On Love

December 21, 2019

Blog 1: On love?

On a very personal level, there is an explanatory gap in which I think about whether I love my significant other; and what I mean is on a philosophical level– that is, on the conceptual level. For I feel very strongly that I love her. But also I come to question whether I can?

Certainly I trust her, and when I'm with her I feel many feelings about her, which I interpret as positive and ecstatic. But the gap which I am noticing is that which is filled when the intentions I give are unmatched or unmet. The usual explanation that makes me fine with this gap is that "I love her" or that to love someone is to be understanding.

While I admit this is theoretical, and I say this because this doesn't affect my actions or feelings but certainly underlies the familiar ground on which I act, I am led to try and understand what love is more.

I have up to this point thought of love the way Iris Murdoch puts it– love is a special kind of looking (to see the good in the person). But I'm led to think about what makes me look at the beloved in such a way. There is a good love and a bad love. Reading Kierkegaard's philosophical fragments, he says there is a happy love and an unhappy love.

The unhappy love comes when the "king who loves the maiden" brings up the maiden to his castle and the maiden is eternally grateful– the maiden can't come to love the king because of the blinding elevation she got, the superman sweeping. The happy love comes from when the maiden loves the king as equal, which is analogous to the believer consummated with faith.

whereas having every slate wiped, it prevents redemption, it perturbs nature. What drives my love qua looking? The platonic good can only go so far as to promote transcendence. To go beyond what is human brings us to the unreal, but also the more real; we are brought to God. The floodgates are opened! Agape. The brotherly love for another. But the passion from the union of human lovers, how can that be called love?

I love my significant other's character and attributes, she is pleasant and she is useful. In decreasing order, this is the importance of kinds of friendship all joined into one. But this is friendship, wishing the good for the other because of their goodness. What leads to the love that makes marriage? or to go more with the times, an actual relationship? For I have my own faults too, faults that strain my relationship with her.

The explanatory gap perhaps is supplied by God's love, the source of the givenness, of believing in anything at all. I'm still at a loss and this is not an essay for sure. But I don't want to be the hyper-understanding person for I do get jealous, and I do get angry, i just try not to show it. This love is perhaps incomplete, despite that which love has filled. There is more to be done. And I really can't see anyone else in mind to express this kind of love to; am I delusional or is this really love? I can be wrong or I can be right but I don't care about that. For I care about good or bad.