What is Love?

A Conceptual Analysis of "Love", focusing on the Love Theories of Plato, St. Augustine and Freud
Nico Nuyens

GRIPh Working Papers No. 0901

This paper can be downloaded without charge from the GRIPh Working Paper Series website: http//www.rug.nl/filosofie/GRIPh/workingpapers

What is love?
A Conceptual Analysis of Love, focusing on the Love Theories of Plato, St. Augustine and Freud

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 1. FORMAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE............................................................................... 3 2. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF LOVE........................................................................... 6 3. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF LOVE....................................................................... 9 3.1 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY: PLATO ..................................................................... 11 3.2 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: SAINT AUGUSTINE............................................................ 18 3.3 MODERN PHILOSOPHY: FREUD ................................................................................. 27 4. COMPARATIVE EVALUATION............................................................................ 37 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................. 40 REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 43

Introduction The starting point of this paper is the question: What is love?, or, in other words, how can we understand or even define the concept of love? To clarify this question we have to approach the problem systematically. Love is no natural kind, nor is it a substance of an abstract kind. It seems to be an empirical phenomenon, since we encounter it almost every day. It is, however, not an empirical concept in the sense that we can empirically decide whether something is love or not. In everyday situations we use love in a great variety of meanings, but still, and maybe exactly because of that, we are not quite able to say what it exactly means. We say for instance: 1) Romeo loves Juliet; 2) Odysseus loves Penelope; 3) Abraham loves his son Isaak; 4) Humbert loves Lolita; 5) Epicurus loves champagne and caviar; 6) Boudewijn Bch loves books; 7) William Wallace loves Scotland; 8) Jesus loves you; 9) This chemical loves water; and finally 10) Socrates loves wisdom. In all these sentences, the sense in which love is used differs. Romeos love for Juliet is highly romantic, whereas Odysseus love for Penelope is an instance of matrimonial love, in which honour and obligation towards the spouse is prominent. Some other examples prove to be even more distinct from love as we would normally understand it. Loving your wife, for instance, means something quite different from loving your books, for whereas the former is love for a person, the latter relates to a set of nonpersonal objects. But still, both occasions can be, arguably, interpreted as something like the desire to be with it and care for it, if we accept this as a provisional and rather intuitive definition of love. For a true bibliophile it is not unusual to have a deep emotional relationship with his or her books. And this feeling can become so strong that the love for other things including relations to human loved ones is neglected. In some cases, human loved ones may even become jealous of the other object of love. It may sound, of course, a bit odd to be jealous with a book, but such reactions do have their plausibility when we realize that true bibliophiles often pay more attention to books than to human loved ones. Obviously, what we perceive as the object of love may differ greatly. Even when individual persons, such as spouses, family members and (girl/boy) friends are admittedly the first that come to mind if we think about the meaning of love, this does not necessarily mean that non-living things or activities, such as a country, a God or some

abstract value or entity, cannot be loved. It, hence, turns out that almost anything can become an object of love. But what about the other way around: Can we say that everything is capable of loving? This seems not to be the case, since, normally, we consider only humans, and perhaps also some higher animals to have that ability. From a biological perspective the love of God for human beings and vice versa may be a difficult case since the existence of a supreme being capable of loving falls outside the scope of the modern scientific worldview. For our purposes, however, which are philosophical, it should not be a problem to deal with the love of an individual for God in the sense of a personified abstract entity. Moreover, as we shall see later on in this paper, the love of God and Gods love for his creation has actually been an important subject of study for many centuries and, hence, needs to be taken very seriously. When looking at the great variety of meanings in which love is used, it becomes clear that it is a very broad concept. If we want to get a full understanding of the scope and possible meanings of love, the following research questions require an answer.

1. What is the formal structure of love? 2. What sorts of things can love and what sorts can be loved? 3. What are the causes and effects of love? 4. What is the relation between sexual and non-sexual love? 5. What is the relation between love and philosophy? 6. What do we mean by true love?

In Chapter 1 I start the analysis of the formal structure of the concept of love, since this counts as an important preliminary for further investigation. The second question, concerning what sorts of things can love and what sorts can be loved, that is, the semantic analysis of the concept, is dealt with in Chapter 2. For the remaining four research questions I have chosen the strategy of providing a historical analysis, which reconstructs three attempts to explicate the concepts of love by three established experts on this issue: Plato (Section 3.1), St. Augustine (Section 3.2) and Freud (Section 3.3)1. Of course, many

Scholz 1929 distinguishes merely the first two concepts of love as die beiden grten Gestalten der Liebe auf dem Boden des Abendlandes, but he is in a way excused for this, since he wrote this work as

other philosophers have expressed themselves on the topic of love, but since I have to limit the scope of this paper and think it is better to make a selection of the most important and influential ideas on this topic, I shall confine myself to these three authors. They represent, in a way, the different worldviews in which the various concepts of love are embedded. Plato represents the ancient Greek worldview, Saint Augustine stands for the Christian worldview, and Freud is characteristic of the modern scientific approach to sexuality and love. I am aware of the fact that in this way I generalise greatly, but consider this to be necessary as I feel that the most important concepts are sufficiently dealt with.2 My strategy is to focus on the concept of love expressed by each author with the intention of formalising their views in a form that allows them to be compared with each other. In Chapter 4 the three concepts of love are evaluated in the context of the research questions as mentioned above.

1. Formal analysis of love In this chapter the mere logical form of the concept of love is considered, without looking at its possible semantic content. In order to determine these formal characteristics the verb of the substantiated form should be taken, for it appears that the noun love is a derivative form of the verb loves. This becomes obvious if we look at the sentences mentioned in the Introduction. Love here operates syntactically as a verb3, which indicates that love is not a substance or a natural kind, but a logical relation. The next step is to determine, with the help of practical examples, how many and which aspects or variables are possible and necessary in this relation, which is expressed in syntactically and semantically sound sentences expressing love. It then turns out quickly that love is a relational concept in which two aspects are involved: the lover and the loved one, or to put it differ-

early as 1929, and hence could not have been fully aware of the later importance of Freuds work. Morgan 1964 and Santas 1988 on the other hand do recognize the significance of Freud as a major theorist of love. 2 Helmut Kuhn gave in his work Liebe: Geschichte eines Begriffs (1975) a very helpful overview of the different concepts of love throughout the history of philosophy. Unfortunately he did not include Freuds theory in his analysis. 3 One obvious exception is the expression: is in love with, which designates the strong and sometimes suddenly occuring feeling of being in love. Essentially, that is, formally, there is no difference in logical structure between is in love with and loves.

ently, the amans and the amandum.4 The correctness of this statement is easily shown, since if the verb to love occurs with only one variable, it will prove to be not informative, as in the phrase John loves5 we feel that something is missing. To know that John loves is not enough; we want to know what he loves. Even if one is to claim that such a sentence is syntactically and semantically possible, it must be admitted that obviously some information is missing or left implicit: namely the object of Johns love. This object of love need not be a concrete physical or even ontological object, distinct from the person who loves. If we say that John loves himself, this is a perfectly well formed and meaningful sentence, which allows for one physical object to be both the epistemological subject and epistemological object of love. Self-love is, thus, a relation between the self as a subject and the self as an object. What I want to make clear with this example is that if we take as a starting point syntactically sound sentences that express a love relation, we find that there always must be a grammatical subject as well as an object. Of course, love relations are not just sentences, they are statements about reality, but for some kinds of love no fitting physical object can be found. Therefore, when I speak of the subject of love and the object of love, I refer to the epistemological meaning of that term, and not to the grammatical or ontological meaning. In the table below an overview of the various types of meaning is given.

Type of meaning Grammatical meaning Epistemological meaning Ontological meaning

The subject variable (amans) the grammatical subject the epistemological subject the lover, i.e. Romeo

The object variable (amandum) the grammatical object the epistemological object the beloved, i.e. Juliet

In all concepts of love there is someone or something that loves, and someone or something that is being loved. This leads to the statement that there are two necessary and sufSee also Kuhn, p. 10 who says that Vielerlei wird Liebe genannt. Aber immer benennt das Wort eine Beziehung zwischen mindestens zwei Partnern, einem Liebenden und einem Geliebten. Kuhn states that at least two partners are required, so that also love between three or more people can be accounted for. What I am talking about, however, are no concrete physical objects of love, but rather conceptual. The objects Kuhn is referring to are no conceptual aspects, but ontological objects. 5 Or, alternatively, John is being loved.
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ficient aspects in a love-relation. Even when A loves both B and C, this is not a threesided relation, but two two-sided relations; namely that A loves B and A loves C. This two-sided relation is technically referred to as a dyadic relation.6 This insight is significant for the formal analysis, since the logic of dyadic relations admits of three logical characteristics: symmetry, transitivity, and reflexivity. With respect to symmetry, dyadic relations can be symmetrical, asymmetrical or non-symmetrical. A symmetrical relation is a relation such that if one thing has that relation to a second, then the second must have that relation to the first. An asymmetrical relation on the other hand, says that the second cannot have that relation to the first. Non-symmetrical relations finally, are defined as such that they are neither symmetrical nor asymmetrical. Now, in the case of a specific love relation, such as between Romeo and Juliet, it may well be that the relation is symmetrical (this would mean that their love is reciprocal), but if we purely look at the formal structure of the love relation itself, we see that it can only be a non-symmetrical relation, since it is possible, but not necessary that the object of love returns this love to the subject.7 The characteristic of transitivity means for dyadic relations that they can be either transitive or intransitive or non-transitive.8 A transitive relation is a relation such that if one thing has it to a second, and the second has it to the third, then the first must have it to the third. For an intransitive relation this cannot be the case, and non-transitive relations are neither intransitive nor transitive. Again, in particular for love relations it might be possible that they are transitive (in the case that Socrates loves Alcibiades, Alcibiades loves Agathon, and Socrates for this reason loves Agathon as well), but this is certainly not logically necessary. So formally, love relations are non-transitive. The third and last characteristic of dyadic relations is reflexivity. This means that any relation of this kind is either reflexive, irreflexive or nonreflexive. For reflexive relations it goes that A not only loves B, but A also loves A, i.e., itself. Irreflexive relations exclude this possiblity, whereas non-reflexive relations are neither reflexive, nor irreflexive. According to Copi loves is an example of such a non-reflexive relation, since although it is possible,
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Copi, Irving, Symbolic Locic, Fourth Edition. New York: 1973 (first edition: 1954), The Macmillan Company, p 130. 7 Copi, p. 131. In Goethes Das Leiden des Jungen Werthers, for instance, was Werthers love for Lotte (tragically) not returned by her. The notion that true love can only exist if the two aspects (the subject and the object) of a love relation love each other equally is interesting, but seems not to be necessary to fulfill the logical criteria of the relation of love.

it is not necessary that the subject of love loves itself as well as the object.9 So to sum up, the following characteristics of the formal structure of love can be given:

1. Love is a dyadic relation, 2. which has two necessary and sufficient epistemological variables, and which is 3. non-symmetrical, 4. non-transitive, and 5. non-reflexive.

