36 Love pleasure-giving or any other feature is always a morally good- (or bad-) making feature of situations. Whether it is depends entirely on the particular situation, on how the features of a situation interact with each other to determine what one should do in the situation. Moral particularism—as its name indicates—is thus a theory that rejects the generality of reasons in moral decision-making and act evaluation ( McNaughton 1988 ). Can the latter view support the idea that when it comes to love, reasons are also not general? On the one hand, if the view is convincing, then not all types of reasons are general. Indeed, if in ethics and moral philosophy—areas in which the generality of reasons has been an anchor for many moral theories— reasons are not general, our confi dence in their generality in other areas will be seriously undermined. On the other hand, if the view is false, then we should not lose confi dence in the generality of reasons, including love-related ones. I will not argue that it is false. I assume that as it applies to art the view is true, but that it should not make us doubt the generality of reasons when it comes to love because it is irrelevant. I will also argue that we should not doubt the generality of reasons in love on the basis of moral particularism. Why accept particularism in art? The main reason is the uniqueness of works of art. If each work of art is unique in an interesting way (not just trivially, as in “each work of art is different from another”), then what makes one work of art good (or bad) is going to differ from one work of art to another. If a painting by Kandinsky and a painting by Pollock are each unique in a deep and interesting sense, then even though both may contain the color red, there is reason to believe that the color red behaves differently in each painting, interacting with other elements to yield the overall unique quality of each. The basic idea is that the uniqueness of each work of art provides the basis for thinking that reasons in art are not general . But with love, individual people are not unique in deep and interesting ways. Moreover, basing love on properties that do make individual human beings unique (e.g., genetic code) won’t provide reasons that are adequate to explain one’s love for another. Basing love on specifi c properties won’t work either, because if they are not specifi c enough they don’t make the beloved unique, and the more specifi c we make them, the harder it is to see how they can be the basis of love (remember the example of Rose walking in her fl ip-fl ops in that unique way in Hawaii). So the model of the non-generality of reasons in art is irrelevant to love. Consider next particularism in ethics. Although the theory seems convincing, two considerations should give us pause. First, there are plausible examples of features that are always good- (or bad-) making features of actions, such that when they are not acted upon in a particular situation this is because other reasons override them, not because they are neither good- (nor bad-) making features in these particular situations (as the particularist contends). Examples are benefi ting others, promoting justice, keeping freely made promises, and not harming others ( Hooker 2000 , 8–11). Each seems to always be a goodmaking feature of a situation. Again, in many situations such features might be
What Is Romantic Love? 37 overridden by others such that the overall right thing to do would not be to benefi t others, promote justice, keep a promise, or not harm others. But this claim, one in keeping with the generality of reasons, is different from the particularist claim that none of them is always a good-making feature. Second, and related to the fi rst reason, it is diffi cult to see how the particularist can convince us of her view. Consider the following example (adapted from Plato’s Republic [1997d], 331c). Suppose that John gives Smith a gun for safekeeping while John is away on a trip. In fairness, Smith should return the gun to John when he returns. But suppose that John comes back stark raving mad. Should Smith return the gun to him? Probably not, because there is no telling the amount of harm that John could do with it given his newly acquired lunacy. The generalist would say that this is a case in which returning the gun to John is the fair thing to do but that fairness is outweighed by other crucial features (e.g., clear and present danger to others). The particularist would say that in this case fairness (would he even call it that?) is not a good-making feature of the situation. But how to determine whether it is or is not such a feature? It seems that the particularist has no convincing argument that fairness is neutral or bad in this case. Indeed, what if the generalist, by providing a built-in exception, fi ne-tunes his reason, stating that returning things to their rightful owners, except in cases when doing so brings great harm , is always a good-making feature? How would the particularist then convince us that this is actually not so in the case at hand? For these two reasons, moral particularism is controversial; it is not a moral theory that commands wide assent when it comes to its tenet of denying the generality of reasons. To be sure, no other moral theory commands wide assent either. But all other moral theories agree on the generality of reasons, none denying such a bedrock principle of reasoning in ethics. If moral particularism is highly controversial, it should not be a model on which to base the nongenerality of reasons for love. The History-Commitment View Neither the reason view nor the no-reason view can fully explain why people love if we insist on thinking of romantic love as a unifi ed phenomenon. However, if we use the distinction between RL1 and RL2, we can see that the reason view of love is better suited for RL2 in some respects (and indirectly, as I will explain), while the no-reason view is better suited for RL1. First, I will offer what I call “the history-commitment view” (“HCV”)—which turns on the two ideas that lovers commit to the beloved and that they share a history—as a way of thinking about how reasons operate in romantic love. I then bring in the distinction between RL1 and RL2. I will start with an example. Suppose that Carla and Ángel meet at a party and there is chemistry between them. They go out on a few dates. They enjoy their conversations, they fi nd that they have many mutual interests and things in common, and, of course, they are sexually attracted to each other. Soon they decide to “go steady” and
38 Love they date each other for a few months. Carla fi nds some properties of Ángel to be valuable (everything I say about her applies to him relating to her also, but I use only Carla for ease of discussion): his acute critical analyses of movies, his fl exibility and spontaneity in what to do on a daily basis, his very extroverted personality, his inclination to become a vegetarian, and his hot body, to give fi ve examples. Moreover, Carla does not fi nd any properties in Ángel that are repulsive or loathsome—more generally, she encounters no properties that are deal-breakers for her. In addition, she fi nds herself generally happy with him—she fi nds her relationship with him and his presence in her life satisfying and fulfi lling. This is not to say that they do not argue or have moments of estrangement, but it is to say that Carla does not fi nd herself miserable being around him, she does not avoid him, she does not dread seeing him, and so on Now, Ángel is not unique given that Carla knows many other guys who are similar to him in all the above respects. Yet what sets Ángel apart from others, if Carla loves him, is her commitment to him: Carla commits to Ángel as her beloved and to herself as the lover of Ángel. She is committed to seeing their relationship fl ourish, and she is committed to Ángel’s well-being and happiness, whatever these imply (and he, too, is committed to her and to the relationship). The crucial point is that in love, lovers at some point commit to each other. The notion of commitment in the HCV has two aspects to it, causal and conceptual. On the causal side, there are facts that contribute to Carla’s committing to Ángel. They are mainly that the lover is happy with the presence of the beloved in his or her life, that the beloved has valuable properties, that the beloved has no negative properties that are deal-breakers, and that the lover and the beloved share a history between them, even if the history is brief. These four facts are crucial in enabling the love to persist by enabling the lovers to commit to each other. The commitment need not be a conscious decision, and normally is not; it usually takes the form of particular actions and attitudes that the lovers have that imply a commitment on their part (some other commitments are usually conscious, like moving in together or getting married, and they themselves might entail the above basic commitment to the relationship and to the beloved). The conceptual aspect refl ects what it means to love someone. To love someone is to regard him or her as an object of attention, devotion, care, concern, and sacrifi ce. This regard is not sporadic, intermittent, or dependent on the moment. It is ongoing and refl ects the focal importance of the fl ourishing of the beloved in the eyes of the lover. The lover’s attention and care is embodied in his or her commitment to the beloved. This is a crucial aspect of what it means for x to love y , especially when x and y have been together for a while. That is, when x and y have an established history between them, and it is true that x loves y , we understand this love as partly constituted by x ’s commitment to y and y ’s commitment to x . We understand the care and concern of love to exist in or be refl ected by commitment. We do not understand the care and concern people exhibit in other contexts in such ways. The concern, for example, that someone offers to an acquaintance, to a neighbor, or to a
What Is Romantic Love? 39 stranger is usually sporadic and depends on the moment (unless there is a special background story). Thus, when x claims to love y , we understand x to be committed to y in all these ways. Loving someone is not merely an issue of wanting to be with them, of desiring them, of feeling alone without them, and so on. It is also a matter of seeing the beloved as someone whose well-being and happiness are the primary (if not sometimes also the only) target of the lover’s concern, and of seeing the beloved’s presence in the life of the lover as crucial to the well-being and happiness of the lover him or herself. Note that how this commitment translates itself into actual behavior depends on each case of love (and the lover could be committed to more than one beloved if the lover is in love with more than one person), though important aspects of it are that the beloved has priority in the lover’s life, that the lover is expected to sacrifi ce some things for the beloved, the lover has concern for the well-being of the beloved for the beloved’s own sake, that the autonomy of the lover might be somewhat compromised, and that the care and devotion is ongoing. Indeed, many of our beliefs about romantic love, such as exclusivity, constancy, and uniqueness, refl ect our views of what the implications of the commitment of love are (we will address some of them further on). Note that these implications might be to some (or large) extent culture-bound—they might exhibit differences depending on the culture and time period (also as we will see further below). 19 Note also that the relationship itself, if it exists—that is, if x ’s love for y is translated into an actual relationship between the two ( x might love y and care for y even if the two do not have a love relationship)—is the focus of the attention of the lovers: they attend to it, try to make it as successful as possible, and so on. Nonetheless, the relationship itself is solely the means for the fl ourishing of each partner to the relationship. There is no point to maintaining the relationship unless doing so helps maintain the fl ourishing of the beloved. This need not mean that the relationship is solely a means, because it could be that the fl ourishing of the beloved cannot occur outside the relationship. In either case, the relationship is not the primary good. We can now see how the HCV can resolve some of the problems that plague the reason view of love. First, it allows the love to be evaluated, for we can always ask whether the commitment is wise, good, based on good reasons, and so on. Second, it explains how love is exclusive and constant. Given that x commits to y , x has no reason to love z or trade in y for z . Specifi cally, the commitment blocks any rationality-based obligations that x has to love z . Put differently, x is not irrational in not loving z , given x ’s commitment to y . Yet this does not mean that x would be irrational or is rationally prohibited from loving and committing to someone else. To say that x loves y is to say that x is committed to y , but it is not to say that x must love only y . In short, the commitment view solves the problem of non-exclusivity arising from the reason view of love by showing that there is no irrationality in not loving others. But it does not show
40 Love that there is irrationality in loving others (this was never a problem with the reason view). It would be perfectly rational for, say, Carla to love someone else while loving Ángel. But now we cannot say to her, “You must also love Ramón on pain of irrationality.” Third, it shows us how love is reason-responsive: the commitment is based on Ángel’s properties—it is who he is that basically explains Carla’s commitment to him. Fourth, it shows us how love can survive the original properties: should Ángel lose the properties on the basis of which Carla commits, the commitment can carry the day, at least for a while. If Ángel develops other properties that Carla fi nds valuable, these would explain the continuing commitment. If Ángel does not develop other properties that can explain the continuing commitment, then the commitment will be irrational. Thus, the HCV can show how the reason view of love can handle the diffi culties raised against it. The one diffi culty it cannot solve, and no view can, is the uniqueness of the beloved. This is because, as we will see in the next chapter, no person is unique in any interesting and nontrivial way (unique to x ). However, someone might wonder why the HCV would not face the problem of irrationality at another level: What makes Carla commit to Ángel in the fi rst place and not to someone else? Practical concerns aside, is she not being irrational in committing to Ángel and not also to Ramón, or to Ramón instead, if Ramón has the same properties as Ángel does but to a higher degree? Unless pushing the problem one step back is an improvement (which it is not), the commitment view does not resolve the main problem with the reason view: Why y and not (or not also) z ? This is where the history between the lovers plays a crucial, conceptual role (not merely a causal one), because it supplies a crucial relational property that Ángel has but not Ramón, namely, the property of having been with Carla for t amount of time, or the property of sharing a life with Carla for t amount of time, or however we wish to put it. It is this history that explains why she commits to him and not to someone else, because no one else has this property (and if someone else did have this property, it would be rational for Carla to commit to both, special considerations aside). It is this historical property that explains the commitment to one person and that does not make it irrational for Carla to not love someone else or trade up with someone else. Note that in some, maybe even most, cases, the history between the lovers is the time that the lovers spend together in RL1. That is, the time that the lovers clock up together and that serves as the relational property on which the commitment is based could be the time that the lovers spend together in RL1. It need not be, but in the usual cases the time of RL1 is a crucial formative period. One might object that x can commit to y without a history between them, and that there is no conceptual incoherence in such cases. This is true. One can imagine two people deciding to commit to each other without a shared history (perhaps arranged marriages are like this), and one can argue that they have properties that make them compatible with each other and that would explain the commitment. This is true also. But the problem is that there is nothing
What Is Romantic Love? 41 between the two people to explain the commitment between them , and specifi - cally between them. That is, x can commit to z as much as x can commit to y as long as each of y and z have properties compatible with x . Only a shared history can explain the specifi c commitment of x to y by supplying an internal reason as to why x commits (an external reason can be the parents’ desire for them to commit to each other). Given the above, we can see that the HCV, to the extent that it is convincing, is convincing only with RL2. RL1 is not reason-based in this way and cannot be. Although a lover could cite properties as to why he is attracted to and in love with the beloved, the problems of non-exclusivity and trading up immediately come up: the lover has as much reason to love someone else with these properties, and he has reason to trade the beloved up for someone with these properties to a higher degree. So the lover has no basis on which to boast of the constancy of his or her love or of the uniqueness of the beloved. Nor can the lover’s commitment be used as a way to block these problems, for the reason that unlike other notions, such as infatuation, sexual desire, longing to be with the beloved, the notion of commitment is not part of our conception of RL1, even though we agree that it feels to the lovers as if the love will last forever. This is the case for two crucial reasons. First, our reactions to RL1 do not refl ect any belief in the commitment of the lovers; perhaps we understand that for genuine commitment or for commitment to take root it requires time. In this respect, the commitment involved in RL2 is not to be identifi ed with a sheer act of will or decision to commit to something. Much as lovers in RL1 sound sincere, onlookers take their claims to committing to each other with a grain of salt, knowing full well that such claims might be based on fl imsy evidence and fl eeting emotions. Indeed, the lovers themselves know this (I would bet) at some level. Second, for the commitment to be genuine, it has to be dedicated to the wellbeing and happiness of the beloved for his or her own sake —it has to be robust. That is, if x loves y , then x has robust concern for the well-being of y . For x to have robust concern for y means that “ X desires for Y that which is good for Y , X desires this for Y ’s own sake, and X pursues Y ’s good for Y ’s benefi t and not for X ’s (a corollary: sometimes at possible loss to X )” ( Soble 1997 , 68). This does not mean that x ’s concern for y never redounds to x ’s benefi t, but it does mean that this is not why x is concerned with y ’s well-being. This kind of concern, I submit, is not found in, or at the least is not typical of, RL1. The main reason is that x is not sure of y ’s love for x or of the success of the love. This propels x to fi rst and foremost secure y and y ’s love. (Why not abandon the love? Because x is beset by intense desires to be with y and to enjoy y , in all sorts of ways, and x feels that y is the one.) This means that in RL1, the love is ultimately self-directed— x aims to secure y and y ’s love to satisfy x ’s desires, which implies that x might resort to tactics not in the interest of y or against y ’s interests. Think of it this way: the destruction of the well-being and the happiness of the beloved is perfectly compatible with RL1. We do not take back our
42 Love judgment that x loves y RL1 if we know that x is behaving in destructive ways towards y . But in the case of RL2 we either do take back the judgment that x loves y if x acts in a destructive manner towards y or we try to explain x ’s behavior by, for example, claiming that x has a mistaken view of what y ’s well-being consists of or that x disagrees with y about y ’s well-being and behaves paternalistically. The madness or obsession or possessiveness of RL1 is not compatible with robust concern. But without robust concern we cannot make sense of RL2: “[B]ecause saying that X loves Y , but X does not care about the happiness or fl ourishing of Y , makes little sense, the link between X loving Y and X wanting to benefi t Y might be tighter: wanting to benefi t the beloved might partially constitute love” ( Soble 2008 , 153). RL2 is similar in this respect to the love found in deep friendship or to the love that parents have for their children. Its concern is genuine: lovers are willing to undertake large sacrifi ces for the sake of their beloveds. Thus, because genuine commitment is not characteristic of RL1, we cannot then use the notion of commitment to block the generation of the above problems that face RL1. But we might not need to. This is because RL1 is not reason-responsive: very few lovers in RL1 are likely to stop being in love (or do so easily) if they were to discover that the beloved has some serious negative properties, and very few lovers in RL1 love based on reasons. When they do cite the good properties of their beloveds, it is likely retroactively, to justify an emotion in whose grip they already are. This indicates that RL1 is best explained not by reasons, but by causes: Mary loves Joseph because the stars were aligned in just the right way. Sad to say, but true enough, had the causal confi guration been different in just the relevant ways, Mary might not have fallen in love with Joseph on that night when she did actually fall in love with him. She might have fallen in love with someone else or with no one. To recapitulate, the reason view faces the main problems of making x irrational by not loving z or by not leaving y for z . But x ’s commitment to y explains why x is not irrational in not loving also z or in not leaving y for z . And the shared history between x and y explains why the commitment is to y and not to z , even though z has the same properties as y. Finally, the commitment is reason-responsive in that if y were to change and acquire properties that x fi nds not valuable, even repugnant, x has reason to stop loving y , and x usually does so, though with time. This typically happens in RL2. RL1 is not reasonresponsive, though it does typically supply the lovers with the history needed to explain the commitment. Thus, both the reason view and the no-reason view of love are correct, except that each is correct about a different form of love. 20 We can even claim that RL1 and RL2 are very different forms of love from each other: RL1 is characterized by passion, by the strength of sexual desire for the beloved, by constant deep longing to be with the beloved, by self-interested concern for the beloved, by lacking genuine commitment to the beloved, and by not being responsive to reasons. RL2 is characterized by genuine commitment to the beloved, by robust concern for the beloved, by deep attachment to the beloved,
What Is Romantic Love? 43 and by being responsive to reasons. They are, nonetheless, both forms of romantic love because of the kind of physical and emotional intimacy they involve, which sets them generally apart from other forms of love. One might be tempted to claim that RL1 and RL2 have another crucial thing in common, namely pain at the loss of the beloved. However, although it is true that in both forms of love the loss of the beloved occasions pain, and a deep one at that, there is surely a vast difference between the type of pain in each form of love. Only in RL2 are the sadness and loss pervaded by permanence. One might put the point by saying that the sadness and loss are of someone who has been part of the surviving partner. The pain is bereavement, grief, emptiness, loneliness, and a sense of irretrievable loss. These are not accurate descriptions of the sadness and loss in RL1. Thus, we should resist the temptation to claim pain to be a shared element between RL1 and RL2. Summary and Conclusion In this chapter, we have distinguished between the passionate form of romantic love (RL1) and its settled form (RL2). We have seen how crucial this distinction is to a proper discussion of the nature of romantic love and of the reasons of love. Keeping this distinction in mind, specifi cally, allows us to offer a more accurate account of love’s nature, and it allows us to plausibly explain the role of reasons in love and how and when love is responsive to reasons. Study Questions 1. Suppose that there are drugs that can help x fall in love with y , maintain the love for y , or help x stop loving y . Should these drugs be made available to the public? What are some of the moral issues involved in using such drugs, both on a social level and on an individual level? 2. Suppose that romantic love is indeed a chemical state of the brain, much like other emotions and psychological states are likely to be. How much does this tell us about the nature of love? Would an alien visiting our world be able to understand what love is by understanding our brain chemistry? 3. If romantic love is to be characterized by desires, what are the essential desires that characterize it? Do these desires differ between RL1 and RL2? 4. Survey the views about the nature of romantic love discussed in this chapter. Do any strike you as more plausible than others? Which ones and why? Are my criticisms and evaluations of these views fair? Have I shortchanged any of them? If yes, how and why? 5. Are there additional, crucial characteristics of RL1 and RL2 that I have not mentioned? What are they and why are they crucial? Are they common to both RL1 and RL2 or just to one but not the other? 6. Try to fi nd the differences, if any, between RL1 and infatuation. Or are they identical? That is, are all cases of RL1 cases of infatuation and vice versa? What reason might you have in support of this view?
