the properties. There’s a heavy price to pay, however. Remember that giving reasons for loving someone is meant to explain (and sometimes justify) one’s love. But when Jeff says he loves Rose because of the way she dazzles and mesmerizes him, we ought to press him: “But Flower can do that to you, too, you know. Why not love her?” “Because Flower is not Rose and I love Rose because she , not Flower, does that to me.” “Um . . . But what is it about Rose that makes you love her instead of Flower when either one can affect you in the same way?” In other words, incorporating the beloved in a relational reason secures exclusivity but at the price of lack of explanation: it pushes the question of why x loves y one step back, but does not answer it ( Soble 1990 , 56–59). A recent attempt to get around these objections, and one that has received much attention in the literature, is by the philosopher Niko Kolodny (2003 ). His view, in brief, is that it is the relationship itself that gives one reason to love someone. If you go to the above example of Jeff and Rose, Jeff’s answer to our question about why he loves Rose and not Flower, even though Flower can do all these things to him, is that he has a relationship with Rose, not with Flower. It is the relationship itself that provides the reason. We do not, for example, press a parent as to why he loves his son Jason and not Jacob, who is not his son, even though Jacob (or someone just like him) could have been his son! “Because he is my son” is a suffi cient answer to our question. The same happens in other love relationships: “Because she is my wife” “or the woman with whom I have made my life” is, or should be, good enough ( 2003 , 146). Yet Kolodny’s view is unconvincing for two main reasons. First, it is not adequate for RL1, and it cannot, as some philosophers have complained, account for how love relationships begin (e.g., Landrum 2009 ; Naar 2013 ). If Jeff and Rose are at the start of their love relationship, Jeff cannot cite the relationship itself as the reason for the love. Kolodny has replied to this objection
34 Love by arguing that his view can still explain how love starts because the lover can always refer to the initial activities and things she does with her beloved as reasons for the love ( 2003 , 169). But his reply is not fully convincing because it strains credulity to call these initial activities “a relationship,” certainly not in the same robust sense as Kolodny typically uses that term. However, since these activities might be the fi rst parts of a relationship, Kolodny might be on to something. The second objection is more worrisome, and it can be seen in cases when relationships go bad. If Rose becomes a bad person, “Because she is my girlfriend” is no reason to love her (though it might be a reason to continue the relationship, to give Rose a chance, so to speak). If Jeff says this to me in answer to my question, “Why do you love Rose given how nasty of a person she is, even to you?” his answer would be strange. I can plausibly reply by saying, “Yes, but why is she still your girlfriend given how nasty she is?” That is, relationships by themselves are not the ultimate reasons or explanations for loving someone. One is in a relationship with another because one loves the other, not the other way around. 18 Perhaps Kolodny is misled by parent-child (or sibling) relationships, in which being one’s son or daughter is suffi cient (but defeasible) reason to love the son or daughter. However, such relationships are different than romantic love (and friendship) relationships in some crucial aspects: in them, but not in romantic love relationships, being one’s brother, daughter, cousin, and so on provides an original or basic reason to love someone, whereas “being my wife” gives one a reason to love only after one has other, original reasons to love. In short, Kolodny’s view gets the order of explanation wrong when it comes to romantic (and friendship) love; it puts the cart before the horse, as the saying goes. Still, there is some truth to Kolodny’s view. Remarks such as “Because she is my friend” and “Because he is my husband” do go a long way as explanations for why the people above are loved by those who love them. But I contend that the reason for this is not the relationship itself, but the commitments that the love in these relationships imply—the commitments that the lovers in these relationships have to their beloveds (be they friends or spouses), which is not quite the same as the relationship itself. Or so I will elaborate further below. So tweaking the generality of reasons won’t do. Let us consider the other attempt to solve the problem: doing away with the very idea that reasons have to be general. Non-General Reasons There are philosophers who argue that some reasons are not general. Some do so in areas that are not surprising, such as art and aesthetics. But some do so in areas that are surprising—in ethics and moral philosophy. Considering them might provide independent grounds for thinking that reasons in love might also not be general. Let us begin by using an example of a painting because this allows us to better understand how reasons in ethics might not be general. Suppose that
What Is Romantic Love? 35 anytime there’s a painting with the color red in it, we have reason to believe that the painting is good. The color red is always a good-making feature in paintings. It follows that having the color red is a property that provides a general reason for goodness: if red is a good-making feature in paintings, then a painting with red in it is good. In short, redness in paintings is a general reason: it makes good all paintings that have this feature. But obviously there are and certainly could be paintings with red in them that are mediocre or bad. Is red then not a good-making feature? It depends on which of two views we accept. The fi rst is that even though red is a goodmaking feature in paintings, it is not the only one and can be overpowered (overridden, defeated, drowned) by other features, some of which can be so powerful that they make the painting, overall, quite bad. This view does not deny the generality of reasons, but claims that they can be overpowered by other reasons. For example, suppose that painting P has red in it but is also badly executed, has no good idea or conception, and has too much gray. It is a bad painting not because red is not a good-making feature but because its redness is overpowered by the other features. Thus, the generality of red as a good-making property in paintings is preserved, except we now understand that it can be overpowered by other properties that a painting can have. The second view is to deny the generality of red is a good-making feature in paintings, and to claim that red is, in and of itself, neither a good-making nor a bad-making feature. Whether it is good or bad depends entirely on the particular painting, especially the painting’s other features and how they interact with each other to form the particular painting that it is. In short, we have no reason to think that red—or any other artistic or aesthetic property—provides a general reason for whether a work of art is good, bad, or mediocre. Everything depends on how that feature fi gures in each work of art. Obviously, the second option denies the generality of reasons in art. This is what one philosopher calls the “context argument” for denying the existence of general reasons: there are no general reasons in art because whether an artistic property is good or bad depends on the context, which includes the particular artwork that has it ( Goldman 2006 ). In ethics, a similar picture exists. Suppose that being pleasurable is a goodmaking feature of an action. If someone were faced with a situation in which she can provide pleasure to others, this would be a morally good thing to do, thus giving her a reason to do the action. However, the provision of pleasure is sometimes overridden by other considerations, such that, overall, what a person ought to do in a situation is not to provide pleasure but something else. For example, letting a rapist off the legal hook and not penalizing him would give him, his friends, and his family members pleasure, but we ought not to let him go free because justice requires that he be punished. As in the case of art, there are two views. The fi rst is that in situations in which one ought not to act by providing pleasure, providing pleasure is still a morally good-making feature but one defeated by more powerful features (e.g., administering justice). On this view, providing pleasure is still a general reason. The second view—known as moral particularism —denies that