These characteristics provide the logical framework for the semantic analysis of the concept, which I shall discuss now.

2. Semantic analysis of love Following the formal analysis, the next step is to determine the possible semantic content of the two aspects of love: the amans and the amandum. That is, we should try to answer the question, what sorts of things can love and what sorts of things can be loved? First, we must ask ourselves what kind of entities they are. There are, in my view, three main categories of entities: ontic, epistemic and semeiotic entities,10 which could constitute the semantic content of either the amans or the amandum. With respect to the amans we can say that for instance, in German, the verb loves to be at the end of long and complicated sentences. But, obviously love is here only used in a metaphorical sense, that is, the verb does not literally loves to be at the end of sentences. What the speaker wants to express is that there is this linguistic phenomenon in the German language that verbs tend to occur at the end of sentence, thereby making it difficult for beginners in German to grasp long sentences in one time. Similarly, with respect to epistemic entities, we can say that a sentence like the idea that I will fail my exam tomorrow loves to occupy my
8 9

Copi, p. 131. Copi, p. 130-132 specifically mentions love as an example for non-symmetric, non-transitive and nonreflexive relations. 10 Ontic entities are things that exist in space and time, and can be considered to be material, such as a cat or a table. Epistemic entities on the other hand have no such physical extension, but are indirectly existentially dependent on a material brain to think them. All concepts, thoughts, ideas, mental representations and

mind is metaphorical, for we would translate it as something like I am very occupied with the idea that I will fail my exam tomorrow. Neither words nor ideas are able to assume the place of the subject variable in a love relation. So only the category of ontic entities remains as a candidate to be a lover. However, we generally think that not all material things are capable of loving. According to the common sense view, the amans must be a sentient living organism11, such as a human or some kind of animal. Plants and inorganic things, however, are usually not considered to be capable of loving. Again, the occurrence of sentences like this plant loves to be watered and that plant loves the sun prima facie seem to prove the opposite, but what is really meant here is that, generally, plants cannot survive without some periodic quantity of water and sunshine.12 In order to create some preliminary structure in the overwhelmingly broad concept of love I propose the schema in Figure 1, by using semantic criteria for the subject and object variable of love. This model is not to be taken as the only possible one, nor as reflecting a monolithic reality, but as a heuristic proposal making further investigation easier.
1 Absolute love

2a Proper love

2b Metaphorical love

3a Human love

3b Divine and cosmic love

4a Inter-human love 5a Sexual love

4b object love

5b Non-sexual love

Figure 1: A model for distinguishing different conceptions of love.

emotions can be subsumed under this category, such as the idea of a cat or the thought of a table. Semeiotic entities are ontic expressions of epistemic or ontic entities, such as the words cat and table. 11 See also Santas, p. 4, who says: there is minimal agreement, I think, that lovers are sentient beings, capable of some perception or thought and feeling. Animals, humans and divine beings can fall under this characterization, but there is disagreement whether divine beings can love, and whether al non-human animals can be lovers. 12 Similarly we say of certain chemicals that they are hydrophile (water loving) for the reason that they are attracted to water or mix well with it. In the same way the Greek philosopher Heracleitus once aphoristically said that nature loves to hide (McKirahan, p. 14).

I start with the very broad notion of absolute love (concept 1), which includes all nonsymmetrical, non-transitive and non-reflexive dyadic relations, of which the epistemological subject loves the object. For each following phase a semantic criterion is added, which distinguishes between instances of love that meet the criterion and those that do not. The first distinction is drawn between love relations of which the subject of love is restricted to persons (concept 2a), which may be called proper love, and those which are not (concept 2b). The latter category applies to the love relations already mentioned above, and which can be called non-proper or metaphorical love. The chemical for instance does not really love the water, but is attracted to it in a purely physical sense. So being a lover in the proper sense seems only possible for sentient living organisms, which we consider to be persons.13 But this concept still includes many things, since persons are not necessarily identical with humans. A divine being might be said to be capable of love as well as some animal, if we anthropomorphically regard it to be a person. But also the possibility for machine love must be kept open since we cannot exclude that some day artificial intelligence may become so advanced that we may call it an intelligent life form that is capable of love.14 To exclude these categories of love, we apply the criterion that the subject of love is restricted to humans (concept 3a). Human love now excludes instances of non-human love, such as divine and cosmic love, animal love and machine love (concept 3b). One may justifiably object that the limitation of the subject of love to persons and even to humans is arbitrary, since the formal essence of love only includes the relation between a subject and an object. Strictly speaking this is true: there is no good reason to exclude non-persons or non-humans from love. The point is, however, that all identified problems of love are related to human love (concept 3a). Further, only the research question concerning the relation between love and philosophy applies to a concept of love that is not inter-human or object love (concept 4b), since the object of love is not another human but an epistemic, semeiotic, or non-human ontic entity. All other forms of love are inter-human love (concept 4a). This
See also Kuhn, p 11: Der Liebende um zuerst von ihm zu sprechen muss jedenfalls ein lebendiges wesen sein. Liebe als Beziehung ist eine Lebensbeziehung nur lebendiges kann lieben. 14 In his book De ijzeren wil (The Iron Will), Bas Haring claims that machines can have emotions, and are capable of loving. He notes: we must conclude that it is possible for machines to have emotions. Real emotions. In any case just as real as our emotions. Machines can really love the sun, and be afraid of death (Haring, p. 122).
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former type of love includes the love for abstract and material entities, such as a mans love for wisdom, books, or his country. The final distinction can be made between human love that we perceive to be erotic or sexual in nature, and love that is not. This is of course highly problematic, because it is exactly the point that is hard to determine, what is meant by sexual and what is not. As we shall see, the three authors that will be discussed in the following chapters all account for inter-human love differently, so this interpretation should only be taken as an informal and intuitive distinction.15 The main focus of concept explication should be on the kind of love relation between two human beings, since most research questions are related to inter-human love. This focus, however, must not be too exclusive since we do not want to rule out the possibility of a human having a non-human object or even a personal God as an object of love.

3. Historical analysis of love One of the first accounts of love we find in stories on cosmogony of Greek literature and philosophy. Love here is a power to unite.16 It finds its expression in ancient poems of heroic and tragic events, and was later used in philosophy as a cosmological principle to explain what holds the world together, and why it falls apart when love is missing. The tragic but necessary relation between love and strife is one of the most fundamental motives of nearly all ancient literature. According to the Greek poet, Hesiod, everything started when Chaos and Earth mated. Their first offspring is Eros: the most beautiful of all immortal Gods.17 For Hesiod love is not only erotic love (rs), that is, a blind force that suddenly and violently disturbs the ordered life, but also philts, the affinity with relatives and friends, which is imperative for a well ordered life. This double nature of love would later on in ancient philosophy be an important subject of thought. rs and phila (or philts) are in a way opposite, but at the same time both undisputed instances

See also Santas, p. 9, who distinguishes three basic concepts of love, which are philia, agape and Eros. Philia includes familial love (parental love, filial love and sibling love) as well as friendship. Agape (Christian love) includes the love of God for his children, the love of man for God, and the love of man for neighbor. Eros is the sexual love between male and female, male and male, or between female and female. 16 Kuhn, p 30. 17 Kuhn, p. 34.

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of love.18 The philosophy of Empedocles included a cosmogonic theory in which philts is the uniting force, which holds all things together, including the human body.19 In Platos days, the common word for love was Eros. It meant, generally, need or desire, a reaching out for whatever one lacked. Originally and characteristically, a man felt Eros toward another human being in the sense of sexual desire. As the term broadened, a man could be said to erei money or music or sculpture or poetry; toward whatever he yearned for, he felt Eros. In addition, especially in later Hellenistic times a man could broadly and generally be said to agapei anything towards which he felt Eros; the words were not sharply distinguished, except that the noun for love was almost always Eros, while the verb could be either eran or agapan. Insofar as the verbs were differentiated at all, a man might incline to save agapan for the love of an object he esteemed while he might confess Eros for an unworthy object, he would hardly say that he agaped it. More specifically (and still speaking of the days before Jesus of Nazareth) a man could feel friendship for and love his friends with the verb philein and the noun philia. When those friends were his brothers or when he thought of them as brothers, he could speak of his fraternal love for them as philos-delphos or phila-delphia. Philia was affectionate and warm, but hardly ever sexual, as was usually, but not always Eros. Gods love toward man was later to be called philanthropy.20 Several antecedent authors used the concept of love as a motivational force to explain human and divine action or as a cosmic force to explain the genesis of the cosmos and the human species. But the leap forward did not occur until Plato, as he was the first to systematically investigate the nature of human love. It is also no exaggeration to say that every later theorist of love, and

18 19

Kuhn, p. 36. For Empedocles nature consists of four indestructible elements, which are earth, water, air and fire. Everything in the universe is composed of these parts in a certain proportion and some day they will decompose again so that only the elements remain. Two cosmic forces are responsible for the composition and decomposition of the elements: love (Philts, Phila, Aphrodt) and strife or hate (Neiks). Aphrodite is the Goddess of love and therefore a common metaphor for the concept of love. The same goes for Eros, who is both the God of (erotic) love and desire. It is not exactly clear how we must interpret them: as purely physical forces of attraction and repulsion, which could be either innate in the elements or imposed on them as external forces, or as intelligent divinities that act in purposive ways in creation and destruction. In the first case it would be an instance of thing love (concept 2b), in the second it would be a case of nonhuman personal love (concept 3b). What is clear is that both forces are engaged in an eternal battle for domination of the cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle (Kirk, Raven, Schofield, p. 327) 20 See also Morgan, p. 65.

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particularly Augustine and Freud, has been in Platos debt, as we will see later on in this paper.