44 Love 7. Understand fully the reason view of love and the no-reason view of love. In doing so, make sure to understand whether the issue between them is explanation or justifi cation. Make sure to also understand the problems that each view faces. 8. Are there additional problems that the reason view faces? For example, if x loves y because of y ’s properties, would z (and everyone else) also not have reasons to love y ? (Does this problem arise if we understand the issue to be about explanation or justifi cation?) Is this a problem also for the noreason view? How? And is the HCV able to resolve the problem? 9. Can we export the model of the particularity of reasons in art to that of romantic love? Indeed, is that model correct with respect to art—does the fact that works of art are unique entail that in their case the reasons are particular? Bring in the language of possible worlds to help answer this question. 10. Philosophers often lump different forms of love together. One common way is to lump together RL2, friendship love, sibling love, parent-child love, and familial love more generally. Are there crucial differences between familial love relationships, on the one hand, and friendship love and RL2, on the other? I mention one crucial difference in the chapter. Are there others? 11. Is it true that the concern for the beloved found in RL1 is not usually robust, whereas it is robust in RL2? If yes, why? If no, why not? 12. Think of the pain involved in losing an RL1 beloved and the pain involved in losing an RL2 beloved. How do they differ? Is the difference one of a kind or only degree? 13. The crucial property on which the commitment in RL2 is based is the historical property between x and y (e.g., “ y has the property of sharing one year with me”). Where (or when) is this history to be found? Is it the time spent together in RL1? And what are some good ways to spell out this property? 14. I have discussed the views of Nico Kolodny in this chapter. Is my commitment view similar to his views? How and in what ways? How do they differ? 15. Does the commitment view resolve the problems with the reason view of love? 16. Is it true that RL2 is reason-responsive? Is it true that RL1 is not? Why or why not? Further Reading On the nature and defi nition of love, see Brentlinger (1989 ); Dilman (1998 ); Fisher (1990 ); Helm (2010 ); Jenkins (2015b ); Solomon (2006 ); and Taylor (1979 ). Vannoy (1980 , Part II, ch. 2) discusses whether love can be defi ned and how it differs from infatuation and friendship. On the science of love, see also Jenkins (2016 ). White (2001 ) has an interesting discussion on love, friendship, and children. On loving for reasons, non-reason-based love, exclusivity, constancy,
What Is Romantic Love? 45 uniqueness, and irreplaceability, Alan Soble’s (1990 ) book is detailed and a must-read. On the generality of reasons in art, see Sibley (2004a , 2004b ). On moral particularism, see Hooker and Little (2000 ). On agape , see also Kierkegaard (1962 ). On love and history, see also Grau (2010 ). Singer (1984a , 2001a ) offers a reason-based and non-reason-based view of love. Jollimore (2011 ) also tackles this issue in an enlightening way. Notes 1. I have never seen a sustained discussion of the possible connections between these questions in the literature on love. 2. For discussion, see Brogaard (2015 ), especially chs. 1 and 2, and de Sousa (2015 , ch. 5). The studies tend to be silent on the chemical processes, if any, that accompany the fi rst steps in falling in love or that cause these fi rst steps—a vexing question no doubt since we need to fi gure out fi rst what these fi rst steps are and how to defi ne them. 3. The second possibility was given by de Sousa. On love and medicine, see Earp, Sandberg, and Savulescu (2015 ). 4. The best source on this remains De Beauvoir (1952 ). 5. The study was discussed in Ben-Ze’ev (2014 ). Note that all these studies require proper scrutiny for how they are conducted. For example, simply asking the participants, “How in love are you with your partner?” might not be good enough insofar as participants are likely to exaggerate. 6. Do not confuse reasons with causes: I have no reasons for desiring a chocolate croissant, but there are probably causes (e.g., a physiological state) that make me want the croissant. 7. Koehn (2011 ) is perhaps correct to understand love as intense liking, but he is wrong to reduce the intense liking to mere desires. 8. It is an interesting question whether desires can be dispositional or are always occurrent—each felt desire is a new desire, not an instance of a persisting desire that is felt under certain conditions. In this respect, a theory of romantic love that attempts to capture the entire phenomenon in terms of desires might be unconvincing insofar as it cannot capture love’s dispositionality. 9. For a more elaborate argument along these lines, see Halwani (2003 , 158–168). In Chapter 4, I will more thoroughly discuss romantic love as a moral emotion. 10. It is worthwhile for the reader to pursue two more theories of love, which I have not discussed, those by Brogaard, according to which “love is an experience of your body and mind responding to your beloved’s loveable qualities” ( 2015 , 69), and by Helm (2010 ), according to which love is a form of intimate identifi cation, and to evaluate them in light of some of the criticisms raised so far in this chapter against similar physically based theories of love. 11. It could also be that some transitions occur because the lover bestows value on some of the properties of the beloved, though this does not seem necessary. Indeed, it might be dangerous insofar as bestowing value on properties that do not merit such bestowal might be a form of self- and other-deception that is morally unacceptable. Besides, what beloved wants to have his or her worthless or neutral qualities considered as valuable? On the importance of bestowal in love, see Singer (1984a ).
46 Love 12. The reader can skip this section without losing the thread of the argument. 13. The importance of this question to love has been emphasized by the philosopher Alan Soble. In addition to the references to his work in this chapter, see his 2005 essay on Frankfurt. Troy Jollimore (2011 ) attempts a middle position, but unsuccessfully to my mind (see Halwani 2014 ). 14. I will discuss these properties of love in more detail in the next chapter. 15. Jollimore (2011 ), throughout his book, lumps the two together. Smuts thinks the issue is about justifi cation (2016, 9–16). 16. See also Nygren (1953 ), for similar views. Whether both their views are genuine forms of no-reason views is debatable, given that both end up endowing human beings with value in virtue of God’s loving us, and if we have value because of God’s love, this makes us loveable because of our value. 17. Writing about the love of his children, Frankfurt says, “If my children should turn out to be ferociously wicked . . . I might perhaps recognize that my love for them was regrettable. But I suspect that after fi nally coming to acknowledge this, I would continue to love them anyhow” ( 2004 , 39–40). The philosopher Ward E. Jones comments that “ferocious wickedness” is “unpleasant business,” examples of which might include violent rape and bludgeoning a dog to death. He correctly adds, “I do not believe that Frankfurt (or anyone else for that matter) should be at all confi dent that his love would hold up in the face of such discoveries” ( 2012 , 622). I would add that if the love is not weakened or driven out, this would be a sign of moral failure on the part of the parent. Frankfurt, however, would not care much about this since he does believe that moral values are always primary. 18. Kolodny does not address this point head on in his discussion of a similar problem on pages 163–168. Instead, he argues that the relationship is a defeasible reason, and thus one can terminate a relationship should certain things go wrong. 19. Dixon (2007 ) provides a similar view. His notion of “imprinting” plays a comparable role to what my notion of “commitment” does, though the role in his account seems to be merely causal. See also Chang (2013 ) for the idea that romantic love requires some kind of internal resolution or commitment. See also Martin (2015 ) for a view similar to mine albeit one that uses a Kantian framework. 20. De Sousa concludes in his discussion of this issue that love is not responsive to reasons, only to causes. I think he concludes this because he fails to bring to bear on his reasoning the two forms of romantic love, even though he makes this distinction himself ( 2015 , ch. 4).
2 The Characteristics and the Object of Love Outline of the Chapter This chapter examines some characteristics thought to be crucial to romantic love, whether they are indeed crucial to it, and whether they differentiate romantic love from other forms of love. It also examines the nature of the object of love—what it means to love the person as a whole or for him—or herself. The Characteristics of Romantic Love There are popular beliefs about love, such as that it is exclusive and constant, and that the beloved is unique. These beliefs refl ect the idea that exclusivity, constancy, and uniqueness are all characteristics of romantic love. In this section, we will consider these characteristics and a few more, including the beloved as irreplaceable, love as concern for the beloved, love as union between the lovers, and sexual desire as a crucial element of romantic love. There is also the question as to whether any of these features are essential to romantic love and whether they serve to set it apart from other forms of love. We will briefl y attend to these questions also. Exclusivity The exclusivity of romantic love could mean one of two things. It could mean, fi rst, that if x loves y during t, then x loves y and only y during t. That is, x cannot love more than one person at a time. Exclusivity could also mean that if x loves y , then x loves y for the rest of x ’s life. That is, that x ’s love for y never dies before x ’s own death. Whatever emotion x feels for z , at any point in x ’s life, it is not love ( Soble 1990 , 169–170). Because it is obvious that x can serially love more than one person during x ’s lifetime, I set aside the second meaning. The issue, then, is whether one can romantically love more than one person simultaneously. If one believes that this is not possible, one is then committed to the thesis of what Carrie Jenkins calls “modal monogamy,” that “the only metaphysically possible romantic love relationships are monogamous ones” ( 2015a , 175).
