I have to question
the characterization of love as a feeling.
The lover is a lover
insofar as, if he thinks of the beloved person, he thinks of her with
love. As a consequence, he loves to think of her, and consequently
thinks of her often and loves to be in her presence. This is
precisely what Aristotle called a hexis and the latinist a habitus.
The deception that
can occur (in love) is not a deception about the things in the world,
but only a deception about myself.
Whether something is
a case of love is decided only by the character of a particular state
of mind.
Amor oculus est
(Richard of St. Victor), but popular wisdom as it in the reverse:
Love makes blind. Someone in love makes up an image of the beloved
that cannot stand the later test of experience. On the other hand,
truly personal love transcends all images, all qualities of the
beloved and aims at the person beyond all these qualities. The
qualities are the „through-which“ love is enkindled, but once it
is enkindled it leaves these qualities behind. The one who can answer
the question, why he loves this person, doesn't yet love really. The
lover is therefore ready and open to engage all the future changes of
the beloved person and to tie irrevocably, for better or for worse,
his own changes, his own biography to that of the other.
The unconditionality
of the commitment is one of the paradoxes of love: It has the promise
of fidelity as constitutive of love. Here we find another paradox.
The case that this promise is not kept happens frequently. It is not
kept because the other has changed more than the lover can stand or
because the lover has lost his love, like a stick or a hat. Because
the unconditionality and the perspective of unchangeability is
constitutive, it appears to the former lover as if he has in effect
never truly loved, especially if a new love takes away the luster of
the old one. Indeed, it is part of the catholic teaching on love of
God and neighbour that no one can ever know for sure whether he has
it or not. Of course, one can always know for sure whether one is in
love or not.
It seems that the
term „love“ does in fact denote two entirely different things,
two attitudes, which already Aristotle had distinguished, when he
speaks of three types of friendship: that for the sake of pleasure;
that for the sake of its usefulness; and that because the friend is
worth of being loved for his own sake.
Robert Spaemann, The Paradoxes of Love: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7271305
No comments:
Post a Comment