3.1 Ancient Greek philosophy: Plato Platos theory of love can be found in two of his works: the Phaidros and the Symposium. In this paper I focus on the latter, since it supplies the most detailed information for our analysis. The Symposium is arguably one of the most enjoyable Platonic dialogues to read. Its literary form is a polylogue and its dramatic setting a drinking party, where each of the guests is asked to give a speech in which Eros21, the god of sexual love is praised.22 The first five speeches function as an introduction to the main theory of Eros, which is expressed in the sixth speech held by Socrates himself. Of the introductory speeches, the speeches of Pausanias and Aristophanes are particularly worth mentioning. In Pausanias speech a distinction is made between two kinds of Eros: Eros Pndemos and Eros Uranos. Of Eros Pndemos he says that it is only felt by the vulgar (men), who are attracted to women no less than to boys and who are more interested in the body than in the soul. Naturally, people who love in this way seek for the least intelligent partners, since all they care about is completing the sexual act, regardless of whether what they do is honourable of not. This Eros Pndemos is mythologically related to a young goddess, Pandemos, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and for this reason she learned to love both males and females. She is also referred to as common Aphrodite, for being more oriented to the flesh.23 The Eros Uranos relates to an older deity Urania, who is the motherless daughter of Uranus, god of heaven. This type of Eros is exclusively directed at boys, since her descent is purely male, and is praised by Pausanias as heavenly Aphrodite. As Urania is older than Pandemos, her love is more mature and, being directed at males, finds pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent.24 It must be noted that the Eros Uranos includes the practice of paiderasta, or pedophile behaviour.
21

In the original Greek version of the Symposium Eros is consequently capitalized, since the God and the kind of love which is usually thought to be sexual in nature are supposed to be identical. 22 There are six speeches of praise delivered in the Symposium, plus a seventh by an uninvited and very drunk latecomer, the Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades. In chronological order the encomia are expressed by Phaedrus [178a-180b], Pausanias [180c-185c], Eryximachus [185e-188e], Aristophanes [189c-193d], Agathon [194e-197e], Socrates [199c-212c] and Alcibiades [215a-222c]. 23 Symposium, 181b. 24 Symposium, 181c.

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Something, which is believed to be rather common in Platos time, and to a certain extent, morally accepted if the boy was not too young.25 The other speech, that of the great poet Aristophanes, tells the story of the origin of man. In the beginning, he states, there were three kinds of human beings: male, female, and androgynous beings (having both male and female sexual organs). The shape of each of the human beings was completely spherical having two pairs of arms and legs and two faces on each side of the head. In addition, they had two sets of sexual organs. But then, tragically, due to their terribly ambitious nature they disobeyed the gods and tried to make an ascent to heaven so as to attack the gods. Zeus, confronted with this rebellion, did not want to simply wipe them out as he had previously done with the Titans when they rebelled; the worship and sacrifices he received from the humans were too valuable for him. In order to stop their misconduct, but at the same time to allow them to survive, Zeus cut each human being in two. In doing so, he not only reduced their strength, but also increased their number, being even more profitable to him then before.26 But then, another tragedy occurred: since the humans natural form had been cut in two, each one longed for the other half it had been separated from. On finding each other, they would refuse to let go of the other half in an attempt to grow together again. This way they were not able to take care of themselves, and finally died from starvation and self-neglect. When Zeus saw that the humans were in danger of extinction he took pity on them and decided to reverse their genitals, in order to make reproduction possible. Now they not only were able to have children, but also to have the satisfaction of intercourse. The moral of this story is that the cause of our desire to love someone is that we try to find the other half of what used to be our original unity. And this intense yearning, which is salient in lovers, is not primarily the desire for sexual intercourse, but the desire to be reunited with something that has been taken away from us by force and against our will. This desire to be a whole again is what we call love.27 Moreover, this mythical account of the origin of love between humans explains why sometimes people are attracted to individuals of the same gender. Obviously, in their original state they were part of one an-

25

See also: Bury, R., Introduction (1909) in: The Symposium of Plato. Edited, with introduction, critical notes and commentary by R.G. Bury, Litt.D. Cambridge: 1932, W. Heffner and Sons Ltd., p. xxvi. 26 Symposium, 189e-190d. 27 Symposium, 190e-193b.

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drogynous being. Interestingly, this view not only claims that homosexuality is in accordance with nature, but also implies that (male) homosexuality is actually of a higher kind than heterosexual love. This conclusion of Aristophanes speech is affirmed by the speech of Socrates, which turns out to be a representation of a discourse he once had with his instructor in matters of love, Diotima. This Diotima appears to be a very wise woman, who refutes Socrates initial claim that love itself is a beautiful thing. According to her mythical explanation, love is neither beautiful and good, nor ugly and bad, but something in between.28 And besides this, Eros is not a god, since being a godhead requires the possession of beauty, and that is exactly what Eros desires and lacks. Instead, he appears to be an intermediary daimon between the immortal gods and mortal men. Moreover, Eros has both a fertile and rich nature, and an impoverished one, due to his descent of Poros (literally: plenty or resource) and Penia (poverty). As he is intermediary between the mortal and the immortal, Eros is intermediary between the wise and the unwise, which is, according to Socrates, the equivalent of a wisdom-lover or philosopher. The vocabulay of mortality and immortality, of gods and men, may sound archaic and mythical to our modern understanding, but if we translate them into philosophically more common terms we find the purely logical result that love strictly speaking is not identical with the amans nor with the amandum. Rather, love is the impelling relation between these two. From Socrates preliminary discussion with Agathon 29 three characteristics of love are identified: that (1) love is always intentional, that is: it always has an object; that (2) love is always a lack, a need, a longing, a want, a desire of something, rather than the possession of something;30 and that (3) love always seeks beauty and goodness.31 It must be noted that these results match perfectly with our formal analysis in Chapter 1. Further on in the speech Socrates establishes even more characteristics.32 For instance, that (4) love itself is neither beautiful nor good, but something in between. Two additions must be made here. First, that Eros is neither a god, nor a man, but a great daimon: an intermediary between the gods and man, and second that Eros partakes in the nature of both
28 29

Symposium, 201e. Symposium, 199c-201d. 30 Symposium, 200e. 31 Symposium, 201a.

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his parents, Poros (plenty) and Penia (poverty). With respect to knowledge, he is a wisdom lover or philosopher, which means that love and philosophy are recognised by Plato as being essentially connected. Then, Socrates speaks of the effects, or the utility, of Eros33 and claims that (5) love is the desire for the everlasting possession of the good, which is connected with the fear of losing the object of love after it is gained. This explains why some lovers become jealous, for jealousy is the fear of losing the beloved in the future. Also, Socrates states that (6) the method or mode of action of Eros is that it procreates, both physical and psychical, the good in the beautiful. Two different forms of procreation are distinguished: physical and psychical procreation. The physical procreation of babies is the nearest approach to immortality through offspring, but never reaches total immortality, since all humans must die some day. Therefore, the psychical procreation of laws, inventions and noble deeds, is a much stronger and higher form of procreation, since its offspring is immortal. A consequence of this sixth characteristic is that some forms of love are objectively better than others. Love for the body is vulgar, whereas love for the soul is the highest love. It also includes the idea that homosexual love for boys is a higher and purer love than heterosexual love for women, since the souls of men are regarded as stronger and more intelligent. Moreover, this kind of love is obviously not interested in creating physical offspring. The final characteristic of love (7) concerns the purpose of love. According to Plato, the purpose of love is to ascend from bodily beauty to the love of soul beauty, and eventually to the Form of the Beauty itself. This is a process, through which the soul has to pass, beginning with the physical love for a body and thence proceeding toward the love for the soul, in which the form of the beauty is recognized. At this highest stage of love, even individual souls become irrelevant and only the pure form of beauty itself is loved. This can be considered to be the most important moral of the story of Socrates instructor Diotima. And she even guides him further in the mysteries of Eros. There are men, she teaches, who are pregnant in the body only, and whose pursuit of the immortality we all seek takes the sole direction of physical procreation. They leave behind only physical offspring, which may well outlive them and in this sense enables the parents to defeat their own death. Other men,

32 33

Symposium, 201d-212c. Symposium, 204d-212a.

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however, are pregnant more in their minds than in their body. They too seek immortality, yet immortality of a higher order. These are our creators, artists, statesmen, lawgivers, and educators: those who are remembered for the children, not of their loins, but of their brains and hearts. These are more fully men, for they have embodied virtues by expressing them. Nonetheless, the distinction Plato makes here between body and soul is not as strict as it seems. The path to true love is a matter of a long process of education. Of course the love of a beginner is honestly sexual: it is the beautiful body that attracts him. However, this is only the first step. In time, the lover will understand that the beauty of the body is related to the beauty of the soul. He then advances from physically beautiful bodies, to morally beautiful actions and then to intellectually beautiful forms. This hierarchy is what is conventionally referred to as Platos Ladder of Love or scala amoris34, because the highest form of love cannot be reached without having initially stepped on the first rung of the ladder, which is the physical attraction to a beautiful object such as a beautiful body, or beautiful words and discourses. With respect to this point, the historical interpretation of Platos concept of love moved in two different directions: one (older) interpretation claims that Plato is an ascetic, who categorically condemns sexuality and urges men to turn completely away from the body and all earthly things in favour of the super-mundane forms. This is where the famous expression of Platonic love came from, by which is meant a purely non-sexual love. A younger tradition of interpretation, however, focuses on the idea that the Symposium and the Phaedrus set on the continuity of loves growth, and claims that Plato only partially condemns sex. However, in neither interpretation sexuality is actually praised. In the first, it is condemned outright; in the second, it is taken as a natural and healthy, although tiny, first step in love.35 But let us now turn to the question of what actually happens to us when we love. Can we say that love is an emotion? Plato would probably deny this. With Scholz36 I believe that he would rather call it a state of mind. Emotions have a more temporary and
Santas, p. 25, 41. See also: Morgan, p. 35. 36 Scholz, p. 4 calls it a Gemtsverfassung; In his attempt to define the concepts of love for Plato and Christianity Scholz uses three questions for a method: 1. what is it based on; 2. what it exists in; and 3. how it is distributed between the sexes (the orgiginal says: 1. die Frage, worauf sie beruht; 2. die Frage, worin sie besteht; 3. die Frage, wie sie sich auf die Geschlechter verteilt (Scholz, p. 48).
35 34

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subjective nature, since they are not so much dependent on the outside world, but seem to originate from the subject itself. Love, however, is a state of mind that needs a certain form (eidos) of beauty as a necessary precondition, to which the lover is attracted. Every time the lover recognizes this form, he will experience the desire to be near the object in which it becomes manifest. So it is this pure form of beauty (and to a certain extent also goodness) that is the actual cause of love: We love things that are beautiful and want to procreate beautiful things in order to become immortal. Yet the philosophical question is, of course, what precisely this pure form of beauty is. According to Plato, beauty is not something that is in the eye of the beholder. On the contrary, it is something objectively present in a concrete thing. As Plato calls it, the beauty of a person is ontologically a quality of a concrete instantiation, which partakes (metexis) in the true and pure form of beauty. So Platos concept of love is essentially connected with his theory of forms. A pure form is, according to Plato, an unchanging, universal and eternal entity, which is unique in its kind and ontologically prior to all existing things in the world of appearances. Individual things have certain characteristics, because they ontologically partake in several pure forms, such as whiteness, beauty and courage. In a way, the pure form of beauty can be called the archetype of beauty, although this is not Platos own wording. Further, love can only be perceived by intuition, and not by sensation, so this explains the intellectual character of the recognition of the pure form of beauty in a person. Salient, from a feminist point of view, is that women are excluded from partaking in the Form of beauty, because Plato considers them to be inferior to men. This is, of course, on the one hand a remarkable point of view, also because Diotima was not the least attractive woman of her time. Plato never elaborated on the matter, possibly because the contradiction never occurred to him.37 On the other hand, Platos idea of the inferiority of women was not exceptional in ancient Greece. In his opinion, women are inferior, since they lack sharpness of vision. And sharpness of vision (that is, sharpness of the mental eye) is a necessary precondition to recognize beauty in the first place. So if one cannot recognize the beauty of someone, there is simply no attraction, and if one sees the pure form of beauty in someone, it is necessary to love him madly.