48 Love Three considerations indicate that romantic love is not exclusive (or that modal monogamy is false). First, other types of love are not exclusive: to give two examples, parents love their children simultaneously, and friends love their many friends simultaneously. Why should romantic love be different in this respect? Second, every other emotion can be directed simultaneously at more than one object without raising any philosophical eyebrows: one can hate, be jealous of, envy, feel sad for, pity, and be angry at many people at the same time. If love is an emotion, why would it be any different? Third, there are polyamorous people—people who are in love with more than one person at a time, which implies that even if exclusivity is common, it is not an essential feature of romantic love. Why is the belief in romantic love’s exclusivity popular? The confusion between RL1 and RL2 could be one reason. Out of the two, RL1 seems to be the exclusive one, or at least it feels that way. When in its grip, the lover feels no passion for anyone other than the beloved and feels that her passion will last forever (which explains the second meaning of “exclusivity” mentioned above). Now it could be that the way the lovers feel during RL1 makes the love exclusive, but this is clearly not so when it comes to RL2: the passion dies down, and although lovers continue to love each other intensely, it is common for many to experience love (especially infatuations and RL1) with a new person. Thus, exclusivity, if true of romantic love, is true of only RL1, not RL2. Are there any arguments for believing that even RL2 is exclusive? One argument is that love requires things that entail its exclusivity. What things? When x and y are in a love relationship, they need to devote time, attention, energy, and commitment to each other. These are time-consuming (especially if x and y work or have other things to attend to). So to have more than one love at a time seems impossible. This argument, however, seems to be about practical considerations surrounding love, not the “nature” of love ( Soble 1990 , 172). In addition, friends often face the same requirements, yet friendship love is non-exclusive. Perhaps love, by its very nature, demands more time and energy on the part of the lovers to attend to each other than friendship does. But we have to be careful that the picture of love we rely on to defend this point is not culturally contingent. That is, the idea that love is more demanding in these respects than friendship may be peculiar to our age and cultural ways. If it is, then love would not be more demanding than friendship by its “nature.” Moreover, if certain cultures are opposed to non-exclusive love, with time social and cultural institutions will bend themselves to this desire, making it more practically diffi cult for nonexclusive lovers to function well, which makes it rarer for such arrangements to exist, which in turn makes us believe that it is somehow practically easier, in itself, for love to be exclusive between two people. A second argument for love’s exclusivity emphasizes love’s conceptual, not practical, aspects that make love exclusive: intimacy, trust, and privacy. One cannot be intimate with many people, trust many people (in deep, meaningful ways), or conduct a private life with many people, because intimacy, trust,
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 49 and privacy thrive only among members of small groups. Telling a deep secret to twelve people makes it really no longer a secret. Because romantic love requires these elements, it is exclusive. Although it is true that for romantic love to succeed it needs trust, privacy, and intimacy, the argument does not show love’s exclusivity; instead it shows only that love’s non-exclusivity cannot mean having too many beloveds, a claim different from the one that love is confi ned to one and only one person at a time. Friendship, which we normally do not think of as exclusive, is similar. Aristotle, in discussing the number of friends one can have, offers the correct insight that “those who have many friends and treat everyone as close to them seem to be friends to no one” ( 1999 , 1171a16). Aristotle gives for friendship an argument similar to that for the exclusivity of love: spreading yourself too thin defeats the very requirement of love. So the above argument does not show that love is exclusive, only that love, like friendship, cannot have too many beloveds. A third argument for the exclusivity of love relies on the concern found in love. When x loves y , x ’s concern for y ’s well-being is so deep and strong that x cannot love another person. This argument can be about practical issues: because of the time and energy x needs to promote y ’s well-being, x has no time for another person. It can also be conceptual: that, somehow, romantic love requires that x be concerned for the well-being of y and only of y . Both forms of the argument are unconvincing. Friends are concerned for the well-being of their friends, yet they manage to practically pull this off with multiple friends. This is also true of parents with more than one child. Moreover, there is no good reason to think that romantic love conceptually requires that the lover be concerned with only the beloved’s well-being. Does the welfare of strangers have no claims on the lover? What about the lover’s friends? If the lovers have children, can they not show concern for them because, somehow, they can only show concern for each other, as this argument requires? Clearly, we are able to show deep concern for more than one person (though, again, not for too many), so this third argument fails. In arguing for romantic love’s exclusivity, we should not make four assumptions that could skew our conclusions. First, we should not assume a love relationship : there is a difference between romantic love as an emotion and romantic love manifesting itself in a relationship. The fi rst two arguments conclude that non-exclusive love is impossible because they assume that the lover is (or tries to be) in more than one love relationship . If he were, say, in a love relationship with y but only felt love for z , the alleged practical and conceptual diffi culties with multiple loves would not be convincing (especially if he feels RL1 for z and RL2 for y ). Second, we should not assume that the love is reciprocated ( Soble 1990 , 190). Many lovers eventually form a relationship, but only if the love is reciprocated. The practical arguments for love’s exclusivity assume reciprocity, and although the conceptual arguments need not assume it ( x can love z , share intimate moments with z , and be concerned for z ’s well-being, even if z does not
50 Love love x back), doing so skews these arguments’ conclusions because reciprocity allows for deeper and more pervasive forms of intimacy and concern. Third, we should not assume whatever requirement or feature we think is part of love to exist to the highest degree ( Soble 1990 , 190). For example, if concern is a feature of love, we should not assume that it exists to the highest degree in any case of love. If sharing intimate moments is a requirement, we should not assume that the sharing is thoroughgoing. Depending on the case, it may or may not be. If we assume this, we tip the scales unfairly in favor of exclusivity by making it virtually impossible for a lover to show concern for or be intimate with more than one beloved. This is why people in polyamorous relationships often designate one relationship as primary, another as secondary, and so on ( Shotwell 2017 ). Fourth, we should not assume a particular cultural idea of how love is or should be conducted. In many cultures romantic love is both very much valued and elevated as one of the best types of relationships people can have. Indeed, the alleged exclusivity of love may be part of such a cultural picture, a picture that fuels and supports ideas of love requiring much of the lover’s time and energy to be spent with the lover’s one and only beloved, and much of the lover’s concern to be directed toward the beloved. Yet it may be that love works in different ways ( Jenkins 2017 , ch. 4). Although the arguments for romantic love’s exclusivity (especially of RL2) fail to show that love is exclusive, they show that exclusivity is limited . But this is enough to show that exclusivity is not an essential property of romantic love (certainly not of RL2). Polyamorous love relationships may not be common, but their rarity might be explained by the social bias against them. This does not mean that there are many closeted polyamorists out there that we do not know about (there may or may not be), but it does mean that social bias helps form people’s psychologies in such a way that they fear, hate, or do not desire polyamory. 1 There is much to be learned from recent writings on polyamory and on the lives of polyamorists, as such accounts can make vivid and real what seems to many to be impossible, to wit, carrying on multiple romantic love relationships ( Anapol 2010 ; Shotwell 2017 ). Constancy The idea underlying the belief in the constancy of romantic love is that for love to be real or genuine it must endure or last for a long time. This is a belief that we have, by the way, about other forms of love: parent-child love is surely considered constant, and so is friendship love. But how should we understand constancy? On one view (Soble calls it “strict constancy”), if x loves y , then x continues to love y as long as y (and x , of course) is alive (I set aside the diffi cult issues raised by loving the dead); that is, if x ’s love ends before y dies, then whatever x felt toward y was not love ( Soble 1990 , 207). Another view— “indefi nite constancy”—requires only that x ’s emotion for y last for some time for it to be love ( Soble 1990 , 207). This view does not specify the length of time, only requiring that it last for some time.
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 51 Constancy and exclusivity are not the same. If love is constant but not exclusive, x can simultaneously love y and z constantly (either for the rest of y ’s and z ’s lifetimes or for an indefi nite period). If love is exclusive but not constant, x ’s loving y means that x loves y and only y , but x may stop doing so before y dies or after only a brief period. Like exclusivity, the way lovers feel when in RL1 probably fuels the popular belief in constancy. Yet strict constancy cannot be a characteristic of romantic love, not unless we are willing to declare most loves a sham, given that in many cases of love the love goes away after some time. This is certainly true of RL1 but also true to some extent of RL2. Quite a few long-term relationships end because the love has turned sour. Strict constancy might be true of some cases of love, but it is not a general characteristic of love, let alone essential. So the best we can ask for is indefi nite constancy. One problem with indefi - nite constancy, which I will note but set aside, is that without setting some reasonable limits on the duration of the love, we leave the concept of “indefi nite constancy” too open-ended. Still, assuming that some amount of time needs to elapse for romantic love to be genuine love, why believe in constancy? One reason is not that lovers in RL1 feel that their love is constant. Here, the contrast with exclusivity is interesting: feeling that the love is exclusive makes the love exclusive—if x does not feel love for another, then x ’s love for y is exclusive. But if x feels that x ’s love is constant, this does not make the love constant. So what the lovers feel is not a good reason to believe in the truth of constancy. One reason for the truth of constancy is that our intuitions tell us that for love to be true, it has to last for some period of time—or, more strongly, that it has to withstand the test of time. This shows its resiliency and thus its genuineness. But the problem with this reasoning is that we do not require or believe this of other emotions: we don’t think that proper hate, proper envy, or proper sadness need to withstand the test of time to be genuine. Even grief need not last long, depending on the object grieved for. So why love? Indeed, insofar as we have RL1 in mind, we have no reason to believe it: we witness the dissolution of “young love” all the time. Thus, our intuition that for love to be genuine it needs to be constant is itself in need of support. Perhaps another reason for believing in constancy is our belief that love is unconditional: x will love y no matter what happens to y or how y changes. This is supported by the fact that unconditional love is found in other forms of love relationships, especially the love of parents for their children, so it might operate also in romantic love. However, it is not clear that our belief in unconditional love is true: Do we really believe that love is (or should be) like this, no matter how the beloved changes? Or is the belief to be taken with a grain of salt—that the love is meant to withstand some changes but not all? It is understandable that x stops loving y because y becomes abusive to x , because y becomes racist, or because y takes up eating meat. This indicates that we do not believe in the absolute unconditionality of love. Indeed, even in parent-child love, it would be perfectly
52 Love understandable (even honorable, I would say), if a parent were to cease loving their child were their child to become a horrible person. In short, the belief in the constancy of love is not maintained in the face of any or whatever changes that occur in the beloved. In some cases, we claim, “ x ’s love for y was never true. The minute that y gained some weight, x lost interest in y !” But in others we claim, “No one, not even x , can continue to love y given what y did!” The belief in the constancy of love is conditional on certain things being true of the love. Perhaps the reason why we believe that love is to some extent constant is that we believe that with love comes commitment, and commitment implies constancy. That is, love’s constancy is implied by the commitment that lovers make to each other, such that even if the beloved changes over time, the lover’s commitment to the beloved might secure constancy to some extent. “To some extent” because, as we have seen, the commitment cannot withstand radical changes in the beloved without some properties to sustain the commitment. So one reason why we believe in constancy is our belief in love’s commitment. Of course, even with commitment, this does not mean that love is not hostage to change, whether the change is in the properties of the beloved or not. Sometimes a lover wakes up feeling different—she feels that the love she felt is gone. Although this is likely to happen more in RL1 (easy come, easy go, as the expression has it), it can happen also in RL2. If this happens, there is very little that can secure constancy. Thus, given that many RL1s are not constant, even the most plausible reason for constancy, commitment, does not take us so far as to believe in constancy’s essentiality for love. Some loves are loves even if they are not constant, especially those of RL1, but sometimes those of RL2 as well. Uniqueness and Irreplaceability 2 People often think that the beloved is unique. Why they think so is not so clear, though it probably stems from how lovers feel in RL1: in that state, they tend to view each other as one-of-a-kind, which probably gives rise to the idea that the beloved is unique. It is also not clear what role the idea of uniqueness plays in our thinking about love. It could mean that the lover falls in love with the beloved because the beloved is unique, or it could mean that because the beloved is unique, the lover’s love is exclusive to him or her. Both claims depend on the idea that the beloved is unique, so let us look into this a bit. To say that someone—let’s call him Donald—is unique can mean one of two things: it can mean that he is unique, period, or that he is unique to someone (to Melania, say). Of course, every individual is unique in some respects: their genetic code, their fi ngerprints, their individual history, their coming from a specifi c sperm and egg, and being that person (only Donald is Donald), to give a few examples. But none of these properties is relevant to love—it is hard to see why Melania loves Donald on the basis of his having a specifi c fi ngerprint or genetic code. The properties that are relevant to love are things like beauty,
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 53 charm, physical attractiveness, and intelligence. It is these properties that lovers often cite for loving someone. But the problem is that these properties do not make someone unique at all—many people are good-looking, witty, and charming. Indeed, it seems that people tend to “follow the crowd,” such that even with things like tastes, preferences, hobbies, and activities they do not exhibit uniqueness. One might argue that what makes one unique is not simply being charming, but that person being charming. Or, put differently, it is not charm that makes Donald unique, but charm-in-Donald, or charm-as-exhibited-by-Donald. Since no one else has this property, then Donald is unique (see Landrum 2009 ). But this will not work, because the only reason why charm-in-Donald is different than, say, charm-in-Jared, is because Donald is different from Jared. In other words, it is the uniqueness of Donald and of Jared that would explain why charm-in-each-one is unique. So we are back to square one ( Soble 1990 , 54). Of course, and especially in RL1, the lover might believe that the beloved is unique and this would explain, to some extent, the prevalence of the belief in uniqueness. This is true as far as it goes, but it does not establish the truth of the belief in uniqueness, which is what we want. After all, lovers believe many things, but this has nothing to do with fi nding out the truth about romantic love. The fact of the matter is that people are not unique in any interesting ways. And they need to have interesting uniqueness if uniqueness is to be the basis of someone’s love for another. Moreover, even if people are unique in interesting ways, uniqueness would not secure the love’s exclusivity. Even though Melania loves Donald based on his uniqueness, she can still love someone else based on that other person’s uniqueness ( Soble 1990 , 65–66). Might uniqueness be a relational property? Perhaps Donald is unique because he is loved by Melania. Assuming that Melania loves no one else, that would make Donald unique, for no one else has the property being-loved-byMelania. But Melania’s love for Donald does not make Donald unique in any interesting sense—so what if Donald is loved by Melania? This leaves us with “unique-to- X ”—Donald is not unique, period, but he is unique to Melania. This means that the uniqueness in question is that of irreplaceability—Donald is irreplaceable to Melania—as there is no other way of making sense of the idea of something being unique to someone. Moreover, it is subjective irreplaceability—irreplaceability for Melania, given that Donald is not unique, period. Now, subjective irreplaceability makes sense, because while some people can value things in such a way that nothing else can take their place, other people might not place any value on these things. So what is irreplaceable for one, is replaceable for another. According to Soble, “An item F is irreplaceable for x if and only if two conditions are met: (I) x deeply values F and (II) nothing can take F ’s place” ( 1990 , 288). Given that lovers satisfy the fi rst condition—they deeply value their beloveds—the issue is whether the second condition is satisfi ed. Is it true that nothing can take the place of their beloveds? Not really. The world is full of cases of those who love another, declare to him or her, “You are the love of my life,” then lose the love, only to love again
54 Love and to (boldly) re-declare to the new beloved, “You are the love of my life.” Beloveds are certainly replaceable serially or diachronically. Indeed, beloveds are also replaceable synchronically—there are plenty of cases in which x loves y (especially RL2 love) yet x leaves y for z or adds z to x ’s roster of beloveds. Incidentally, here might lie another difference between romantic love and friendship love, on the one hand, and sibling love and parent-child love, on the other. There is a sense in which friends and beloveds are replaceable that is not true of siblings, children, and parents; it is worth further thinking about why this is so. If all these beliefs about romantic love do not withstand much scrutiny, why do many people believe them? The phenomenology of romantic love, especially of RL1, is such that while in it lovers feel and think that their love for the beloved is exclusive and constant, and that their beloved is unique. After some passage of time, they realize that this is not true, even though they still love the original beloved. The feeling of irreplaceability, however, remains in RL2 and is even deepened, given that lovers come to deeply value each other over time. These facts might help explain why we have these beliefs about romantic love. We might also have them because they make us feel special: being loved because we are unique and irreplaceable, and being loved exclusively and constantly makes us feel valuable, special, important, and, well, loveable. These in turn might help us have or maintain our self-respect, which is important for any working relationship and for our daily comportment ( Soble 1990 , 67). Still, maintaining our self-respect on the basis of delusional beliefs is not a good idea. It might even be self-contradictory: If I am not unique and if I am replaceable, believing the opposite defeats my self-respect insofar as living our lives based on the truth is a precondition of self-respect. Perhaps we maintain our self-respect and worth knowing that someone loves us (although a lot depends on who that someone is) despite or even because of our not being unique and despite or because of our having common properties with others. The following statement makes complete sense: “It does not give me any self-worth to know that you love me because I am unique in interesting ways. That is easy love! I want you to love me despite the fact that I am not unique in interesting ways.” So far, we have seen that romantic love is not necessarily exclusive or constant, and that the beloved is neither unique nor irreplaceable. Let us turn next to union. Union The idea that lovers seek union with each other has a long history in philosophy, starting with the speech by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium , in which he explains the myth of the original, rounded creatures whom Zeus split in half because they became arrogant and powerful. After the calamity of being split in half, they spent their lives looking for their other halves (or for someone to complete them). To Aristophanes, this story explains the origin of love: “This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 55 one out of two and heal the wound of human nature” (Plato, Symposium [1997e], 191d). 3 We have slogans and beliefs that seem to echo Aristophanes’s sentiment: “He’s my other half”; “I know that there is a special someone out there for me”; and “You complete me.” No one really accepts the idea of “union” in the strong ways found in the account by Aristophanes. Philosophers have striven to understand this point in a way that gives it its due yet also makes it plausible. Desire for union cannot be desire for physical union, especially because it is not clear what “physical union” means. It cannot mean becoming something like Aristophanes’s original human beings, because not only is it physically and psychologically impossible—it is not desired by romantic lovers. First, such a desire defeats the very point of love. If x loves y , x loves y as a separate entity, so if x and y were to merge, there would no longer be a y that is the object of x ’s love, which defeats the very point of love, not to mention that such union erodes x ’s own being and identity as a lover. So both x and y would be obliterated in the process, with a new entity, z , made up of x and y , emerging. However, love is strange; might it not have paradoxical and self-defeating desires? I am skeptical of this thinking, because even though lovers desire to be with each other, to share their experiences, even to cling to each other, say, during sex, they do not desire to literally fuse into one physical entity. The idea of union must then be one of mental, emotional, or spiritual union. But what does this amount to? Let us look at two philosophers’ accounts that attempt to answer this question, Robert Nozick’s and Robert Solomon’s, beginning with Nozick’s. Nozick on the We Under a weak concept of union, the lovers form, or desire to form, some sort of a single entity. Nozick calls it a “we.” To Nozick, the desire to form a “we” is not accidental to love but is intrinsic to it: “Love, romantic love, is wanting to form a we with that particular person, feeling, or perhaps wanting, that particular person to be the right one for you to form a we with, and also wanting the other to feel the same way about you” ( 1991 , 418; emphases in original). Desiring to form a we with y (and with no one but y , as Nozick later says on page 427) is a necessary condition for romantic love. This means what? The “we” has three features. First, the well-being of each lover is tied up with the well-being of the other ( Nozick 1991 , 419). If something bad (or good) happens to one, something bad (or good) happens to the other, though the bad thing that happens to the beloved need not be the same bad thing that happens to the lover ( 1991 , 417). This is unlike friendship, whereby if something bad happens to a friend, we feel bad for our friend but the bad thing does not also happen to us ( 1991 , 417). For example, suppose that Sally and Toni are lovers. If, say, Toni fails her bar exams, something bad happens to Toni. But something bad also happens to Sally, though, being a dentist, it is not failing the bar exam. Nozick is elusive on what the bad thing could be, though he would probably say that it is Sally’s feeling hurt or sad ( 1991 , 417). If Tom and
56 Love John are friends, and if Tom fails the bar exam, John feels sad for Tom. In the case of Sally and Toni, Sally feels sad, period (could John feel sad, period? We will return to this point later). Second, the “we” requires lovers to jointly make some decisions, thereby limiting each other’s autonomy: “people who form a we . . . limit or curtail their own decision-making power and rights; some decisions can no longer be made alone” ( 1991 , 419). Examples of such decisions are where to live, “whether to have children and how many, where to travel, whether to go to the movies that night and what to see” ( 1991 , 419). Nozick is not clear on how these decisions are jointly made, simply stating that they “somehow” are ( 1991 , 419). He is also unclear on which decisions are jointly made. Given his list of examples, they seem to be about things that include both individuals in a we : from the serious decision about whether they should have children to the mundane one about whether to go to the movies on a particular night. As we will shortly see, and contrary to Nozick’s narrow understanding of how the we limits individual autonomy, the we limits the individuals’ autonomy pervasively . Third, the formation of a “we” alters each lover’s identity: “[T]o love someone might be, in part, to devote alertness to their well-being and to your connection with them” ( 1991 , 419–420; cf. Conlon 1995 , 297–298). The idea is that each lover becomes psychologically part of the other: they think and worry about each other all the time, and one lover even has imaginary dialogues with the other when the latter is not around ( 1991 , 420). Since this feature is uncontroversial and we do not need to believe in a Nozickian we to accept it, I will set it aside for now (and return to a similar idea with Robert Solomon’s account of shared identity). Nozick’s we raises three important questions. First, is the we a plausible idea? Second, what is the connection between the desire to form a we , on the one hand, and the features of the we , on the other? Third, is the we compatible with another basic feature of romantic love, the genuine concern that lovers have for each other? THE PLAUSIBILITY OF NOZICK’S WE There is some truth in the idea that the well-being of each lover is tied up with that of the other, since lovers suffer when their beloveds suffer, and are happy when they are happy. Having said this, the trouble with the fi rst feature of the we is that it is either uninteresting or false. Consider Nozick’s claim that the bad (or good) thing that happens to y need not be the same bad (or good) thing that happens to x . This claim is true, for otherwise it would be utterly implausible. Failing the bar exam is the bad thing that happens to Toni, but it clearly is not the bad thing that happens to Sally. Even if Sally also took the bar exam and failed it, this is a bad thing that happens to her, but not because Toni failed the bar exam. So although Nozick is right that the bad thing that happens to one in a we is not usually the same bad thing that happens to the other, he ends up with the uninteresting point that when one
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 57 bad (or good) thing happens to y , x feels bad or sad. As Nozick acknowledges, this is a feature common to all types of love ( 1991 , 417): if I love my collection of Harry Potter novels, then if something bad happens to it (it gets stolen), something bad happens to me (I feel miserable). Perhaps Nozick can reply that the sadness or happiness that x feels when in a we is deeper than what happens in other cases, say, what x feels when something bad happens to x ’s friend. But this would be false, because some negative or positive effects to y ’s well-being, though causing sadness or happiness in x , are too trivial (not coming home in time for dinner) to make the sadness or happiness deep. So the fi rst feature of a we does not capture something interesting in a union. The we ’s second feature is the limitation on autonomy. Nozick discusses this idea in terms of limits on individual decision-making. It is true, as Nozick claims, that some decisions will need to be made jointly, and, I suppose, the idea here is that two lovers need to sit down and discuss whether, say, they should move to another city and arrive at a decision by consensus. 4 Even though Nozick does not say which decisions need to be jointly made and which do not, the idea is that some individual autonomy nonetheless remains in a we , evidenced by those decisions that do not need to be, or that are not, jointly made. However, much depends on what we mean by “autonomy.” If, as Nozick understands it, it means a decision arrived at by an individual alone, not by consensus or agreement, perhaps the we limits autonomy only when it comes to important decisions. But making a decision alone is not the same as making it independently, so another sense of “autonomy” that the we more thoroughly limits is the ability to make decisions without having to take into account the needs and desires of one’s beloved. Granted, and unless one is a hermit, this type of autonomy is almost always limited in our lives: we have to make decisions taking into account the needs of our friends, colleagues, neighbors, and even strangers, at least in the minimal sense that whatever we decide does not (seriously?) harm them, break our promises to them, and so on. But when we enter a we , things become more complicated. For example, x ’s decision to have pizza for dinner while y is out of town is not autonomous, in that, at minimum, x needs to ensure that y would not disapprove of this decision (unless x does not care about what y thinks, a fact that might raise doubts about x ’s being part of a we with y ). Whether x goes to the movies tomorrow night, whether x buys a new cell phone, whether x takes up yoga lessons, and whether x goes away on a weekend by himself are normally not serious, momentous, or life-affecting decisions. Yet as part of a we , x cannot make these decisions on his own; x needs to ensure y ’s approval or, at least, nondisapproval. Outside a we , x has much more autonomy: x need not worry that his friends approve or disapprove of such decisions. The limits on autonomy in a we , then, are much more thoroughgoing than Nozick seems to believe (they increase if we bring in other considerations, such as emotional ones). They create trouble for the very idea of union and the desire for union, as we will shortly see.
58 Love So far, we may conclude that the feature of the we that is both interesting and plausible is limited autonomy. But it faces severe diffi culties. To see this, let us turn to the next two issues connected with Nozick’s account. THE DESIRE TO FORM A WE AND FEATURES OF THE WE Consider a simple example that has nothing to do with the we or love. Suppose that as I am about to dive in the sea for a good swim, someone alerts me to the presence of many jellyfi sh in the water, sea creatures whose sting can be very painful. I would then probably no longer want to swim. I might still fi nd the water alluring but would not retain the desire to jump in right then and there. Many similar cases can be generated of such confl icting desires (e.g., desiring a frosty glass of water only to be told that it is full of poison; desiring to visit a particular country but not wanting to support its regime). Nozick’s view faces a similar conundrum. Presumably, all (or most) of us want to be in love. But if to be in love is to desire to form a we , would we still want to be in love given the fi rst two features of this we ? If Nozick is correct, to want to be in love is to want to form a we . Wanting to want something is a “higher-order desire,” a type of desire whose target is another desire. Normally, our desires target regular objects (swimming, brownies, and Justin Bieber), but higher-order desires target other desires. Suppose that John doesn’t like chocolate, but he feels very weird about this, seeing that everyone else likes it. So he wishes he could desire or want chocolate. John has the higher-order desire to have a desire for chocolate. Ordinarily (and back to Nozick), we do not want to limit or tie our well-being in strong and direct ways to somebody else’s, perhaps because we value our independence too much (or is this a mere cultural product of societies that emphasize individualism?). The problem, then, with Nozick’s view is that although most people desire love, they do not desire to have their autonomy limited or their well-being held hostage to another’s in strong ways. If Nozick is right, limiting their autonomy and strongly tying up their well-being with another’s are two things that people do desire, given that they desire love. However, as Soble puts it, “Why would we want to ‘pool’ that hard-gained autonomy with the autonomy of someone else, thereby effectively abandoning our prize?” ( 1997 , 91). We have three options. The fi rst is to argue that people are generally ignorant of these two features of love, which means that when they desire love, they do not desire the two features; they end up being saddled with them because they didn’t know about them. But people are not usually ignorant of the fact that when they are in love they lose much of their autonomy, or of the fact that in loving someone (or something) they have to brace themselves for possible sadness and loss (though they might not dwell on them). So the fi rst option is not convincing. The second is to accept that people do actually desire these two features, but relegate this phenomenon to human strangeness or irrationality. People often do things they know to be dangerous, to come with a heavy price, to be painful,
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 59 including desiring intimate relationships, which come with their own risks, even guaranteed pain and suffering (no parent, for example, will tell you that raising her children went without a hitch). Romantic love is not unique in these respects. We desire it just as we desire having friendships and children. So most people are irrational or strange. But this conclusion is too quick, because love, in all its forms, makes people happy, makes life worth living, or both, which could explain the fact that people desire love while being fully aware of the price tag. So it does not seem that people desire both love and its costs. So they are not being irrational or strange. This brings us to the third and most plausible option, as it offers a more sophisticated account than the fi rst two of what goes on when we desire love. Although people desire to be in love, they do not desire these two confl icting features, but accept them as a price worth paying. How is this possible? Suppose that I do jump into the blue water knowing about the jellyfi sh. This would not mean that I am no longer averse to their stings, let alone that I desire them, but that I decided to just bite the bullet. One can desire something without desiring every property or aspect of that thing. Setting aside cases of self-destructive behavior, examples are many: desiring sweets but not their fattening or unhealthy aspects, desiring sex but not its diseases, desiring traveling but not its hassles, and so on. Applied to Nozick’s account, people desire romantic love but not its curtailment of autonomy and the tying up of wellbeing. It then follows that when people desire to be in love, they do not desire to form a we , at least not a Nozickian one. UNION AND CONCERN Suppose that romantic love is characterized by the lovers’ robust concern for each other. Recall Soble’s defi nition of robust concern: x having robust concern for y means that “ x desires for y that which is good for y , x desires this for y ’s own sake, and x pursues y ’s good for y ’s benefi t and not for x ’s (a corollary: sometimes at possible loss to x ).” 5 The concern is robust because x directs it at y ’s benefi t, not x ’s; it is not selfi sh or even self-interested on the part of x . But this view of concern is in deep tension with the idea of union, so love cannot be both characterized by union and by robust concern. One has to go. Here is why. If the well-being of two lovers is intimately tied up with each other’s, as Nozick would have it, such that every time x ’s well-being goes up when y ’s does, and x ’s well-being goes down when y ’s does, then it is not possible that when x does something to benefi t y , x does not also benefi t himself ( Soble 1997 , 82). The idea is not that when x does something to benefi t y , x is thinking, “I do this because it will also benefi t me” ( x might or might not think this). The idea is that Nozick’s view cannot account for robust concern: where, in all this tying up of x ’s and y ’s well-being, is there logical room for robust concern? Indeed, any account of union that strongly ties together the lovers’ interests, well-being, desires, and so on is going to have a diffi cult time accounting for robust concern, because to have it, x and y ’s well-being, interests, and so on
60 Love must be separate; only then x can view y (and y view x ) as y ’s own person, with y ’s own needs and desires. Should we give up union or robust concern as a characteristic of love? We should give up union, because there are diffi culties with it independent of its being in tension with robust concern, and because the idea of robust concern better explains what happens to the lover when the beloved’s well-being goes up (or down). To see this, suppose that x and y have robust concern for each other. Then, when y fares badly, x feels bad or sad because x is concerned for y . In other words, the going up or down of lovers’ well-being occurs not because they are tied to each other’s well-being, but because x and y are robustly concerned for each other. On Nozick’s view, x ’s well-being goes up (or down) because it is logically connected to y ’s well-being going up (or down), given that they are in a we . On the alternative view, the reason why x ’s well-being goes up is due to x ’s concern for y ’s well-being: because x is concerned for y , when y does well, x feels happy. Indeed, it is telling that Nozick claims that the good and bad things that happen to x and y are not the same. This is what we would expect if x and y had concern for each other; we would also expect that x ’s sadness or happiness varies depending on how important is the type of good or bad thing that happens to y . To clarify, consider a simple example. Suppose that Henry has a lousy job. It does not pay very well, does not befi t his abilities, and does not make proper use of his talents. But Henry likes it and does not want to quit, even though Catherine, Henry’s we- mate, abhors it and wishes Henry would quit. She hates it not because it is low-paying (she makes more than enough for both of them), but because she thinks it is undignifi ed for Henry to occupy it. Suddenly, because of budget cuts, Henry gets fi red. He is miserable to the point where his well-being is affected (he is seriously unhappy, lost). Catherine, however, though she feels sad for him (she does love him, after all), is secretly happy. If Nozick were right, Catherine’s reaction would be puzzling, because her well-being should go down with Henry’s. But it doesn’t; it actually goes up (she is now even happy all the time). To explain Catherine’s reaction, we need to rely on concern: being concerned for Henry, knowing that his job was a deadend one, and knowing that he will eventually fi nd another that will make him happy, Catherine is happy he lost the job; this event is good for Henry, even if Henry does not see it her way (is Catherine presumptuous to think that she knows what’s good for Henry? We will touch on such issues when we discuss concern). The example of Henry and Catherine illustrates why Nozick is wrong to think that a lover’s well-being always goes up (or down) when the beloved’s well-being goes up (or down), and it illustrates how robust concern better explains why a lover feels the way she does when the beloved’s well-being is positively or negatively affected. Moreover, if it is merely the idea that when two people are in love each of their well-beings is affected by what happens to the other’s, this would be a true claim, but it should not be considered a union view of love, unless we agree that this is all that we mean by a “union” view of love. This takes us to Robert Solomon’s account.