37

Scholz, p. 12.

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So to summarize, the most important results are that the explicandum of Platos attempt to explicate love is the Greek term Eros. We also saw that an explication should aim at inter-human love (concept 4a), since it is the love between human persons Plato is interested in. Evident non-examples that have to be excluded are instances of non-person or thing love (concept 2b), such as the love of a (hydrophilic) chemical for water, and to a lesser extent non-human love (concept 3b) and abstract and material love (concept 4b). Regarding the conditions of adequacy, it must be said that Platos concept of love is quite narrow. It excludes instances of cosmological love and leaves no room for the love of God for his creation. Moreover, the only objects of love Plato mentions are human beings. Love for material objects, such as books, is not mentioned. He does give an explanation of the love for wisdom, as philosophy, but intrinsically connects it to the love of another human soul, which is needed to give birth to this beautiful knowledge. An aspect that may face the scepticism of feminists is the fact that for Plato the only true objects of love are the souls of male individuals. The love for females is regarded as a matter of the flesh only, since it is inherently connected with procreation of children. True love seems, therefore, only to be possible for homosexual (male) couples. This means that Platos concept may be too narrow even to include our common view of women also being able to love truly. An evaluation of general desiderata is concerned with giving a judgment on three non-specific criteria: precision, fruitfulness and simplicity. With respect to the first criterion we may note that Plato is remarkably precise in his explication of the concept of Eros. He explains in detail that love is a relational entity, which involves a person who loves and a person who is being loved. The lover feels a very strong desire to be with the loved one due to the beauty he sees in him. The purpose of love is to procreate beautiful children in the form of laws, inventions and noble deeds. Platos account of love proved to be fruitful, in the sense that his theory was a great inspiration for later philosophers. The question of whether Platos theory of love is simple, however, cannot be answered with a clear yes. He does involve the metaphysical concept of beauty as an unchanging form. In fact, this concept is essential to his whole theory. One may try to put into perspective this term by replacing it with a less objectionable term, such as archetype of beauty, but that is not what Plato claims. He puts forward the strong claim stating that

17

these entities are absolute and that beauty is far from being in the eye of the beholder. Platos concept of love cannot be separated from his metaphysical assumptions on the existence of pure forms, and, therefore does satisfy the demand of simplicity.

3.2 Christian philosophy: Saint Augustine The transgression from antique philosophy into Christian thought progresses slowly after the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In the first centuries AD many sects claim to represent the true Christian belief on earth, and disagree on important dogmas, such as the nature of God, the status of the Bible as divine revelation, and the immortality of the soul. With Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), many of the now typical Christian dogmas were established, the most important of which are the free will of human beings, the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the theory of the fall of man, the inherited sins and Gods grace. He counts arguably as the most influential Christian thinker ever, as he wrote numerous works on philosophy and theology. The most important are De doctrina christiana, the Confessiones, De trinitate, and De civitate Dei. One interesting characteristic of the life of Augustine is that of extremes. As a youngster, Augustine leads a remarkably unrestrained life, as we can read in the Confessiones.38 He steals, lies, leads a promiscuous life and vainly strives for respect and wealth as a teacher of rhetoric.39 Only after his conversion into Catholicism, he devotes himself to an ascetic life, and becomes the humblest servant of God. A salient detail of his life story is that he relentlessly sends away his wife and young child, because he thinks that a life devoted to God cannot be combined with a normal family life. Among the most important philosophical ideas of Augustines philosophy is the existence of a personal and immaterial God, who consists of three substantially identical persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In contrast to later religious thinkers, Augustine is not so much concerned with proving the existence of God by rational argu38 39

See also Flash, p. 12. Well known are Augustines confessions of his escapades before his conversion. In his sixteenth year he had longed to be sinning with the boys. He despised his mother Monnicas warnings against sexual irregularities she urged him to at least avoid seducing married women and felt ashamed at being less dissolute than his peers. At the famous pear-tree incident Augustine and his friends stole pears and threw them to the pigs. According to his testimony, Augustine took them, precisely because he knew it was the wrong thing to do.

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ment, since for him this is evidently true.40 Compared to Gods superior intellectual powers the human mind is only a poor imitation. According to Augustine, human persons are no actual composites of both body and soul, but rather the pure identity of the soul itself. The body is merely a piece of clothing which covers the soul and cloaks its originally clear view. The soul, however, is something purely immaterial and immortal.41 In the context of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, Augustine became concerned with sexual differentiation. An important question was whether the difference between the sexes is something that abides by the soul after death. If this is not the case, is then biological reproduction the only reason for the sexual difference of earthly bodies? Augustine thinks that sexual difference might remain in some kind in heaven, but certainly no sexual acts occur there, as some contemporaries suggested. In De bono coniugali (The Good of Marriage), Augustine is still hesitant to admit that sexual intercourse took place in the Garden of Eden, and in the Literal Commentary he is wondering whether the affection of caritas alone would actually have been adequate for reproduction. It is not exaggerated to say that Augustine never achieved a wholly satisfactory account of the role of sexuality within marriage. It took him years to decide that Adam had an animal, and not a spiritual body, and that in their unfallen state in paradise Adam and Eve did actually enjoy sexual relations albeit strictly for the procreation of children. And Augustine emphasizes here: sex, yes, but neither did they have it for the erotic pleasure, nor simply as an expression of affection.42 Eventually, in De bono coniugali, Augustine comes to the conclusion that the only justification for sexual intercourse is the procreation of children. Sex not aiming at making babies is a fault, though venial in a married couple.43 Augustine gives only one explicit definition of love. He says that love is craving (appetitus).44 All animals, including man, have these cravings, but when they occur in man he calls them affects (affectus). Every affect is related to a definite object, and it takes this object to spark the affection itself, thus providing an aim for it. Affection is determined by the object it seeks analogously to a movement, which is set by the goal to40

There are a few proofs of Gods existence in Augustines works, but this is not his main interest. He is much more interested in the nature and attributes of God (See also Rist, p. 67). 41 Rist, p. 92. 42 Rist, p. 112. 43 Kirwan, p. 194. 44 Arendt, p. 7.

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ward which it moves. For, as Augustine writes, love is a kind of motion and all motion is toward something. 45 What determines the motion is always something previously given; we only love what we know. So in accordance with Plato, Augustine thinks that we consider the object we know and desire to be good (bonum), otherwise we would not seek it for its own sake. These goods are always independent objects, unrelated to other objects. Again Plato resounds when Augustine says that we only desire what we do not have. We desire it because we think the object is good and will make us happy. Once we have our object, our desire ends, unless we are threatened with its loss. In that case the desire to have turns into a fear of losing. So as craving seeks some good, fear dreads some evil (malum). The consequence is that as long as we desire temporal things, we are constantly under the threat of losing what we have gained. Constantly subjected to the rule of craving and fear, the future is uncertain and we are unable to be happy. The true life, Augustine therefore proposes, is one that is both everlasting and happy.46 His solution is to introduce a different object of love: namely, one that is no longer a particular good, but the absolute or highest good itself (summum bonum). This absolute good must be eternity, since eternity is not something you can lose against your will. A love that seeks anything safe and disposable on earth is constantly frustrated, because everything is doomed to perish in the long run. We must therefore make eternity the object of our desire: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Love for things in the world he denounces as cupiditas: the kind of love that pulls us down, due to its weight on the soul.47 The right love, in contrast, is the one that seeks eternity and the absolute future: caritas, and is able to draw us in the opposite direction, namely up and out of our earthly dungeons into the heavens. Still, both right and wrong love have in common that they are craving desire, appetitus. The difference between the two kinds of love lies therefore solely in the object of love. Hence, Augustine warns, love, but be careful what you love.48 Thus, Augustines theory of love is part of a morally charged model of the right life. According to this model, God is conceived as the summum bonum, and as the object

45 46

Arendt, p 9. Arendt, p 10. 47 Rist, p 173. 48 Arendt, p 17.

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all movements of love should be directed at. All ethical rules are derived from this object of love. The ethical purpose is, for Augustine, to live life as a wise man (sapiens). This means that to live rationally is to live a happy life and a life of being with God.49 So the love for God is unmistakably of an intellectual nature. The purpose of man is to recognize God, and for this purpose, the Christian virtues of faith (fides), hope (spes) and love (caritas) must be internalised, as they are thought to be a preparation of the soul to view the light of God. To view God (visio Dei) means to intellectually grasp him, not to physically see him or to have a vision of God. Hence the love for God is an intellectual act of the soul.50 From the perspective of Christian virtues, love is subsequently interpreted as the desire to view God, hope as the expectation to achieve this and faith as the belief that the object of the mental view corresponds with the way God truly is. Several historically separated lines of thought come together in Augustines works: one is the desire for deliverance and the other the desire for knowledge. The questioning of intellectual investigation (quaerere) was for Augustine essentially a quest for God. This means that the true philosopher is at the same time a true god-loving person (verus philosophus amator Dei).51 So philosophy as the love of wisdom was according to Augustine identical with the intellectual love for God, and can be understood as a moving power that can ultimately unite us with God in perfect harmony. It is, however, characteristic for the humans of the post-Adamitic age that their love is not originally intact. Human love needs to be healed by the compassionate love of God. Three types of love are distinguished in the works of Augustine, which differ from each other only in the direction of the moving power of the love. They are 1) the love of God for his creation, and in particular for humans, 2) the love of humans for God, and 3) the love of a man to his fellow-men. The first love is descending, the second love is ascending, and in the third kind of love both directions are combined. But still, in the combination of the two directions of love, the motivation of the descending love dominates, and the ascending movement of the amor Dei is subordinated.52

49 50

Flasch, p. 128. Flasch, p. 128. 51 De civ. Dei VIII, p. 1. 52 See also: Kuhn, p. 81.