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 61 Solomon’s on Shared Identity Solomon rejects the union view of love that involves the “synthesis of a single identity out of two atomistic and autonomous human beings” and chooses instead “shared identity” and “shared selfhood,” by which he means “selfidentity conceived through identifi cation with another person, group, or institution” ( 1990 , 151). Solomon gives the example of someone who “identifi es with a dozen or so others as a member of such-and-such a team” ( 1990 , 151; emphasis in original). If I identify with my soccer team, then, when playing soccer every Saturday, my qualities (or properties) that move to the forefront are those pertaining to my soccer-playing abilities, such as how fast I run, how well I pass the ball to other team members, and how I perform as a member of a team. My other properties (that I am a philosopher, that I have a cat, that I have brown eyes) are downplayed but not eroded: I still have them, but they are not prominent or relevant to that particular identifi cation. To Solomon, “Romantic love . . . must be understood . . . as shared determination of self” ( 1990 , 155). The individual selves of the lover and the beloved are (partly) determined in and through their relationship: “not just what I think of myself but what you think of me, and what I think of the way you think of me, and what you think of the way I think of you, and so on” ( 1990 , 155). Suppose that I think of myself as an honest individual who does not like to mince his words. In a relationship, I need to also take into account what my beloved thinks of this; perhaps he thinks that it is not honesty but meanness. But I also need to take into account what I think of his thought: he’s really wrong; it’s not meanness, after all, but honesty. Thus, what I think of who I am and how I conceive of myself depend on my direct thoughts about myself, on others’ thoughts about me (in this case, my beloved’s), and on my thoughts about these. Is this a view of determining a self? It is not clear what this idea really means. If it means something along the lines of defi ning who I am, fi guring out what is my “core,” then merely taking into account what my beloved thinks of my socalled honesty and of me in general is not enough to determine who I am. After all, if I only entertain these thoughts or mull them over, this will do nothing to defi ne me. Something stronger is needed, such as accepting or rejecting these thoughts, because then I am able to defi ne who I am (an honest person or a mean person). This means that the process of self-determination involves at least two steps. First, I take into account what I think of myself (I’m honest) and what my beloved thinks of me (I’m mean) and of my thoughts about his thoughts about myself (it’s not honesty but meanness). Second, I endorse or reject these beliefs (he’s wrong to think I am mean; I am, really, honest). In this way, and through my relationship with my beloved, I determine what my self is. Solomon believes that the goal of shared identity is impossible to attain, because attaining it is a never-ending process given the lovers’ individual differences: “[N]o sooner do we approach this goal than we are abruptly reminded of our differences” ( 1990 , 269). On my interpretation of his view, the goal is not impossible, but it is never fi xed and always subject to amendments, changes, and tinkering.
62 Love However, romantic love is not special in this respect, because we take into account and then reject or accept what not only our beloveds think of us but also many others: friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors, and even strangers. Solomon does not deny that selves are determined in such various ways, including by society and culture at large, but he believes that “much of the determination of self . . . is to be located in our specifi c interpersonal relationships” ( 1990 , 155). Although romantic love is not the only interpersonal relationship people have, it is primary because only our beloveds usually come to know us thoroughly and intimately, given that lovers tend to live with each other and spend most of their private time together. They know each other in deeper and more pervasive ways than, say, friends come to know each other. Perhaps this is why romantic love plays a primary role in the determination of the self. Even if true, Solomon’s would not be a view of union that “has bite.” First, because the determination of the self can and does occur through different interpersonal relationships, it is diffi cult to see how in romantic love it is a form of union, even if romantic love is the primary way of determining the self. Second, on my interpretation of Solomon’s view, in determining my self by accepting or rejecting my beloved’s thoughts about me, it is necessary that I retain my individuality and autonomy (Solomon does not deny this), because without some autonomy on my part—some ability to make independent decisions about, among other things, myself—I am not in a position to accept or reject these thoughts of my beloved. This means that no union is going on—at least no thoroughgoing, interesting, or Nozickian union. If it exists, the union is innocuous, one in which lovers merely come to understand who they are in light of how they understand each other. (To call it “innocuous” is not to be glib; in societies where women or minorities are made to view themselves as having lesser value, members of these groups who are in love relationships with members of the dominant groups might come to think of themselves almost completely in terms of how their lovers think of them. Here, determination of self is malignant.) The fact that some degree of autonomy is necessary for such self-determination is crucial: it prevents a complete merging of selves, allowing lovers to feel concern for each other. Moreover, any view of union that is a form of shared selves would have to be carefully articulated. If “shared selves” means that the lovers share their desires, beliefs, views, emotions, tastes, or experiences (it is not clear what else it could mean), three points must be made. First, the sharing cannot be literal. My belief that the sun is rising is my belief; it cannot also be my beloved’s (ditto for tastes, experiences, and so on). So “sharing” here must mean something like “both Raja and his beloved have two instances of the same type of belief, that the sun is rising.” Second, not all the beliefs, desires, and so on can be shared even in this sense. For example, my belief that I am in love with y , where y is my beloved, cannot be had by y , because “I” refers to me, not to y . Basically, any belief of mine that has the “I” as a part would be one that y cannot share. Third, not all beliefs and desires will be shared. In all likelihood, I will have desires and beliefs (and tastes and experiences) that my beloved does
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 63 not. I might like cheese-less pizza, whereas he likes cheese-smothered pizza. I might believe that Jack is nosy and decrepit, whereas he might disagree with me or not have any beliefs about him. This is to say nothing about when he and I disagree (or even fi ght) about all sorts of issues when it is likely that we do not share the majority of our desires and beliefs. So, once again, another possible way of understanding union—the idea of sharing selves—does not (and cannot) amount to any interesting form of union. It is not surprising that we have come up empty-handed. Any account of union is bound to face diffi culties if the account is genuine—if it is of union in a profound way—because it will need to explain how such union is possible given that the lovers must retain a good measure of metaphysical independence to be able to claim that they love each other and that they show concern for each other. Why do some people believe in some sort of desire for union between the lovers? First, the belief in some sort of union was probably also generated by what lovers feel in RL1 (one is hard pressed to fi nd lovers in RL2 clamoring for union: “Union?!?!? Does this mean you will come to work with me all the time?”), when they desire to always be in each other’s company, to see, hear, and touch each other, and to generally bask in the glow and warmth of the other. Second, lovers often talk in terms of “we,” so some sort of pooling or sharing is going on. It is because of the second reason that there is some truth in union views that needs to be unpacked. To do so, we need to make two distinctions. First, we need to distinguish between strong union views (SUVs) and weak ones (WUVs). That is, if one feature of romantic love is union, or the lovers having union, is the union strong or weak? Under a SUV, the union is physical (which is impossible) or a thoroughgoing welding of well-being (such as Nozick’s, which is implausible). Under a WUV, the union consists of some amount of shared interests, shared schedules, shared plans, shared values, shared activities, shared space or domicile, shared time, shared things—in short, a shared life. This is not only a plausible and achievable union, but one that many lovers actually desire (especially those of RL1) and attain (especially those of RL2). The second distinction concerns the desire for union, as opposed to actually having union, and whether it is the desire for a SUV or WUV. It seems to me that the desire for SUV does not exist (or exists only during passionate sexual encounters in RL1), as it is a desire for something that threatens both the individuality of the lovers and the concern in the love, and thus the love itself. Since the lovers know this, it is virtually impossible to see how it exists (though it can, as an irrational desire). The desire for WUV is more plausible and surely prevalent, in both RL1 and RL2: witness how many lovers speak in terms of “we,” “ours,” and “us.” It is this desire for a shared life that characterizes almost all cases of romantic love and that lovers realize comes with the price of the loss of some autonomy. 6 The restriction of autonomy (one of the features of Nozick’s “we”) might not exactly be a positive feature of love or something to look forward to, but
64 Love it is a feature of love. It also exists in both RL1 and RL2. In RL1 it takes on more of a feeling of lack of independence, in which the lovers feel that their happiness depends on the presence of the other in their life. In RL2 it takes on more practical dimensions, though the feeling aspect is also there. Whether it feels as a burden in each probably depends on the couple in question and the specifi c context in which it occurs. Let us next turn to concern. Concern for the Beloved It is another common belief that lovers show concern for each other. If x claims to love y , but x shows no concern for y ’s well-being and happiness, it is virtually impossible to defend the claim that x really loves y . If x is actively hostile toward y , acting in ways to destroy, or at least chip away at, y ’s well-being, it is even more certain that x does not love y . We can, then, agree that if x loves y , x must have some concern for y ’s well-being. We can even agree that x must show quite a bit of concern for y ’s well-being, given that this is typical of lovers. Sometimes the concern sits side-by-side with destructive tendencies (alas, such is human nature), but the concern needs to exist in some form. Now, although there is general agreement on the necessity of concern, there are three further issues to address: fi rst, whether this concern is robust ; second, whether the well-being should be as seen by the beloved or as seen by the lover; and third, whether, supposing x ’s conception of y ’s welfare is utterly warped, we can still claim that x loves y . Let us start with the fi rst issue. Is the Concern in Romantic Love Robust? To recapitulate, x has robust concern for y means that “ x desires for y that which is good for y , x desires this for y ’s own sake, and x pursues y ’s good for y ’s benefi t and not for x ’s (a corollary: sometimes at possible loss to x )” ( Soble 1997 , 68). The concern is robust because x ’s desiring y’s good is for y ’s sake, not, ultimately, for x ’s sake. Consider a simple example: Suppose that Peter discovers a drowning boy, and Paul discovers another drowning boy. Peter saves him because it is a child who is drowning, because it is a human life, period. Paul saves him because doing so will make Paul look good in the eyes of his community. While Peter seeks the child’s good only for the child’s sake, Paul seeks it as a means to his (Paul’s) own good. Peter’s concern is robust; Paul’s is not. The issue is whether the concern in romantic love is robust. Some philosophers believe that the concern in romantic love is selfi sh or self-interested (selfi shness and self-interestedness are not the same, but I will ignore the differences for the moment). One argument is that because human beings are selfi sh, and they act selfi shly, love is no exception. So any concern x shows for y is, appearances notwithstanding, ultimately selfi sh. However, the view that human beings act selfi shly is false. It might be that they act selfishly in most of their actions, but they do sometimes do good things for others
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 65 with no positive repercussions to their own well-being, sometimes even with negative repercussions ( Shoemaker 2006 , 21–24). So we do not always act selfi shly. And if it is not true that we always act selfi shly, it needs to be shown why in romantic love we do. Moreover, even if we always act selfi shly, we cannot derive any interesting conclusions about romantic love because it would not be special in this regard. For although we can conclude that lovers’ concern for their beloveds is ultimately selfi sh (given the assumption that we always act selfi shly), this would have nothing to do with love as such but with the fact that this is how people always behave. But then the idea that the concern in romantic love is not robust becomes uninteresting, because there is nothing special about romantic love in this respect. Philosophers who argue that romantic love is selfi sh usually do so because of their beliefs about the nature of romantic love. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard argues that both erotic love and friendship are morally dubious because they involve preferences: “That passionate preference is another form of self-love will now be shown . . . just as self-love centres exclusively about this self —whereby it is self-love, just so does erotic love’s passionate preference centre around the one and only beloved . . . The beloved [is] therefore called . . . the other-self , the other-I . . . But wherein lies self-love? It lies in the I, in the self” ( Kierkegaard 1962 , 66). 7 X romantically loves y because y , somehow, suits x ’s needs and desires. X prefers y over others because, in short, y makes x happy. If this is the reason why x loves y , then x ’s love for y is ultimately selfi sh or self-interested. The contemporary philosopher Russell Vannoy puts the point this way: “The erotic lover is ordinarily quite selective, choosing for a mate one who has attractive qualities that stir the emotions and gratify the lover’s own needs and self-interest” ( 1980 , 132). The claim is that the lover treats the beloved preferentially because he is ultimately not motivated by the well-being of the beloved but by his own. This is the fi rst reason given why romantic love is selfi sh. The selfi shness, however, also consists in the fact that people want to be preferred in this way. We want to be loved for who we are as individuals. Vannoy again puts the point nicely: “[T]he loved one would ordinarily be distressed to think her lover would give his love to just anybody. Nor would she ordinarily accept a love given out of purely altruistic considerations, that is, someone who gives his love to whomever he sees as needing love, regardless of other qualities” ( 1980 , 133). Not only do we prefer and select who is to receive our love, we prefer to be the recipients of such selections. We do not want to be “charity cases” as this does not sit well with our pride. There is a third reason why romantic love is selfi sh. Suppose that by donating $50 to a charitable organization I could greatly improve the life of a poor child. I jump at the opportunity, only to realize that someone else has donated the money and beat me to it. Unless I am psychologically ill this would not bother me. I could always donate the money to make another child happy. But suppose that someone else “beats me” to making my beloved happy by doing
66 Love all the things I could have done to make her happy. Typically, a lover’s reactions would be anger and jealousy, not “Oh, pouring your heart out to Brett and having sex with him makes you happy? Just go ahead and do so, hon. Whatever you want.” This reaction indicates that the lover’s motives are selfi sh: he wants to be the one to provide the beloved with happiness, not someone else. But exactly how does selfi shness enter the picture? And how is it connected with concern? According to the fi rst reason, x selects from among many individuals the one person who most suits x and who makes x happy . According to the third, x strives to make the relationship with y a success and to make y happy because if y is unhappy x would be unhappy (one common answer to the question, “Why do you love me?” is “Because you make me happy”). According to the second reason, being selected and loved for who we are individually makes us feel wanted, desired, and needed. This makes us happy. In all this, “happy” does not only mean “ feeling good,” but that our lives have meaning, we are useful, we have companionship, we are not lonely, we are important to someone, we are (somewhat) more fi nancially and emotionally secure—we are content. “Happiness” does not refer only to a feeling but to well-being in general. Romantic love is selfi sh because it contributes positively to the well-being of each lover. Are these arguments for the selfi shness of romantic love convincing? Suppose that I claim that I want or need oxygen in order to breathe, some fi nancial assets to be able to live a somewhat decent life, some political freedom to be able to do the things I want, and physical health so that I can maneuver around this world without the incapacitation of pain. These things are all necessary, basic goods that anyone would want to have to lead a minimally decent life. 8 They are not superfl uous goods that human beings want to live luxuriously. In desiring them we are not being selfi sh; we are merely asking for what is necessary for our lives to even take off. And if wanting them were selfi sh, then “being selfi sh” would no longer have bad connotations or be immoral. If happiness and well-being are also basic, necessary goods, then when people seek or want them, they seek or want what is expected of them to seek or want. We all have an interest in being happy; without it we would be, well, unhappy. When someone offers happiness as a reason why she chose a specifi c career or a specifi c country of residence, we don’t exclaim, “How selfi sh of her!” (unless in doing so she is neglecting important obligations to others). If romantic love makes people happy or is a major source of happiness, seeking it would be morally acceptable self-interest, not selfi shness. Generally speaking, a selfi sh person is someone who constantly seeks her own good, often superfl uous goods, without paying heed to the needs of others, and sometimes at the expense of others. She always puts her needs and desires fi rst, whether for the short term or the long term. Seeking romantic love is not like that. To desire love is not, as such , to do so at the expense of others. 9 So the fact that people seek romantic love and do so by selecting one person from among many is not a matter of selfi shness, but of desiring happiness, which is one form of morally acceptable self-interest. Similar considerations apply to people wanting to feel good about themselves (cf. Soble 1990 , 258–260).
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 67 It is crucial to note that when people seek love to be happy, this does not mean that they seek it in every action they do for the beloved. It does not mean that every time x shows concern for y , x is thinking that this will make x happy (“I’ll bake the best cake ever for y because y likes cakes, and if y is happy then I’m happy!”). We should not confuse the reasons for why we fall in love with how we behave when in love. An analogy with morality might help clarify the point. Some philosophers (e.g., Aristotle) believe that in order for people to be happy and to lead welllived lives, they should be virtuous. They need to inculcate in themselves character traits such as courage, justice, temperance, and generosity. But once such traits are part of a person’s character, they go on “automatic pilot”: they don’t function by asking the question, “If I now act bravely (or justly or generously or temperately), will my action make me happy?” Indeed, if they operate this way they would not be virtuous at all, because being just or courageous is not (ironically!) about the happiness of the person who has the virtues, but about being just, generous, brave toward others . The idea is that in order to be happy we should be virtuous, but once we are virtuous we don’t act from motives of happiness, but from motives specifi c to each virtue (some of which may sometimes lead to our death or serious injury, as when we get maimed or killed for being brave). Thus we have two claims occupying two different levels of discussion (cf. Hursthouse 1986 ). Something similar happens with romantic love. Our general reasons for wanting to be in love may very well be personal happiness. But once we are in love we don’t relate to our beloveds by asking “Will it make me happy?” When I buy a present for my beloved on his birthday or tend to him when he is sick, I do not do so because this will make him happy or feel better and therefore make me happy ; I do so only out of the fi rst two considerations (his happiness and his feeling better), with my happiness trailing along as a side-effect. This does not mean that lovers should never raise questions about their happiness. If a woman’s husband constantly cheats on her, then, even if she deeply loves him, at some point she will ask herself, “What about me? What about my happiness? Can I just go on neglecting myself and what’s good for me?” Issues about happiness normally function at the base of love, but under special circumstances they can also function at the day-to-day level of how lovers relate to each other. Only the third reason remains for thinking that romantic love is selfi sh: lovers wanting to be the source of their beloveds’ happiness, not being content to have others as this source. Suppose that Nadia and Hassan are in love, but Nadia is always upset and jealous whenever Hassan spends time with his friends, enjoys being with his co-workers and happy at work, and, in general, when she perceives that he is happy and doing well because of others . Without a special background story, not only would Nadia strike us as being somewhat deranged, she would also not seem to be concerned with Hassan’s happiness and well-being, because we should not expect Hassan’s well-being to be maintained and promoted only by her. Well-being and happiness have
68 Love multiple sources and require different ways to be sustained and promoted. No single person—not even a lover—can do so by herself. If Nadia thinks she can, she is massively deluded; if she doesn’t think she can but is nonetheless upset that others tend to Hassan’s well-being, then she doesn’t really care for it. So if a lover is to show proper concern for the well-being of her beloved, she must allow him access to the multiple sources and ways that sustain and promote his happiness and welfare. Fortunately, this accords with how most lovers actually act; they are happy to see their beloveds spending time with their friends, engaging in hobbies, doing well at work, and experiencing the range of human emotions in reaction to all sorts of events, not just to what the lovers say and do. So for the third reason for why romantic love is selfi sh to be convincing, it should be restricted to some, not all, types of sources that maintain the happiness and well-being of the beloved. Yet doing so would still not make the reason convincing. Consider parenting. It may be important for a child’s well-being that the child’s parents, not just anybody, attend to it. The care, sense of security, and sense of being loved are three crucial ways for parents to engage in when seeing to a child’s welfare. Strangers may not be up to the task ( Soble 1990 , 265). Moreover, the parents’ tending to the child’s well-being is important for the relationship between the child and her parents. Love and other intimate relationships are similar in this aspect: there are areas where it is crucial for the lovers to be the ones who tend to the well-being of their beloveds, both for the sake of the beloved and for the relationship itself. Intimacy is the main example of such areas, and it covers a wide range of activities: sexual activities, disclosures of deep personal matters, and the day-to-day living together (which itself includes even further varieties). These involve trust, vulnerability, a sense of security, comfort, and emotional stability (among others). To a large extent, both parties’ well-being hinges on the successful maintenance and promotion of these elements. If the beloved secures these elements through people other than his lover, doubts can be raised about the success of the relationship. Conversely, when the lover insists on being the one to maintain and promote these elements of her beloved’s well-being, she has a morally legitimate self-interest in wanting to be the one to do so. For if she is not the one, the relationship would in all likelihood deteriorate, putting her own happiness and well-being at stake (remember that seeking and maintaining one’s own happiness is a morally acceptable form of self-interest). Therefore, lovers who insist on being the ones to engage in such maintenance and promotion of their beloveds’ well-being are not thereby being selfi sh ( Halwani 2003 , 100–101). 10 The third reason, then, is not convincing. Thus we have good reasons to conclude that romantic love is not selfi sh and that the concern that lovers show each other is robust. We should not generalize this conclusion to both RL1 and RL2. As I have argued in the previous chapter, the concern in RL1 is not always robust.
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 69 Concern, Well-Being, and Autonomy Granted that the concern in romantic love, especially RL2, is robust, another issue immediately arises: Should the happiness or well-being of the beloved be seen through the lover’s or the beloved’s eyes? That is, should we think of the well-being of the beloved in terms of how the lover thinks of it or how the beloved does? Consider the following examples: (1) Pedro smokes; he knows that smoking is dangerous to his health, but he downplays its importance; Julio, his lover, begs to differ. (2) Pedro thinks that his friend, Emily, is good and trustworthy; Julio thinks she is a bad infl uence. (3) Pedro thinks that his job is fantastic, affording him plenty of opportunity to climb to the top; Julio thinks it’s a dead-end job and that Pedro is misreading the situation at work. (4) Pedro loves to eat fried and fatty foods, thinking that their effects on his health are minimal; Julio disagrees and wants Pedro to eat more healthily. (5) Pedro is an atheist and doesn’t give a damn about religion; Julio is a Christian and believes that, if Pedro doesn’t mend his ways, he will rot in hell. In all these cases, there’s a wide gap between how Julio conceives of Pedro’s well-being and how Pedro conceives of it. If Julio is concerned for Pedro’s well-being, how is he to think of it? A deceptive answer is that Julio should act on his beliefs; after all, if this is how he perceives the situation, he should act according to his judgment. But this won’t do. First, he could be wrong; if he is and acts on his mistaken views, he would act in ways contrary to Pedro’s well-being, thus defeating his own (Julio’s) professed goals of promoting it. Second, even if he is not wrong, in acting on his beliefs, especially all or most of the time, he is likely to drive Pedro away by not heeding his desires regarding these matters, thus undermining the very relationship he values with him (and if Julio doesn’t act on his beliefs all the time, how should he decide when to do so and when to act on Pedro’s beliefs?). Third, and most important, Pedro’s views are part of his autonomy and independence, and autonomy is part of Pedro’s well-being. If Julio has robust concern for Pedro’s well-being, he must respect his autonomy, which means that he should—at least sometimes—respect Pedro’s wishes, even if he disagrees with them. So if Julio loves Pedro and is robustly concerned for his well-being, should he promote it as he sees it or as Pedro does? Without minimizing the seriousness of this issue, and granting that it is likely to be a problem in many love relationships, it does not really affect the idea that in love the lovers have robust concern for each other’s happiness and well-being. To see this, suppose that Julio fi nds out that Pedro’s metabolism is such that his habit of eating fatty foods will not endanger his health. Julio would then not object to Pedro’s eating fatty foods. The real issue is that the robust concern that lovers have for each other is, ultimately, objective, not how Julio and Pedro see it. How they see it is a sign that they don’t agree on what their well-being really is. But in principle, there is no confl ict; if both Julio and Pedro can have access to what each of their wellbeing objectively consists of, they would have no disagreement about what and (possibly) how it should be promoted ( Soble 1990 , 268–270).
70 Love For two reasons, we are not quite out of the woods yet. First, we may be doubtful that all such disagreements between Pedro and Julio can be resolved even in principle, because some may be indeterminate—some may have no objective answer. For example, Pedro agrees with Julio that moving to Istanbul and taking up a new position there is a big and even risky move, but he thinks that it is worth the risk. Julio disagrees. In such a situation, there is no objective answer short of undertaking the move and seeing what happens. There can thus be cases in which the objectivity of the well-being of the beloved is indeterminate. Second, even if all disagreements over Pedro’s well-being have objective answers, the extent to which Julio should act to promote Pedro’s well-being remains an issue. Consider an extreme case. Suppose that Josephine is a womanizer, a gambler, drinks excessively, cannot keep a steady job, and is abusive toward Mary, her long-time beloved. Mary is a good woman who has stood by Josephine through thick and thin and has never seriously considered dumping her. Josephine, despite all her faults, knows that Mary has tied herself to a sinking ship: as long as she is with her, Mary’s well-being and happiness are in dire jeopardy. If Josephine is at all concerned for Mary, she should leave her, despite Mary’s predictable protestations. Josephine is correct: objectively speaking, Mary should be set free for her own good. So even if we set aside questions about the objectivity of how lovers see their well-being, and even if we assume that they agree on what each other’s well-being consists of, sometimes concern for the well-being of y requires x to make sacrifi ces. In Josephine and Mary’s case the sacrifi ce is ultimate, requiring Josephine to break up with Mary for Mary’s own good. Not all cases are extreme, but they require x to sacrifi ce something for y ’s good. Here is a notso-unusual example: Rachel and Muna are another lesbian couple who are very much in love. All is going well until Muna fi nds out she has a debilitating sickness that will soon require her to stay at home. Muna’s good and well-being, needless to say, consist of her receiving care, rest, and proper attention. Even if Rachel and Muna can afford a nurse, Rachel will still have to devote time, energy, and attention to Muna. She must make this sacrifi ce, with no issues here about whether they disagree on Muna’s good or whether there is an objective answer about what that good is. But sacrifi ce has its limits. Martha has recently changed: she is unable to keep a steady job, she has sex with lots of men, she’s addicted to reality TV, and she drinks excessively. Her slow deterioration has occurred owing to a series of bad choices and misfortunes in her life. Her long-time beloved, Joseph, has stood by her and tried to get her back on track. Although he loves her, he is beginning to wonder whether she will ever become the Martha he once knew. He begins to wonder whether all the sacrifi ces he is making are worth it and whether he will ever be happy again. These examples illustrate that, fi rst, even if lovers agree on what each of their good is, they will in all likelihood need to make sacrifi ces for each other. Conceptually speaking, if lovers agree on what their well-being is, it does not
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 71 follow that no sacrifi ces have to be made for each other’s well-being (so much for Nozick’s tying together the well-being of each!). Second, in extreme cases, the sacrifi ces can be so high that they require the demise of the very relationship of the lovers. Conceptually speaking, x ’s sacrifi cing his being in a relationship with y for y ’s sake shows how sacrifi ce can be logically at odds with the very point of being in a relationship, namely x ’s happiness. Third, there are cases in which it is not clear whether and to what extent x should go on sacrifi cing for y . Conceptually speaking, we know that x shows robust concern for y , but it is not clear whether this concern should stop and, if it should stop, at which point. X’s Warped Conception of Y ’s Good We know that in romantic love, x ’s concern for y can be robust, that in many cases it is indeed robust, that x sometimes needs to make sacrifi ces for y , and that x and y need not always agree on the nature of y ’s welfare. Underlining all this is the idea that romantic love, like all types of love, necessarily involves concern for the beloved’s well-being. However, if x ’s view of y ’s well-being is warped, can we still defend this claim? What does it mean to say that someone’s sense of another’s well-being is “warped”? It is more than being false or mistaken. Being mistaken is necessary, but not suffi cient, for x ’s view to be warped. Being based on improper knowledge of y is also not suffi cient (probably not even necessary). The view must be detrimental to y ’s well-being were x to act on it. Consider three examples. First, suppose that Jacob, a Humbert Humbert–like person (Humbert Humbert is the main character from Nabokov’s Lolita ) thinks that Maggie, a 13-yearold, is better off being with a man his age (48 years old, say). For some reason, Jacob thinks that Maggie’s good consists of having a romantic relationship (which includes sex) with him. Suppose also that Joshua, a gay man in his forties, wants to revive the good old times of classical Athens. He thinks that the good of 12-year-old boys consists of his falling in love with them, having sex with them, and educating them by imparting his wisdom to them (as the Greeks did). Joshua meets, seduces, and falls in love with Bruce, a 13-year-old boy. In both these cases, were the two older men to fall in love with their respective girl and boy and to act on their view of what the girl’s and boy’s well-being consists of, chances are that such relationships would ruin the young people’s well-being. As a third example, consider Jarvis, who is married to and in love with Telulah. Jarvis fi rmly believes that a woman’s place is at home, tending to her husband and children. He refuses to allow Telulah any work outside the home, to have an enriching social life, or to develop any of her talents. While of course raising children and being a good spouse are not usually a waste of someone’s time and talents, they need not be done at the expense of other things. Thus, by denying Telulah the ability to develop her talents and pursue projects that she fi nds interesting, Jarvis is acting in a way that is quite detrimental to her welfare.
72 Love We can make one of two claims about the above cases: (1) x loves y but x ’s love for y is deeply fl awed on moral (and other) grounds, or (2) x does not love y . The main reason to accept (2) is that “real” love cannot be so destructive to the beloved; “real” love must be, if not benefi cial to the beloved, at least not detrimental to her. But as a general reason for genuine, as opposed to fake, love, this idea is not true because, as we know all too well, there are many cases of love that are destructive of the beloved (and the lover), including cases of lovers who physically or emotionally abuse their beloveds. Human psychology in all its complexity often interferes to render destructive many cases of genuine love. Those who say that “real” love is not destructive of the beloved or her well-being have in mind a normative notion of “real” or “genuine” love, one opposed to “bad” or “immoral” love. If this is true, we should accept (1), that cases of love in which x has a warped view of y ’s well-being are real, but immoral or bad. Are there are any reasons for accepting (1) other than that (2) is not convincing? The main reason is that the lovers in these cases not only say that they love y , but they also believe and feel it. They are genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of their beloveds but have a wrong view of it, one that would actually be destructive to the beloved were they to act on it. But having false beliefs is not enough to show that their love is not genuine. Consider by analogy those who have zeal and fervor for their country and religion, but who think that the best or only way to preserve and enhance their country or religion is by subduing other countries or killing members of other religions. We don’t usually claim that their love for their country or religion is fake; if anything, it is all too real. Instead, they are fanatics: they are utterly misguided in their love and how to secure its object. Now although we don’t call lovers such as Jacob, Joshua, and Jarvis “fanatics,” we have no good reason to doubt their love; all we can say is that they don’t love properly. We may then conclude that a lover’s warped views about his beloved’s wellbeing need not make the love any less real. It’s “messed up” love, but love nonetheless. I have argued in this section that we have no good reasons to deny that the concern is robust in RL2. This does not yet show that the concern is always robust in RL2, so does not show that it is an essence of romantic love (at least of RL2). Can this be shown? It depends on whether we can come up with convincing cases of RL2 such that the concern is not ultimately for the sake of the beloved. This is easier said than done, because we must remember that RL2 involves well-established and successful love relationships (not relationships maintained out of inertia or lack of options), and these relationships exhibit all the signs of true love, in which the well-being of the object of love is considered for its own sake. Moreover, for any purported case of RL2, if x is unwilling to make sacrifi ces for y ’s good, this immediately puts the genuineness of x ’s love for y in doubt. This strongly indicates that the concern in RL2 is always robust. If this is correct, we can conclude that although RL1 need not involve robust concern, RL2 always does.