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Compared to the Platonic conception of love, this idea of a descending love of God for his creation is a radically new concept. For the platonic thinker this would be a very strange notion, because love for him is the desire for something, which is lacking. Since God by definition is perfect and therefore lacks nothing, why should he want to love something else? In Augustines theory of God this problem is never mentioned, and obviously he did not think there is a contradiction here. Unlike cosmological love (concept 2b), which is largely blind and serves as a pre-physical principle to explain the coherence of individual particulars, Augustines divine love is proper love (concept 2a). God loves his creation as a father loves his children. Now, since all forms of human love are derived from and subordinated to Gods love, this love has a special status. It is a principle of nature that all love is aimed at the good, but humans also have the moral duty to love the objects of their love in the same way as they are being loved by God. This equally holds for mans love for neighbour as his love for himself. In its true form love is love for the good, such as justice. But love is always accompanied by knowledge, so no true love is possible without knowledge of the form of the object. At the same time true knowledge is not possible without love. This line of thought is clearly circular, but becomes understandable, when knowledge is subordinated under faith. Unfortunately the clarity of knowledge and faith is obscured by the corruption of human nature, which leads the human soul away from its true destination.53 Augustines theory of love which for him is actually caritas or agape54 is essentially connected with his doctrine of divine grace. Due to the grace of God, men are free beings, and are able to choose whether they return the love of God or not. The true object of love is always God, in fact, God is love, and, therefore, he loves himself. This idea, in connection with the idea that man is the image of God, constitutes the fundament of Augustines metaphysics of the trinity. Of the three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the latter mediates

53 54

Kuhn, p. 90. According to Hannah Arendt the three Greek terms of the Greek New Testament Eros, storge and agape correspond with the Latin translations: amor, dilectio and caritas. She also says that Augustine uses these terms rather flexible. Moreover, Augustine frequently uses them synonymously and even emphasizes this repeatedly. Still, he generally, but not consistently, uses amor to designate desire and craving (that is, for love in its largest, least specific sense); dilectio to designate the love of self and neighbor; and caritas to designate the love of God and the highest good (Arendt, p. 38). Still, all three kinds of love are instances of agape / caritas (see also Santas, p. 98).

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between the Father and the Son, and functions as love (caritas). This involves both the love of the Father for his Son as the love of the Son for his Father. According to Augustine, the ascending love for God always has human persons as a subject. Of all his creation, only humans have the innate capacity and desire towards fulfilment, in the sense of becoming one with their creator. The typical characteristics of man are furthermore that he is a thinking being, which has freedom of the will (liberum arbitrium). From these characteristics two aspects of love can be distinguished: 1) the questioning, searching and constantly distressed love (quaestio amoris) and 2) the ordered, but in its order threatened, love (ordo amoris).55 The quaestio amoris is an innate desire for God, which is initially not recognized as such by the mortal individual. Usually our view is too much obscured by earthly matters. The path towards God is something we must find first, since we are largely ignorant of the true nature of this love. To seek the love of God is not only the morally proper thing to do56, it is also the most natural and necessary. The restlessness of our heart, which consists of a mixture of ignorance and knowledge, drives us to our quest for divine love. As an ascending movement this quest passes through three stages, which are the outer world here on earth, the inner world of the soul, and finally the transcending of the world into the realm of the divine. In the first stage, man seeks to find the object of love in nature: the earth, the sea, the air and fire, but then realizes he can never find it here. In a second attempt, he turns to himself and starts searching in his own soul (animus, memoria). But soon he must concede that love cannot be found here either. The third way for man to search for love is to transcend his own internal life, for only over me (supra me) God can be found.57 But now the searching man is captured by a difficulty, since it is unclear where he must look for his object of love. It is not simply an over that can be determined in space. It is a completely different realm, which cannot be grasped by our common understanding, but rather requires a special insight. God is not somewhere to be found. He has not turned himself away from man, but on the contrary, man has lost himself and with himself he has lost God. In a decisive moment of reflection, man realizes that he is subjected to a world of temporal

55 56

Kuhn, p. 82. Thou shalt love the Lord, my God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind (Matthew, 22:37) 57 Augustinus, Confessiones, I, 1.

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variability, in which he is unable to grasp the highest truth. Only when he meditates on the eternal realm of unchanging truth he is able to recognize this truth. Then, he perceives the true divine beauty, similar to Platos intuition of the form, and finally understands his originally existing relation to the object of love, which is God.58 Another aspect of ascending love is that it is an ordered love (amor ordinatus), since no ascending is possible without a ladder on which to ascend on. This ladder is related to levels of being, such that all human love is subordinated to the love of God. Human love, namely, is part of the love for the outer world, which is lower than the love for the self (but still higher than the love for material things, such as garments and riches). The love for the self, which is, according to Augustine, the soul (anima), is in turn to be subordinated to the highest love, which should be directed at God himself. According to this order of love, no human being should be loved in the same way as God is to be loved.59 The love of neighbour as a Christian commandment60 is derived from the love (caritas) of God,61 which the believer embraces, as well as from the resulting new attitude toward his own self. If man recognises himself as a part of Gods creation, not only this God is loved, but man will also love himself as a part of the created nature, together with the other created nature, for being related to the same origin. The love for the self and for neighbour, therefore, goes hand in hand, since they are both, as humans, the image of God. To be more precise, the love of neighbor is a form of affection or sentiment (affectio) towards the other, which penetrates and shapes the natural love relations, such as between friends, parents and children, brothers and sisters, and the citizens of a state or nation.62 Through the love of neighbour, love of God can be expressed. It has a strong moral bearing and is essentially connected with the agape of the New Testament.63 The dilectio of the self and neighbour is, thus, a combination of an ascending and descending love, which is not a direct love relation between two human persons, but an indirect one through the love of God. At the same time the concepts of platonic love between friends (philia) and desire or sexual attraction (eros) do not seem to be appropriate to cover the
Kuhn, p. 84. Kuhn, p. 92. 60 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus, 19:18; Matthew, 22:39; and Mark, 12:31); . 61 See also: Arendt, p. 3; Kuhn, p. 86. 62 Kuhn, p. 86. 63 Kuhn, p. 87.
59 58

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meaning of dilectio. Also cupiditas, as the love of things one can lose against ones will, is criticized by Augustine as more hostile to a good will capable of freedom than anything else. 64 In fact, cupiditas is nothing else than a desire (libido) for mortal things. Freedom in this context means nothing else but self-sufficiency, which is reached only through the love of God. So to summarize, the explicandum of the Augustinian attempt to explicate love was the Latin term caritas, which may be translated as divine love, i.e. the love of God for his creation (concept 3b). He also speaks about cupiditas, which is the sexually motivated love of an individual man for created objects in this world (concept 5a or 4b), but rejects this notion for being vulgar. Inter-human love (concept 4a) is still possible, but only when a detour is made over the love of God. For this reason individual creatures can be loved indirectly only, and out of a moral obligation towards God. Generally speaking, one can say that Augustine fails to develop a satisfying concept of (romantic) love. He does make love the centre of his ethical theory, 65 which seems to be a very high valuation, but emphasizes the epistemological character of love too much. According to Augustine an object can only be fully known, when it is fully loved.66 Love, then, is reduced to a form of knowledge, and appears to be too narrow to cover instances of love we identified in the analysis of love. The special character of love emotions, which phenomenologically strikes us as a strange and overwhelming force, is not considered in its own right, but from an intellectual and ethical perspective only. Of the sexual expression of human love Augustine speaks at best with disdain, but usually with outright disgust. Obviously, his theory is more concentrated on how to control love emotions than to explain their nature. Love between human persons is accepted, but only when it is purely intellectual at a subordinated level under the love for God. Moreover, Augustines love is something purely of the soul; the body only counts as a hindrance to acquiring true love. On hearing the objection that if his theory were to be put into practice, mankind would go extinct, Augustine cried out: Oh, if only all men wanted this!67 a statement that was as remarkable then as it is today. Another limitation of Augustines

64 65

Arendt, p. 20. Flasch, p. 138. 66 See also Flasch, p. 135. 67 Flasch, p. 135.

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concept of love is that only the love for God is a purpose in itself; all love for other people including the love for oneself is only regarded as a means to this end. This view entails not only that the meaning of human life and love is reduced to an instrument for the higher purpose of the love for God, but also that it fails to recognise our common experience of other people as persons with an end in themselves and not as things only instrumental to Gods plan. So in making humans instruments of the love for God, a fundamental distance is created in the relation of man to others and to himself as a person. We are only allowed to love people insofar as this love is related to the eternal grace of God. The Augustinian concept of love has nothing to do with personal care or valuation of persons. And that is part of what makes it so difficult to translate this concept into the informal description. The common desire (appetitus) for something cannot count as love, since it is not in any way related to the ascending nature of the love for God. In the same way the love for a created thing for its own sake (cupiditas) is wrong. This means that sexual love is simply disregarded as something vulgar and unworthy. It is completely left out of the considerations of Augustines moral concept of love, and condemned as a source of evil. This way he was insufficiently able to explicate the whole concept of love, but rather focused on one and disqualified the other, thereby violating our common-sense conception of sexual love as an evident example of love, no matter whether it is morally good or bad. Nonetheless, Augustines theory about sexual, moral and Christian ethics was extremely influential for more than one thousand years and for a large part still dominates Western views on marriage, sexuality and homosexuality today. As to the criterion of precision, we may say that Augustine does not pay much attention to syntactic and semantic determinateness. Obviously, though implicitly, he identifies love as a dyadic relation, but does not emphasize the non-symmetrical, nontransitive and non-reflexive character of love relations. On the contrary, Augustine thinks that the right kind of love is necessarily transitory over the love of God. This means that man is only able to love another mortal creature if he loves God first. So if a person A loves God, and God loves person B, then person A must love person B. This is clearly at odds with the formal characteristics established in Chapter 1. With respect to the criterion of simplicity, the major role of Augustinian metaphysics and theology in his concept of love should be addressed. If we are to accept Augustines explication, the notion of a the-

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istic interpretation of God as the creator of heaven and earth, the initiator of miracles and the final purpose of our very existence, must be accepted. Moreover, in this world view are included the beliefs in an immortal soul and the primacy of the spiritual over the physical.