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 73 Sexual Desire and Sexual Activity It is often thought that the distinguishing mark of romantic love from other forms of love is sex. Indeed, one of the crucial features of RL1 is the lover’s sexual desire for the beloved. The lover in RL1 has intense sexual desires for the beloved to the point of not desiring anyone else. I phrase this feature in terms of desire instead of activity because sexual desire is not always consummated. Even though lovers often have sex in RL1, if we phrase the feature in terms of sexual activity, some cases of romantic love would implausibly lack a sexual dimension simply because the lovers did not have sex. RL2 is different. Lovers often lose the intensity of sexual desire for each other, and most lose it altogether with the passage of time. This does not mean that RL2 lovers stop having sex, only that the sexual desire is weakened or dead. The lovers might still continue to have sex with each other for various reasons: they can rely on routine yet satisfactory sex (see the views of Janice Moulton in ch. 6 ), they have sex to make (more) babies, they have sex because they should (they owe it to each other), they have sex to continue to express their commitment and love to each other, or they have sex because they worry that no sex at all might signal or symbolize the death of their relationship. This worry is not always true, because RL2 relationships do not need sex to thrive, but it does explain one reason for the lovers to have occasional sex. So sexual desire and activity are usual features of RL1 but not of RL2. At best, couples in RL2 have occasional sex, but whether we can say that sexual activity is a usual feature of RL2 is uncertain. Why are sexual desire and activity so important to understanding romantic love? First, in many cases, romantic love is generated, at least partly, by sexual desire. When x and y are sexually attracted to each other, the sexual attraction, even if not consummated, plays a crucial role in getting them to be with each other, to want to be with each other, and to know each other. The longer the sexual desire is active and alive, the longer x and y spend time with each other and enjoy each other’s company. The time spent together, along with x and y ’s desires to touch, delight in, and enjoy each other, creates a strong intimacy, which is the causal basis of their love. It allows the love to exist and fl ower. This is, of course, true of RL1. Note here as a reminder (from the previous chapter) that sexual desire is not a reason for RL1, but a causal mechanism for it. Second, sexual desire and activity help cement the love, including those cases in which they do not generate it. For example, Richard and Ken met in graduate school but were not initially sexually attracted to each other. They became friends and occasionally spent time with each other. After a while, they increasingly desired to be with each other because they enjoyed their conversations, made each other laugh, and so on. As their friendship progressed, they began to fi nd each other sexually attractive. Eventually, they decided or realized that they had “more” than just friendship; they had love. They had sex, and it helped their love to grow. Sexual desire and activity cemented the love between them. In such a case, sexual desire and activity are clearly playing a
74 Love causal role, and, depending on how late in the relationship they enter, might even be a reason for the love. Richard can plausibly claim, “One of the reasons that Ken and I discovered that we love each other was that we were sexually attracted to each other and we enjoyed having sex with each other a lot.” This is no mere causal factor but also an explanatory one. Sexual desire and activity are crucial vehicles for understanding romantic love. Sex not only explains how love is generated, it also explains how an already existing young love is cemented. It does this by creating shared and deeply intimate pleasurable experiences, and by allowing the lovers to express their love for each other through sex (these two are different: casual sexual encounters tend to be deep and intimate, yet they do not express love, though they might express other emotions). Because expressing love is important for sustaining love, it bears more discussion. Some philosophers doubt that sexual activity can express love. Russell Vannoy denies it and asks rhetorically, “Indeed, just how does a penis that is vigorously thrusting up and down in a vagina express anything at all, with the possible exception of dominance (which is hardly the same thing as love)? If one moves the penis slowly, is this an expression of love? The absurdity of this line of thinking is evident” ( 1980 , 11). But the absurdity may be evident only because Vannoy latches on to the manner in which sex is engaged, and it may be that whether sex expresses love has nothing or little to do with how two lovers have sex. Two lovers, that is, can express their love for each other by having sex vigorously or tenderly, even painfully, as when x puts nipple-clamps on y during their lovemaking to please and express her love for y . Still, Vannoy is right that it is not clear how having sex can express love. He argues that if sexual behavior usually considered to be an expression of love, such as gentle kissing and caressing, can also occur between strangers, how can the fi rst be an expression of love while the second not ( 1997 , 248)? The context—that the two people are in love—is not a suffi cient explanation, because there are many other things that lovers do (e.g., taking out the garbage) that don’t express love ( 1997 , 249). The intention to express love through sex won’t do, either, since “some rapists have the odd notion that they are expressing love for their victims” ( 1997 , 251). Vannoy’s argument, interesting as it is, proves too much. There are many physical behaviors that express emotions (e.g., giving the fi nger to someone) such that their meaning is unclear if we go only by the behavior itself (how can one fi nger express anger?). Moreover, think of the many ways in which we express love for others: cooking them dinner, taking them out to their favorite museums or amusement parks, buying them presents. As Vannoy would claim, it is hard to see how each of these activities expresses love; after all, I can go through the same motions of cooking dinner for my boss, but this doesn’t mean that I am expressing my love for her. I might also cook dinner for my beloved but without expressing love for her. Instead of rejecting all cases of sex as capable of expressing love, we need to explain or analyze exactly how some do. I suspect that context is essential, one that includes the specifi c history of
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 75 the couple, and the moods and the setting preceding and during the sex act (a sex act may start by expressing love and shift to expressing anger owing to changes in the prevailing mood). So sex can somehow express love, cementing, as it does so, that love. Of course, the fact that sex can, and does, express love does not mean that it is special in this regard, certainly not in RL2, when the sex might be infrequent and the expression of love is done in other, often more meaningful, ways (e.g., tolerating a whole week with the beloved’s family or friends). Although sexual activity can be an important vehicle in maintaining the affection and the intimacy of love in RL2, the nightly ritual of watching something together on Netfl ix can be as well. 11 In RL1, sexual activity is crucial because it is the expression of not only the lovers’ sexual desires for each other, but also of their other desires: to be with each other, to cling to each other, to show affection and passion for each other. Yet even in RL1 the expression of love can be done in many other ways: surprise text messages in the middle of the night, a romantic dinner, and so on Sexual desire and activity are crucial features of romantic love, then, for two main reasons. They generate and help sustain RL1 by bringing it into existence and by allowing the lovers to express their desires for each other. They (at least sexual activity) might also help sustain RL2, even though sexual activity’s status (its frequency, its pleasures, etc.) as a feature of RL2 is unclear. It is an interesting question whether sexual desire and activity also generate the emotional and physical intimacy typical of lovers. Although they certainly play a causal role, many other factors in RL2 play as crucial roles—the sheer sharing of daily activities creates an intimacy whose depth should never be underestimated. Physical and Emotional Intimacy Romantic love has an interesting feature: it allows two people to be intimate with each other physically, emotionally, and mentally. Having sex, of course, is one crucial way that physical intimacy occurs, but it is not the only one. Lovers snuggle with each other, hold hands, walk arm-in-arm, put their heads on each other’s laps, give each other massages (including ones that, say, friends do not give each other, such as foot massages), they playfully slap each other’s butts, they take showers together or in front of each other, and they use the bathroom in front of each other, to give a few examples of the kind of physical familiarity that exists between them. There is also emotional intimacy: lovers know each other emotionally very well, and if they don’t, they strive to do so (especially in RL1) as a way of cementing the relationship. This emotional intimacy does not just amount to knowing each other’s emotional states (friends and parents are also attuned to those). It is also the willingness to be emotionally open with one’s beloved in all sorts of ways: from crying, to expressing, say, anger or frustration without heeding the usual social decorum when one does so in public. The intimacy is also mental, by which I refer to their thoughts, wills, and desires: they share
76 Love their views and thoughts about others (even about close friends) with each other, they are open with each other about their desires and vulnerabilities (“I wish I was not so thin”). The surrender of part of their autonomy or independence, and their having to make joint decisions and plans is also, I think, a form of mental intimacy—it is a clear example of how their wills become intimate with each other. There is a case to be made that these intimacies in RL1 are different from those in RL2. First, the physical intimacy in RL1 tends to be mostly sexual. Indeed, and with the exception of the physical intimacy that expresses affection, lovers in RL1 are not yet so accustomed to each other as to be physically intimate in the other ways listed above. Moreover, their emotional intimacy in RL1 is either tentative, laced with worries that disclosing too much might alienate or scare the other away, or it takes the form of gradual sharing (it probably starts as tentative and then slowly takes the form of sharing). Ditto for mental intimacy. We can say that the emotional and mental intimacy in RL1 is formative, whereas in RL2 it is based on knowing the other. Nonetheless, the physical intimacy that does express affection is common to both. It is what helps unite both forms of love as romantic love. Longing Surely one crucial feature of romantic love is longing to be with the beloved. The longing is not just to have sex with the beloved, but to be in his or her presence; to be with him or her in general; to do things together; to enjoy things together. It is one of the crucial desires that characterize RL1 (especially on the desire view of love). This longing, which characterizes RL1, is absent from RL2. In RL1 it takes a form of lack of focus, of continuous thinking about the beloved, of a feeling of emptiness and loss when not with the beloved, and it has the feel of a painful yet sweet sensation, especially when the lover knows that at some point in the near future he or she will be with the beloved. In RL2 the longing is felt only during certain times or under particular conditions, such as after a lengthy absence between the lovers, or after the loss of the beloved in some form or another. In RL2, the lovers are accustomed to the presence of each other in each other’s lives, so there is no reason for longing. In addition, since the longing in RL1 is partially sexual, and since lovers in RL2 lose the intensity of their sexual desires for each other, this also explains why there is no longing in RL2. Pain at the Loss of the Beloved Finally, romantic love involves the deep pain at the loss of the beloved. The loss can be owing to many things, be it the death of love (especially on the part of the beloved) or the death of the beloved. Whether in RL1 or in RL2, the loss can be severe. Yet it is also different. The loss of the beloved in RL2 causes bereavement and deep sadness. It can result in long-term emptiness and feelings
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 77 of being lost and without purpose. The pain of loss in RL2 is closer to the pain of losing a long-time friend or a sibling or a child. Some lovers, especially when they are old, shortly die after the death of their beloved, and some even commit suicide, seeing no point to continue living. This loss is basically the loss of one’s life-companion. In RL1 it is different: the loss feels more like the loss of a real opportunity and hope of being with someone with whom one could have shared one’s life. And although the loss leaves the lover empty and lost, he or she is able, under normal circumstances, to recover in a reasonably short period of time. The Characteristics of Romantic Love and Other Forms of Love The characteristics of romantic love help us understand it in itself but also in relation to other forms of love. By seeing whether other forms of love share these characteristics and whether some are had only by romantic love (by RL1, RL2, or both), we can see continuities and differences between the different forms of love. We can conclude three things from studying these characteristics of romantic love. First, most of them fail to group RL1 and RL2 together as two forms of romantic love. Second, most of them are not essential features of romantic love—they are not found in all cases of it. Third, most of them can be found in non-romantic forms of love, so they do not set romantic love apart from other forms of love unexceptionally. First, and as we have seen, exclusivity-via-commitment is a feature of RL2, but not of RL1, though it is a feature of RL1 as far as how lovers feel. Constancy is not an essential feature of romantic love, and it is not generally true of RL1. Uniqueness and irreplaceability are also not genuine features of romantic love. Ditto for union. Concern is robust in RL2 but need not be (and it is doubtful that it is) in RL1. Sexual desire is usually the hallmark of RL1, not RL2, and sexual activity is more frequent in RL1 than in RL2. The longing is a feature of RL1 and not RL2. The pain of loss and intimacy are features of both, yet they differ from each other. Even the loss of autonomy is different in each form. So it seems that there is nothing from these features that unites RL1 and RL2 together, except for the feature of physical intimacy that expresses affection. This might be the only common denominator of the two forms of love. It is, nonetheless, an important one because it also generally sets romantic love apart from other forms of love. Second, some of those features that are true of love are only generally true of it: exclusivity, for example, in RL2 is not essential, and many lovers can be in RL2 with more than one beloved, as in cases of polyamory. Desire for (weak) union in RL2 is generally true. Sexual activity in RL2 is (at best) generally true (especially if infrequent). Nonetheless, some other features seem to be essential to either RL1 or RL2. Both sexual desire for the beloved and the longing to be with him or her are, I submit, essential to RL1. It is impossible to imagine an uncontroversial case of RL1 such that x does not sexually desire y or x does not long to be with y (do not confuse such cases with ones in which
78 Love x knows that x cannot or should not be with y , sexually or nonsexually). This is true also of the loss of autonomy in some form or another. Moreover, robust concern for the beloved seems essential to RL2. Third, there is the issue of whether any of the true features of romantic love set it apart from other forms of love. I don’t think that any do without exception. For instance, some forms of friendship include both sexual desire and activity. I have in mind not only “friends with benefi ts” (“friends” might be a misnomer anyway in most such relationships), but cases in which friends have sex with each other every now and then, for a period of time, once, and so on. Moreover, robust concern for the well-being of the beloved is surely present in many cases of long-term friendships and in parent-child love. Desire for some form of a shared life exists among family members (at least for a certain length of time) and can surely exist among friends. 12 Not even physical and emotional intimacy stands out: some friendships exhibit it, and it often exists in some form among siblings and between parents and children. The same goes for the deep pain at the loss of the beloved (think of what parents go through when they lose a child, or what friends go through when they lose a friend). Moreover, some cases of friendships consist of partial loss of autonomy, and, as to parent-child love, just ask any parent how much of their autonomy and independence is left after they have children. Still, more detail is crucial: emotional and mental intimacy are surely present among close friends, close siblings, and parents and their children (or some stages of the last type of relationship), and physical familiarity is often found among family members. Even the physical intimacy that expresses affection might exist among close family members, who often express physical affection with and to each other. It might even be that the physical intimacy expressive of affection in RL2, especially in those cases in which sexual activity is not frequent and in which the lovers have lost sexual desire for each other, is more akin to that found among family members than to that of RL1. We want to say that they are nonetheless different, but the question is how to do so. Still, some of these features might set romantic love apart from other forms of love in a general way. We can help ourselves to the concept of g-necessity, given by the philosopher W. Newton-Smith, to attain some conceptual tidiness. According to Newton-Smith, no requirement for something to be romantic love provides a precise way of distinguishing romantic love from similar relationships, not even sexuality: “For we might wish to allow some feelings of a sexual sort to enter into a case of basically maternal love. And we might allow some aspects of homosexual love in the close relationship between the offi cer and men of a marine platoon without the relationship ceasing to be basically a fraternal one” ( 1989 , 203). He suggests that because romantic love does not always or necessarily contain, for example, a sexual dimension (at least as a way of distinguishing it from similar relationships), we should instead use the concept of g-necessity: romantic love g-necessarily has a sexual dimension because romantic love generally (hence the “g”), but not always, has a sexual dimension. This idea captures three crucial intuitions about romantic love. First,
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 79 we think that it has some important connections to certain features, such as sexual desire for the beloved. Second, we think that it might not always have that feature. And, third, we think that other relationships might have this feature. As a corollary, if a case of romantic love lacks this generally required feature, it would need special explanation ( Newton-Smith 1989 , 201). So a g-necessary feature of romantic love is one that is generally found in romantic love and one that generally sets romantic love apart from other forms of love. Newton-Smith gives the following list, containing four clusters, of generally necessary features of a love relationship: If A loves B, then “(1) A knows B (or at least knows something of B); (2) A cares (is concerned) about B; A likes B; (3) A respects B; A is attracted to B; A feels affection for B; (4) A is committed to B; A wishes to see B’s welfare promoted” ( 1989 , 204). He claims that in paradigm features of romantic love, all these features are present to a high degree. In other cases, some features may not be present to a high degree, and others may not be present at all: “Thus we have a g-necessary truth that love involves the satisfaction of [these features] to an as yet unspecifi ed degree” ( 1989 , 204). However, with the single exception of “A is attracted to B” (the sexual feature), all the other features are also generally necessary of close friendships. That is, in cases of deep friendship, all these features (except for the attraction feature) are present to a high degree, and if one or more were not present, we would also require a special explanation—the same reasoning that NewtonSmith applies to romantic love. 13 How can love be g-necessary in these ways when friendship can satisfy these conditions? Or should we lump friendship with romantic love and say that both are g-necessary in these ways? Part of what is confusing here is that the concept of g-necessity cannot do all the work needed to sort out the connections between the features of romantic love and those of other forms of love. Consider sexual activity and emotional intimacy: both are surely g-necessary features of romantic love, yet only one of them (sexual activity) sets romantic love apart in general from friendship, because friendship also has emotional intimacy as a g-necessary feature. That is, it is one thing for romantic love to have a g-necessary feature; it is another whether another form of love also has that feature in a g-necessary way. In fact, we need other concepts for help with these issues: First, a g-necessary feature of romantic love is a feature usually found in romantic love, though there are exceptional cases. This is Newton-Smith again. Second, an a-necessary feature is a feature of romantic love that is found in all cases of it. This does not mean that there are such features, but if there are any, they would be a-necessary. An f-exclusive feature is either a g-necessary feature or an a-necessary feature that is not found in other forms of love. So, for example, if there is no sexual desire in any form of love other than romantic love, then sexual desire would be an f-exclusive feature of romantic love. Here we can divide f-exclusive features into fg-exclusive features and fa-exclusive features . A feature is fg-exclusive if it is found only in romantic love though not in every case of it. A feature is fa-exclusive if it is found only in romantic love and in every case of it.