3.3 Modern philosophy: Freud The reason I chose Sigmund Freud as the third milestone in the history of the concept of love is that he was a great innovator and a revolutionary in the study of love. Freud managed to deliver a modern theory and method to interpret and analyze our most common experiences with love. Moreover, he was the first one to approach the study of love scientifically, to probe its mysteries and explain its irrationalities. Using his new theory of the mind focusing on the psychosexual development of the child, and relying on data from his patients revealed by the methods of psychoanalysis, he tried to locate the origins of love in the early experiences of the individual. Yet Freudian psychoanalysis is not a simple scientific claim. It is rather a labyrinth of mutually implicative insights. There is, however, a distinct metaphysical framework in Freuds thought, that seems to be a combination of modern scientific, and ancient mythic elements. He conceived the world as a dynamic system of material mass-energy units, which move and interact due to mechanical forces, so no teleology is involved in Freuds worldview.68 All desire and need pushes us in a certain direction, of which the destination is unknown. The outcome of our actions is not consciously and carefully considered before we act, but undertaken action is the result of previously determined factors. Freuds initial model of the mind is mechanistic, but because of its limited possibilities for explaining the internal dynamics of human personality, let alone of complex relations among persons, he adopted the organism as his basic model. This model allows for development, something which is typical for all life on this planet. Consequently, any biological or psychological explanation is typically genetic; to explain a mans behaviour by tracing it back to its roots. With respect to the so-called mental concepts Freud pre-

68

This, however, is Freuds official claim. As Morgan points out, Freud felt compelled to talk in terms of teleology again and again. Certainly when Freud is engaged in biological discussions, he finds it hard to avoid a teleological way of thinking (Morgan, p. 170).

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sumes that they can be translated into physical concepts. Thus, he thinks that somatic characterizations are primary, while psychic ones are derivative and theoretically reducible to somatic disturbances in the bio-chemical household of the body. The challange was, however, that Freud met patients whose physical findings were completely negative, yet who suffered hysterical tics and coughs. He realized that these patients needed help, without denying the ultimate importance of physiology. By using model-analogies, Freud could help his patients to gain insight into the causes of their present psychological state, and in some cases this relieved some intolerable symptoms. The language he uses is hardly scientific. Concepts such as instinct (Trieb), inhibition (Hemmung), ego (Ich) and repression (Verdrngung) cannot be translated into any equivalent anatomical or physiological terms.69 Freud wanted to construct a unified concept of love, that is, a concept in which familial love, friendship, sexual love and Christian love were all parts of the same whole.70 The basis for such a concept was found in the idea of sexuality. Freuds account of love is fundamentally grounded in the idea that sexuality underlies all other expressions of love. This notion can be referred to as the sexual reduction. Basically, this means that the fundaments of love are deeply hidden in affections of much older sexual impulses, which determine the love choices we make at puberty and adulthood. These later love choices are modelled after these original sexual experiences in infancy and childhood, usually within the family circle. Freuds theory of sexuality is most clearly expressed in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). In this work Freud tried to reconstruct the infantile factor in human sexuality by analyzing sexual perversions, such as fetishism, homosexuality, sadism and masochism. He starts with what he regarded as the dominant view of sexuality. A view that he thought was full of errors and inaccuracies. According to this popular opinion, the sexual instinct is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in at the time of puberty. The supposed object of the sexual instinct is a person of the op-

69

The common complaint is that Freuds key terms are of a metaphysical nature and can never hope for confirmation. At the same time no one can prove they are false because, however the facts turn out in a given case, there is always a Freudian explanation. 70 See also Santas, p. 98.

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posite sex and the aim is sexual union.71 Freud decides to radically break with this tradition. He begins his criticism by drawing a distinction between the object and the aim of the sexual instinct. The sexual object is the concrete individual person, which is sexually attractive to someone; the sexual aim (libido) is the act towards which the instinct tends.72 For Freud there is no innate connection between the sexual aim and any object. They are merely soldered together. So, contrary to the popular view, Freud thinks that humans desire to find an object that fits the sexual aim and, depending on the degree of correspondence, is more or less suitable for sexual gratification. During his study on sexual deviations with respect to the sexual aim, Freud noticed that even in most normal sexual processes, other activities are also involved, such as touching, kissing and looking. These activities are pleasurable in themselves and intensify the excitation of the mere union of genitals. Under certain conditions these other activities and areas of the body the erogenous zones can take over the main sexual aim in so-called perversions. Perversions are sexual activities that either extend beyond the genital regions, or linger the sexual union, the aim of which is, normally, intended to be reached as soon as possible.73 Freud draws two major conclusions from his discussion of the perversions. First of all, the sexual instinct has to struggle against certain mental forces which act as resistances, such as cultural and ethical ideals, shame, and disgust. This results in a repression of the sexual aim.74 Second, the sexual aim is not a simple thing but rather a composite of several elements, including, for instance, the touching and kissing of, and looking at the different erogenous zones of the body. This points out a second error in the popular view of sexuality, namely that the sexual instinct does not have just one aim that sexual is not the same as genital.75 According to Freud, the third error of the popular view of the sexual instinct is that it is supposed to be absent in childhood, and first set in at the advent of puberty. Freud argued, on the contrary, that the sexual manifestations at puberty are only the second phase in the development of the sexual instinct. The first phase occurs already in infancy and childhood, followed by a period of latency. In addition to this, the particular shape that sexual life takes at puberty and
71 72

Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 135. Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 136. 73 Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 150. 74 Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, SE: Volume VII, p. 162.

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beyond is determined largely by the particular forms of sexual manifestation in those earlier years. Consequently, to understand the love life of adults we must trace back and identify the main phases and forms of psychosexual development from infancy on. A unique feature of the development of the sexual instinct is that it is diphastic, it has two phases of development, interrupted by the period of latency. First there is the period of infancy (1-3 years) and childhood (3-5 years), and second, after a period of latency, puberty sets in.76 In the period of infancy there are two groups of instincts: those that are directed at the preservation of his organism (ego-preservative instincts), and those that will, after inevitably anxious transformations, become genitally sexual (anaclitic instincts). The former becomes manifest in the infants dependence on his mother for nourishment. Sucking its mothers breast is the infants first act of love. But the infants sexual needs demand gratification as well. Since no individual object of love is at hand, the babys sexual needs are leaned-against his ego-preservative needs, and this is what Freud calls anaclitic needs. These anaclitic needs are the genetic root for love. They are not of a passionate-possessive nature, but rather affectionate and quiet-intimate. The baby does not seek to overpower this nursing mother, but rather welcomes and responds to the embracing comfort she offers.77 A closely linked phenomenon is what Freud calls narcissism. Here the motivating force of the ego-preservative instincts themselves is explained dynamically in terms of a reflection of the anaclitic love for the mother towards the self (the object I love is good, therefore I am good). What we call adult love is always a function of these two basic tendencies: taking ones self as a love-object (narcissism) and attaching ones self (anaclitically) to another person, who is prototypically the mother.78 In this first phase of development, the construction of the self79 or ego (Ich), is in full progress. Newly born babies do not have an ego yet. It emerges as a result of certain situations later on, in

75 76

See also: Santas, p. 102. Santas, p. 106. 77 Morgan, p. 138. 78 Morgan, p. 139. 79 In his Introduction to The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud sometimes uses ego to refer to a persons self as a whole (the self concept) and sometimes to a particular part of the mind characterized by special attributes and functions (the agency concept) (see also: Meyer, J., and Bauer, B., Ego Psychology in: Erwin, Edward (ed.), The Freud Encyclopedia. Theory, Therapy and Culture. New York and London: 2002, Routledge, p. 169).

30

which some mental conflict needs to be resolved. The ego then becomes the executive organ of the mind. It negotiates the demands of the outside world as well as the demands of the inside mental agencies: the id (Es) and the superego (ber-ich). Both the ego and the id attempt to satisfy the individuals needs, but their methods of going about are radically different. The id insists on immediate gratification without regard to the consequences or steps necessary to achieve it, whereas the egos task is to mediate in such matters in order to make the original wish or a substitute gratification possible. Similarly, the superego insists on total and immediate compliance with its usually moral demands, and it does so without regard to any mitigating circumstances and without concern about the costs or the consequences of its requirements. The ego facilitates, transforms, or deflects those demands. It does so by taking into account the very factors that the superego ignores, and then balances and counterbalances the instincts using sublimation, neutralization and drive-fusion.80 In the first phase of development there are several stages: the oral, the anal, the phallic, and the genital. The phallic stage is the most important for Freuds theory of love. It is marked by the first real experience of love, but still shares the characteristics of infantile sexuality, since it is dominated by a new erogenous zone: the genitals. Now the Oedipus Complex becomes relevant. Essentially, it means that the child shows exclusive attachment to the parent of the opposite sex, whilst jealousy and resentment for the parent of the same sex, which is considered to be a rival. In addition, the behaviour of the child toward his parents, or brothers and sisters, is unmistakably erotic or sexual. However, at a certain point of psycho-sexual development, the incest barrier intervenes, which results in psychical repression. This leads to the childs withdrawing from its knowledge and awareness of a part of its sexual aims: the sexual union with the parent of the opposite sex. The sexual instinct becomes inhibited in its aim and turns into affectionate or tender feelings. Later on, these feelings can become a component of normal love in the sense that they are directed to new non-incestuous objects. At puberty, Freud says, the sexual instinct develops into full strength, as the old familiar incestuous objects are taken up again and fuelled with libido. Now the adolescent is subject to very intense emotional

80

See also: Lasky, R. Ego in: Erwin, Edward (ed.), The Freud Encyclopedia. Theory, Therapy and Culture. New York and London: 2002, Routledge, p. 168.

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processes, since he realizes that the parent of the opposite sex cannot serve as an object of libido. Due to the intolerable content of the Oedipus complex, his anti-reaction remains inhibited in the sub-consciousness. From this time onwards the human individual has to detach himself from his parent, and redirect his libido to an outside love-object.81 As we have seen, the central thesis of Freuds theory of love is that all love is sexual in its origin. But this statement must be put into perspective. Love for Freud is not simply identical with the desire for sexual intercourse. Psychoanalysis extended and deepened our common understanding of sexuality, and placed love relationships within a creative-sexual context of the libido. Freud says that all love naturally consists in sexual love with sexual union as its aim.82 Love in its focal meaning is indeed sexual love (with sexual union as its aim) but in its broader meaning it also refers to self-love, familial love, friendship, charity, and love for non-human concrete or abstract things.83 Freuds justification of this claim lies in the fact that observation showed us that sexual impulses are sometimes inhibited in their aim and are redirected toward a socially acceptable alternative.84 In the light of this explanation, it becomes clear why Freuds claim should not be seriously problematic. The word sexuality means for him nothing more than just the very broad concept of love, which is not far removed from that of desire. Then, it becomes notably less shocking to say of an infant that it needs milk and desires its mothers presence, than to speak of a baby as sexual. But still, Freud meant quite clearly that infants have desires out of which will develop their later, explicitly sexual desires, and that the psychical problems they will later face, whether obviously sexual or not, will always be traceable back to childhood states and events. Empirical proof for this thesis was found in the omnipresent, but, due to an extraordinary feat of self-deception, ignored experience of babies exploring their genital organs with evident joy, and the fact that babies love to look at naked people. Between the desires of children and their subsequent adult

81 82

Idem, p. 336. Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 90. 83 See also: Santas, p. 117. 84 Freud literally says: psycho-analytic research has taught us that all these tendencies are of the same instinctual impulses; in relations between the sexes these impulses force their way towards sexual union, but in other circumstances they are diverted from this aim or are prevented from reaching it, though always preserving enough of their original nature to keep their identity recognisable (as in such features as the longing for proximity, and self-sacrifice (Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 91).

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needs lie redirections and refocusing, but not sharp breaks. Apart from Freuds claim that love is sexual in its origin, two more claims are made concerning the concept of love. First, that language has carried out an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating the word love (Liebe) with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do better than take it as the basis of our scientific discussions and expositions as well.85 The piece of unification that the German language carried out is paralleled in the English language. In both languages the terms Liebe and love cover sexual love, as well as self-love, love for parents and children, friendship, love for humanity in general, and love for concrete objects and abstract ideas. So psycho-analysis adopts this wide linguistic use and provides a genetic explanation of it86. Second, Platos concept of Eros coincides in important respects with the libido, the love-force of psychoanalysis. Now I focus on the two main characteristics of love: the exclusive attachment (Anhnglichkeit) and overvaluation (berschtzung). These characteristics remain fairly constant throughout Freuds writings. By exclusive attachment Freud means a libidinal object choice of a single object, usually a person, with a view to sexual gratification.87 What makes this attachment exclusive is that the amans is fully absorbed in the interests of the amandum, and becomes jealous. What is important for us, however, is that this attachment may be only sensual, or only affectionate, or both. Attachment, which is only sensual, is nothing else than object-fixation on the part of the sexual instincts with a view to direct sexual gratification. This fixation expires when its aim has been reached, and this is what we call common, sexual love.88 But what happens very often is that a revival of the expired need occurs, which forms a first motive to direct a lasting fixation on the sexual object and for loving it in the passionless intervals as well. However, whether lasting or not, this is only sensual or earthly love. When tender feelings of affection and care are also attached to the same object, a full-blown case of being in love comes into being. Freud calls this combination of both sensual and affectionate feelings normal love.89 When, however, the two currents of feelings are not united on the same object and the attachment is only on the tender and affectionate feelings, we have a case of love
85

Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, pp 90-91. See also: Santas, p 119. 87 Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), SE: Volume VII, p 199. 88 Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p 111.
86

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referred to in art and literature. Freud calls this heavenly love.90 This kind of love is also found in the case of psychically conditioned impotence that occurs in men, who show a sentimental enthusiasm for women whom they deeply respect, but who do not excite them to sexual activities. He will only be potent with other women whom he does not love in this way and thinks little of or even despises. In such tragic cases, where sensual and affectionate love does not coincide in the same object, true love cannot blossom. To be in love with an adult initially means for a person to lose some of our narcissistic self-regard and, consequently, to lower himself in his own estimation. This can be psychologically justified by the hope of becoming an object of the love of another person, through which our self-regard is restored. In genuinely happy adult love, as in the primal state, object-libido and ego-libido coincide.91 The second characteristic of love is overvaluation or overestimation (berschtzung). Overvaluation consists in valuing the characteristics of the loved object more than those of people who are not loved, or in valuing them more than at a time when the object was not loved. It also results in an unusual credulity, as we view the amandum as an authority. This means that we blind ourselves to the faults and weaknesses of the amandum, and idealise it, sometimes to a dangerous exaggeration of reality.92 But now I come to discuss Freuds account of a persons object choice. Why do we fall in love with certain people and not with others, which are equally or even more beautiful and good? As we have seen in the discussion on Freuds theory of sexuality, the first choice of amandum occurs during the phallic stage when the child comes under the Oedipus complex and is confronted with the incest barrier. Typically, the first love-object of the child is the parent of the opposite sex or a parent substitute, such as a brother or sister. The prohibition of such a love relationship results in the repression of the incestuous sexual aims, which become inhibited. In puberty, however, the powerful current of
89 90

Idem, pp 112-113. Freud, Sigmund, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and other Works (1910), SE: Volume XI, p. 183; and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 112. The parallels with the love theory in Platos Symposium, where Pausanias distinguishes between Eros Pandemos and Eros Uranios are evident here, although Freud does not express this explicitly. 91 Freud, Sigmund, On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914), Standard Edition: Volume XIV, pp. 98-100. 92 Freud, Sigmund, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), SE: Volume XVIII, p. 91, 113. Freud also mentions several other features of love, such as the longing for proximity and self-sacrifice, traits of humility, of the limitation of narcissism, and of self-injury which, he tells us, occur in every case of being in love.

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the libido can no longer be disguised, and must find a way in which it can be satisfied. Due to the obstacle of the incest barrier, the new love-objects are chosen in the world outside the close family. But, according to Freud, these new objects are still chosen after the pattern (image) of the infantile ones.93 Thus, the new love-objects are, as Freud puts it, mother surrogates or father surrogates: they bear similarities to the actual father or mother. These characteristics may be obvious physical ones, or role-similarities: the older, caring type of woman or the father type of man who protects. Freud believes that for men there are four conditions that characterize the choice of amandum: 1) Apart from the amans and the amandum, there should be an injured third party; 2) the amandum should be more or less sexually discredited and its fidelity and loyalty should admit of some doubt. According to Freud, this condition could be called that of the love for a harlot94; 3) the amans passionately attaches itself time after time to different amanda of this harlot type, without actually finding satisfaction that lasts; and 4) the amans is convinced that the amandum actually needs the amans in order to be saved from a complete loss of respectability and for a rapid and otherwise unavoidable sink to a deplorable level.95 These conditions make sense when viewed in the light of Freuds Oedipus complex. The injured third party here is none other than the father himself, which is seen as a rival and must be overcome. The condition of the amandum being sexually discredited, is less obvious, since the loose character of the chosen playmate, seems to contradict with the grown mans conscious image of his mother as a personification of impeccable moral purity: a kind of Madonna. But while in the conscious mind Madonna and harlot are contraries, in the unconscious they are a united whole. According to Freud, this phenomenon can be traced back to the childs accidental witnessing of parental intercourse, which is interpreted as an indulging in forbidden acts of the mother with another man (the father). The high value placed on women of low character is unconsciously associated with this infidelity of the mother, but consciously, the mother is still unique and irreplaceable. Consequently, the satisfaction that is sought is never found in the endless series of love-affairs with harlots. Finally, the element of the rescue is also a de-

Freud, Sigmund, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and other Works (1910), SE: Volume XI, p. 181. 94 Freud, Sigmund, A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men (1910), SE: Volume XI, p. 166. 95 Idem, p. 168.

93

35

rivative of the mother-complex. It originates from a feeling of guilt of the man towards his mother, because she gave life to him and took care of him. He now wants to repay his dept by saving his surrogate mother and to beget a child with her.96 So to conclude this section: for Freud, the explicandum was the broad concept of love (Liebe), including sexual as well as non-sexual love. Taking seriously the linguistic indication that there is indeed such a unity in the concept of love he wanted to find one common origin for all kinds of love. A strong point of Freuds explication is, therefore, that he immediately directs his focus on inter-human love (concept 4a). He never deals with or refers to other concepts of love, which are unrelated to human love. Freud does refer to sexual love which is directed at non-animate objects (concept 4b), which he calls fetishism, but reduces this to a mere substitute of the normal aim of genital union. In effect, Freud denies that there is a genuine difference between sexual (concept 5a) and non-sexual (concept 5b) human love, which need not be a problem, but rather provides an important insight into the nature of love as such. A minus of Freuds concept of love is that it radically violates our common-sense conception that sexual love is something very different from familial love and friendship. Associating young children explicitly with sexuality was, in the time of Freud, and is still today, one of the greatest taboos. For this reason Freud was repeatedly urged by his friends not to use the word sexuality in talking about infantile love, but he consistently refused, on the grounds that sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, and that a scientist should be courageous.97 Freud seems to be not so much concerned with establishing the formal characteristics of love. As in the case of Augustine he implicitly assumes that love is a dyadic relation, but nowhere mentions the formal characteristics of being non-symmetric, nontransitive and non-reflexive. An interesting feature of Freuds concept of love is that according to his theory of narcissism, the love for an outside object is always unconsciously accompanied by the hope of being loved in return, in order to strengthen the self-love of the subject. Love, from this perspective, is therefore always egoistic and narcissistic in nature. This means formally that love relations are reflexive, since if A loves B, then A must also love itself. Concerning fecundity, Freud succeeds remarkably well in giv-

96 97

See also Santas, p. 126. See also Morgan, p. 137.

36

ing a non-trivial and coherent account of the whole concept of love. In making all love sexual in origin, he can guarantee the fundamental unity of the concept of love. Another aspect is that Freuds account of love and sexuality was very novel and, at the same time, evoked a true paradigm change with respect to the general perception of love and sexuality. Before Freud, sexuality had hardly been a serious topic for scientists to be concerned with. Due to his new approach, which naturally had to deal with fierce opposition from the public on moral grounds, the door was opened to a whole new field for scientific research. One glance at the vast amount of literature that is inspired by Freuds theory of psychoanalysis shows that his theory has indeed been fruitful. With respect to simplicity we must, however, admit that Freuds worldview and conceptual tools do not always meet the requirements of Freuds own scientific ideals. He deliberately reintroduced mythical language and model-analogies into his psychoanalytic theory. This makes his theory quite obviously speculative and immune to scientific refutation. Officially renounced by science, Freud realised that he would never be able to explain neurological deviations and sexual perversions without the use of metaphorical language and analogies. He was, however, applying his non-scientific terminology in a scientific sense, because he was willing to give up certain hypotheses if they would prove to be non-sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. This way he abandoned several of his earlier hypotheses.