80 Love Consider next f-shared features of romantic love. These are features that romantic love can have but that are also shared with other forms of love. An fgw-shared feature is one that is g-necessary and that is widely shared with some other forms of love. An fgn-shared feature is one that is g-necessary and that is found, though not commonly, in some other forms of love. An few-shared feature is one that is a-necessary and that is widely shared with other forms of love. An fen-shared feature is one that is a-necessary and that is found, though not commonly, in some other forms of love. To make this discussion a bit more containable, let us summarize our fi ndings and apply the above features to the characteristics of romantic love. The following is a list of the features we have discussed. I indicate which of them are not true features of love (by which I mean, “Not true in general,” not, “Are never true of it”), and I indicate under which of the above concepts the true features belong. I do not include RL2 as another form of love when discussing RL1, and I do not include RL1 as another form of love when discussing RL2. For RL1 Exclusivity: Not true. Constancy: Not true. Uniqueness: Not true. Irreplaceability: Not true. Desire for strong union: Not true. Desire for weak union: fgn-shared feature. Robust concern: Not true. Sexual desire: fen-shared feature. Sexual activity: fgn-shared feature. Physical intimacy: fen-shared or few-shared feature (depending on the form of physical intimacy and the other type of love we have in mind). Emotional and mental intimacy: few-shared feature. Longing: fen-shared feature. Pain at loss of beloved: few-shared feature. For RL2 Exclusivity: Not true. Constancy: few-shared feature. Uniqueness: Not true. Irreplaceability: Not true. Desire for strong union: Not true. Desire for weak union: fgn-shared feature. Robust concern: few-shared feature. Sexual desire: Not true.
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 81 Sexual activity: fgn-shared feature or not true. Physical intimacy: fen-shared or few-shared feature (depending on the form of physical intimacy and the other type of love we have in mind). Emotional and mental intimacy: few-shared feature. Longing: fgn-shared feature. Pain at loss of beloved: few-shared feature. Thus, though there are features commonly thought true of romantic love, some are not actually true, some are shared, even widely, with other forms of love, and few are common to both RL1 and RL2. Romantic love emerges as a phenomenon divided into two forms, one of which (RL2) has much in common with other forms of love. This is surely not bad news to anyone, because there is no good reason to insist that romantic love must be drastically different from other forms of love. It is even good news to many people. If romantic love exhibits many properties in common with friendship, then those who desire polyamorous love, who cannot fi nd love, or who do not want it should be consoled and should not feel or believe that their lives or desires are strange. The Object of Love There is a basic yet crucial distinction between the basis of love and the object of love. The basis of love is the reason or reasons for the love: What is the basis of Olivier’s love for Nora? Why does he love her? Because of her beauty, kindness, and generous nature. These are Olivier’s reasons for loving her, usually encapsulated by the properties of the beloved. But the object of the love is supposedly different: Olivier does not love Nora’s beauty, kindness, or generosity (or not only these), but Nora herself. It is Nora, not (only) her properties, who is the object of Olivier’s love. Or so it seems. In the Symposium by Plato, Socrates, in his speech on love (which he claims to be merely a recount of things that Diotima—a wise woman—told him), claims that love has a proper trajectory: that a true lover moves from loving a beautiful boy, to loving all beautiful boys, to loving beautiful souls, to beautiful laws and activities, to the beauty of knowledge, to, fi nally, the very essence of all things beautiful, the Platonic Form Beauty ( Symposium [1997e], 210b–211a). This account has generated many discussions among philosophers, but for our purposes we should note that in this account beauty is clearly the basis of love: originally, the lover loves the beautiful young boy for his beauty, and moves up the Socratic “ladder,” loving successive things because they are all beautiful. So beauty is the reason for the love. So far so good. But Socrates often speaks as if beauty is the object of the love, not merely its reason. Earlier in his speech Socrates claims, fi rst, that we desire beauty, and he identifi es love with the desire for beauty (199e–201c). Second, he advises that we move up the ladder of love from an individual human being to the Form of Beauty, at which point beauty itself becomes the object of love. If, third, Socrates considers the Form of Beauty to be the main embodiment
82 Love and “paradigmatic instance of [Beauty]” ( Vlastos 1989 , 106), the implication seems to be that the object of love is beauty as such, whether found in human beings, in souls, or in the Form of Beauty itself. If we interpret Socrates as claiming that we love both the individual and the beauty found in him, this would not be very controversial, because we seem to agree with him. Lovers do tell their beloveds how much they love their eyes, smiles, charm, wit, and so on, so to claim that we love other people’s attributes is a problem only if we assume that we love only people’s attributes, not also the people themselves (although what it means to love someone’s attribute could use some unpacking). But why would this be a problem? Why would the falsehood of the belief that we love individual people be a problem? What is problematic about loving only the properties of the beloved? To fi nd out, we need to fi gure out what it means to love someone as an individual. The philosopher Gregory Vlastos gives us one answer. Commenting on Plato’s (Socrates’s) theory, he writes, “What needs to be stressed most of all . . . is that Plato’s theory is not, and is not meant to be, about personal love for persons . . . In this theory persons evoke [eros] if they have beautiful bodies, minds, or dispositions. But so do quite impersonal objects . . . as objects of Platonic love all these are not only as good as persons, but distinctly better” ( Vlastos 1989 , 107–108). But that’s not the only problem. The more serious one is that on Plato’s view we do not love individual people as a whole, but only in part: “[W]e are to love the persons so far, and only insofar, as they are good and beautiful. Now since all too few human beings are masterworks of excellence . . . if our love for them is to be only for their virtue and beauty, the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality, will never be the object of our love. This seems to me the cardinal fl aw in Plato’s theory. It does not provide for love of whole persons, but only for love of that abstract version of persons which consists of the complex of their best qualities” ( Vlastos 1989 , 110). 14 Vlastos is accusing Plato of giving us a view of love according to which the object of love is not the whole individual. But he seems to be attributing two views to Plato. The fi rst is that we do not love the individual but only his or her good properties (the last sentence in the above quotation indicates this). The other view is that we love part of the individual. Let us assume, correctly, along with Vlastos, that few people (if any) are perfectly good and beautiful, and that most of us have defects. If Plato’s view is that “we are to love others so far, and only insofar, as they are good and beautiful,” then we are able to love only that part of someone that is good and beautiful. Loving only a part of the person means that, somehow, we do not love the whole person. We would love the whole person, on Vlastos’s view of Plato, only if he or she were fl awless, one who has no defects at all. But Vlastos should not be faulting Plato for giving us this theory of love. Plato’s theory presents no conceptual or logical diffi culty in loving individuals as a whole. If, by some miracle, the majority of people were perfectly good and beautiful, then, on Vlastos’s own reading of Plato, we will be able to love them
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 83 as wholes. It is only an accident, so to speak, that we happen to be defective. Vlastos may convincingly reply that a good theory of love should accommodate the fact that we are defective. It should not make it a condition of loving a person as a whole that he or she be perfect. Although this claim is correct, it is not the same as Vlastos’s original criticism of Plato: it is one thing to accuse a theory of not allowing us, logically, to love persons as whole, but quite another to accuse it of not allowing us to do so contingently. Indeed, Vlastos’s rendition of Plato’s view, and despite his own problems with it, makes sense. How can we love someone as whole, given the person’s defects? And why should we? (A more diffi cult question is how we can love someone only in part .) Perhaps a Christian or agapic view of love might urge this form of love on us, but there is no obvious reason why romantic love should be like this. In this connection, what would be Vlastos’s alternative view to Plato’s? If Vlastos faults Plato for offering us a theory of love that, given our defects, allows us to love only those parts of us that are good and beautiful, an alternative view would have to tackle how in loving others we are to approach their not-so-good-and-beautiful parts when we love them as wholes: If I am to love Alec wholly, do I also love his incessant snoring? His tendency to pick his nose? His addiction to cocaine? The alternative view would ask us to either tolerate these properties or to love them. The fi rst is a plausible alternative, but not one that Vlastos can adopt. The second is implausible. When we love others, it sounds silly, not to mention strange and possibly unachievable, to require that lovers love not only the good properties of their beloveds, but every other one as well. It is a tall order to require me to love—not merely tolerate—the grapefruit-sized goiter on my beloved’s neck, his stinking feet, or his habit of constantly harping on about some point or other. Not only is such a requirement a tall order, it also does not cohere with how people actually love (sad to say, we do not usually love our beloveds’ goiters or their leprosy). So the most to ask of a theory of love is that it requires us to tolerate the nasty parts of our beloveds, not love them. Vlastos, however, cannot take this way out, because Plato’s theory of love accommodates tolerating the bad properties of the beloved. The only option left to Vlastos is to require that we love those bad ones—an implausible idea, as we have seen. Let us assume that we can love the good properties of the beloved without loving the bad ones. What does this mean, exactly? Specifi cally, if I love only the beloved’s good properties, does that mean that I love only a part of the beloved? This cannot be right (it is also a bit nonsensical) because we often talk of loving someone, all of her, despite her defects. So loving someone’s good properties does not mean loving only parts of the person. It must be, somehow, compatible with loving the whole person. How? We need to know fi rst what it means to love the person as a whole, to love the person, period. Who or what is this person that we are meant to love wholly, for herself? That is, if the object of love is the person as a whole, we need to know what this person as a whole is.
84 Love Given that everything in this world, including human beings, has properties, each of us is, in a sense, a “bundle of properties,” a collection of all of his or her properties. Metaphysically speaking, however, this is not quite accurate. This is because properties are supposed to be what philosophers call “universals”: the property of being solid, for example, is not an individual thing, but a universal that is found in many things, namely, those objects that are solid. So persons cannot just be collections of properties, because then they would be just a collection of universals, whereas they are individual things or entities in which properties inhere. Imagine a ball of wax with thousands of pins stuck in it, covering its entire surface. The pins would represent the properties, while the ball of wax would represent the soul or the self. It is what underlies and unifi es all the properties (the pins) as the properties belonging to one entity. One issue is what this something is that underlies these properties: a person , a soul, or a transcendental self, something in which all the properties inhere or to which they all attach. To what do the properties attach? There must be something to which they attach, for we cannot be nothing but a bundle of properties. Setting aside thorny metaphysical questions that we do not need to settle here, we can say that the person is that thing to which a specifi c set of properties attach at a time. 15 If Micah is Sarah’s beloved, then the object of Sarah’s love is the entity to which all of Micah’s properties attach. (Note that there are two different questions here. One question is what it would mean to love the person behind all the properties as a whole, as a person, or for himself (I take these three ways of posing the issue as equivalent). The second question is what it means to love someone for who he or she really is. These two questions are different, as we will see.) So what does it mean to love the person as a person or as whole? We don’t have much by way of knowing what the person or the self is apart from its manifestation through its properties. That is, loving the person as a person might not have meaning beyond the idea that we love the personas-manifested-through-her-properties. Consider our options. Either it means that we love the person’s self in itself, apart from its manifestation in the properties, or it means that we love the person’s self as it is manifested in these properties. The fi rst option is hard to fathom: If I love Nora’s self in itself, how can I have access to it in order to love it? I cannot “grasp” her self in order to love it. Moreover, if I love her person apart from how it is manifested through her properties, it is not clear that it is Nora’s person that I love as opposed to someone else’s or for that matter anybody’s or nobody’s. And if nothing makes it Nora’s self in particular, what happens to my love for Nora ? I cannot love her by loving a self that is not connected to her in any signifi cant way. So it is diffi cult to understand the idea that we can love someone as a person if it means that we love her self or person in itself, apart from its manifestation in the person’s properties. If you reply that I love Nora’s person because I can see it in her gleaming eyes, her relaxing smile, and her tender touch, we are back to the second
The Characteristics and the Object of Love 85 option, namely the self’s manifestation in (the embodied, physical) Nora. We can say that I love Nora’s self in how it manifests itself in different ways in her. But then talk of selves and persons adds nothing informative. This means that when x loves y , x loves y -as-manifested-in- y ’s-properties. This allows us to see clearly the difference between loving the person as a whole and loving the person on the basis of the person’s properties. To say that Sarah loves Micah as a person or as a whole is to say that she loves that particular object or individual, Micah-as-manifested-in-properties-P1-to-Pn (all are Micah’s properties at a time). However, the basis of Sarah’s love for Micah might be only a delimited set of Micah’s properties, say P4 to P21. These are the properties because of which she loves Micah. There will be other properties to which Sarah is indifferent, and there will be others that she dislikes or downright detests. Thus, to love the whole person does not mean to love every property of the person. Instead, it means that the lover tolerates or overlooks those properties that the lover does not like (cf. Soble 1990 , 308). So far so good. But I have earlier written that we also love the beloved’s (good) properties. So is it that we love both the person as a whole and a subset of her properties (or all of them, if they happen to be all good or loveable)? Why would we not love properties? There is the thought that it is hard to make sense of the idea that properties are objects of love. Suppose that Rose has the property of having blue eyes. What would it mean for Jeff to love this property? Does he love the universal “having blue eyes”? This makes little sense. Moreover, lovers do not say, “I love your having blue eyes”; they say, “I love your blue eyes.” This indicates that the appropriate object of love is an object, not a property (which is a modifi cation of the object), either the whole person or part of the whole person. So while it makes sense that properties serve as the basis of love because they serve as bridges or reasons between an object, on the one hand, and an attitude, emotion, or action regarding the object, on the other, it does not make much sense to say that they are the objects of love. However, people do often ask, “What is it about Rose that you love?” Although this might be a different way of asking, “Why do you love Rose?” in which case it would be a question about the basis of love, it need not be. It could be a question about the properties of the beloved. Note the answers to the question: “I love her blue eyes,” “I love that he is so expressive,” and “I love her gait.” These all seem to be properties of the beloved (to say “parts” is to abuse language). Perhaps what the lovers, however, are saying, and unbeknownst to them, is that they love the property of blue eyes as instantiated in Rose. We can call them “aspects,” “facts,” “states of affairs,” or even “properties,” as long as we do not understand the last to refer to bare universals. So it seems that the object of love is the whole person, and can also be some (or all) of his or her properties. If x loves y , then x loves y as a whole, y -as-manifested-through- y ’s-properties. X can also love some aspects of y , be indifferent to others, and dislike others. As to the reasons of love, x loves y on the basis of y ’s properties; the properties serve as the reasons for the love. Note