4. Comparative evaluation After having discussed Platos, St. Augustines and Freuds concepts of love individually we now proceed to the comparative evaluation, in which several aspects of the three concepts are contrasted. In Figure 2 the metaphysical models of each of the reconstructed concepts of love are visualized. The arrows represent the different directions of the love from an amans towards an amandum. Each of the models shall now be discussed.

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3) 2)

pure form 1) soul

God 2) amans 3) 0) human being

amandum (aim): Madonna harlot amandum (object): person x person y

1) word language body amans [Plato]

amans:

Superego Ego Id [Freud]

[Augustine]

Figure 2: the metaphysical models of love.

According to Plato, the first stage of love (1) the love of the amans is primarily directed toward the beautiful words, language and body of the amandum. A higher kind of love (2) develops out of this primary erotic attraction, when the pure form of the beauty is recognised in the soul of this person, through his body, words and language. The highest kind of love (3) is achieved when the amans recognises in the amandum the pure form of beauty, without being specifically related to any individual body or soul. Correspondingly, the lower type of love aims at procreating beautiful children in the physical sense, whereas the higher type of love intends to procreate beautiful ideas, such as laws, inventions or noble deeds. The third type of love aims at achieving complete immortality and happiness. An important aspect of this higher type of love is that it only seems to be possible in a homosexual love-relationship. From a genetic point of view it is relevant to note that the stages 1 and 2 are necessary steps in the development toward the love for the pure form of beauty (3), which means that even in the highest state of love its erotic origin is recognized. Augustine conceptualizes a similar ladder of love, but in his expurgated version there is no trace of sexual love as the first step in the direction of the highest love. The direct relation between a human subject and its earthly object (0), is renounced as vulgar and evil, and cannot even be properly called love. One should not direct his love toward the low things of the earth, but to the divine and eternal God in the heavens. The metaphorical up-down language must be taken very literally here, as Gods love for his creation (1) is descending, mans love for God (2) ascending, and the

38

indirect love for neighbour a combination of the two. In Freuds psychosexual developmental theory of ego, superego and id, no such intellectual development as in the previous two concepts is envisaged. There is, for Freud, no higher love which ultimately moves away from the desire toward sexual union. Instead, the gratification through sexual union is a necessary, though not sufficient condition to achieve normal love. For such a perfect love to be possible the individual has to overcome the incest-barrier that prevents him from identifying the the aim of the harlot archetype of the sexually attractive, but debased woman, with that of the Madonna archetype, which reflects the mother as a source of tender affections and the reference point of moral impeccability and respectability. With respect to sexuality, Plato saw Eros as a powerful motivating force capable of inspiring humans to the greatest achievements in art, science and philosophy. Augustine downgraded erotic love, but elevated love of God into the leading principle in the life of virtue and the way to salvation, thus connecting the study of love inevitably with the study of ethics. In his theory of sublimation, Freud takes a similar view as Plato, when he regards sexual love as providing our most intensive experience of pleasure and a pattern in our search for happiness. All three authors would agree on the claim that we cannot develop properly as human beings and be happy, without the presence of some kind of love. But what exactly this love entails is, for each author, very different. When a comparative judgment is made we must conclude that Plato does very well in focusing on instances of love people are commonly interested in: inter-human love. Despite his metaphysics Plato is able to generate a profound insight in the nature of love with all its causes and effects. Augustine, on the contrary, fundamentally lacks this advantage, since he subordinates all inter-human love to divine love. It is therefore not surprising that he is not able to arrive at a special insight concerning the problematic relation between sexual and non-sexual love. Even when condemning sex for pleasure, Augustine should have given a better explanation of it. Freud, however, reopened the theoretical investigation concerning the relationship between love and sexuality and radically breaks with social, cultural and scientific conventions preventing this debate. His theory about the psychosexual development of the infant and the Oedipal Complex which consequently sets in, is a refreshing widening of the too narrow boundaries set by the Christian world view on

39

sexuality and love. It must be granted to Freud that his concept explication was more successful than Augustines, although he also borrowed some aspects of Platos philosophy. However, where Platos concept of love brought us to the heavens, Freud managed to bring it back to our earthly proportions. He gave a comprehensive account of the issue as to how sexual and non-sexual love are related and how reconciliation between them is possible, without presupposing Platos theory of forms. Instead, Freud is able to explain the origins, development and consequent aims of love in his much more empirically oriented theory of psychosexual development.

Conclusions In the Introduction six research questions were formulated of which the first two have been answered in Chapters 1 and 2, which thematized the formal and semantic analysis of the concept of love. As an answer to the first question: what is the formal structure of love? we found that love is a dyadic relation, which has two possible and necessary epistemological aspects, which is non-symmetrical, non-transitive, and non-reflexive. With respect to the second question: what sorts of things can love and what sorts can be loved?, a definition tree was designed that systematically cuts up the concept of love by making distinctions concerning the nature of the subject and the object of love respectively. This way it was possible to differentiate between several kinds of love and, at the same time, to allow for the various related concepts to be subsumed under more general concepts. In this semantic analysis, it was also established that the main focus should be on the kind of love relation between two human beings, without ruling out the possibility of a human loving a non-human object or even a personal God to love a human being. The third research question included two aspects concerning the causality in the concept of love. First, the problem of what the causes of love are, can be defined as the question of why we choose to love person x and not person y, although the latter may have admittedly better qualities. Augustine tells us nothing about the cause or reason why we love a certain person, other than that it is a low inclination to the flesh. The cause of Gods love for human beings is that he loves his creation as a father loves his children. Conversely, we naturally love our father in heaven, and have a moral obliga-

40

tion to do so. Platos account is definitely more informative on this point, since he claims that it is due to the fact that we see the pure form of the beauty become manifest in a human body or in a persons words. Freud has a comparable explanation in the sense that he thinks we are attracted to a certain person, because he or she reminds us of our first love, which is usually the parent of the opposite sex. Santas98 thinks a parallel can be found between Plato and Freud, in the fact that they both discriminate between the aim and the object of sexual love. For Plato the lovers aim would be the form of the beauty and through its experience the achievement of complete happiness, whereas the object would be the individual boy in which beauty becomes manifest. In Freuds theory of love the aim is to return to the sensual gratification the lover experienced as an infant when his mother nurtured him. In the standard Oedipal situation the lover seeks an object that resembles the characteristics of the image of the parent of the opposite sex. These characteristics may be obviously physical ones, or role-similarities. In any case the aim is not to be found in some higher abstract realm of entities, but in the developmental experiences of childhood. I deem Platos and Freuds account of a distinction between the aim and the object to be insightful, because it corresponds with our experience of love. Secondly, with respect to the question what are the effects of love?, we can say that for Plato the effects are very clear: love can drive us to madness, but it can also bring perfect happiness. Love is a demon with a double nature: on the one hand, the lover is overflowing with love and may be called rich, on the other, he is always in need of something, and, hence, is poor. Whenever the object of love is obtained, the lover is not completely happy, but always afraid to lose it in the future and, thus, by feelings of jealousy disturbed in his happiness. This double nature is what makes Eros so difficult to understand. In its effects, Plato distinguishes two aspects. One is the physical procreation of children, and the second the psychic procreation of beautiful laws, inventions and moral actions. For Augustine the effects of love are that we finally come to knowledge of Gods divine grace, and can be truly happy. The effect of sexual love is devastating for our souls well-being, because it draws us only further into the earthly sphere, and does not contribute in any way to immortality. Freud thinks we can attain a normal, healthy and happy love life by combining the tender feelings of affection (associated with the con98

Santas, p. 31.

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scious image of the mother and idealized as a Madonna) with the explicitly erotic love for the harlot, the unconscious interpretation of the unfaithful mother. The difference between Plato and Freud seems to be that for Plato the highest form of love is to love the pure form of the beauty, and to become insensitive to erotic seductions, whereas for Freud the combination of these two is unproblematic. Of course, instead of the pure Form of Beauty, the infants experience of the affectionate tenderness and safety with the mother must be read in the case of Freud. The fourth question was referred to as the hard problem of love, since it seeks to find out what the complex relation is between sexual and non-sexual love. Plato presumes such a unity, but focuses his explication on sexual love, since for him it seems to be a more powerful motivator for action. He thinks that philia and agape are more settled forms of Eros, which can be adequately defined as derivative forms of affection, which remain after the storm of Eros has passed by. Augustine thinks there is no relation at all between sexual and non-sexual love, since sexual love cannot properly be called love. Freud has a similar account to that of Plato, but emphasises the point more strongly that all love is sexual in its origin. The sexual reduction of love in Freuds philosophy is by far the most controversial aspect of his theory of love, because it seems to contradict our non-sexual experience of familial love and friendship. On the other hand is it exactly this point that solves the problem of the relation between sexual and non-sexual love, by making them all sexual in origin. The relation between love and philosophy (the fifth research question) is particularly present in both Plato and Augustine. Freud on the other hand nowhere connects the two, maybe because he considered himself to be a scientist rather than a philosopher. He may have referred to philosophy as an intellectual inhibition of libido. For Plato the connection between love and philosophy is obvious, since this is exactly the meaning of the word philosophos: a friend or lover of wisdom. Eros is not a mortal creature, but he is also no God. In the Symposium Plato lets the character Diotima say that Eros is a demon: something in between the mortal and immortal with the ability to mediate messages between the divine and the earthly. And here there is an obvious parallel between Eros and the philosopher, since the latter is considered to be able to grasp divine knowledge and

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pass it on to human beings.99 For Augustine the true lover of God is also a true philosopher, since due to his intellectualistic interpretation of love, caritas coincides with the philosophical desire for knowledge. Good lovers are good philosophers, according to Augustine, as long as they choose the appropriate object of love. And finally, the question of whether there is something like true love, and if so, how we can achieve it, is answered by all three philosophers. Although Plato doesnt say it in this way, true love for him is the love for the soul of a person in which beauty and goodness is recognised. Love that has merely sexual union as its aim is only the first small step on the ascending ladder of love. Eventually, this stage must be surmounted, for the true purpose of the human soul is to realize his pure love for the form. For Augustine true love is identical with true knowledge of God and is achieved, in any case, by radically changing the aim of love. In God, true knowledge, true love and true happiness coincide. No love for earthly things can bring us closer to God; only the direct way will suffice, which is obtained by profound meditation. So for Augustine the meaning of love is identical with the meaning of life itself. Also Freud thinks that living and loving are two necessarily connected things, since his sexual love instinct is identified with life, while the opposite, hate, is the same as the death instinct. To love, we may, therefore, conclude, seems to be essentially connected with a fulfilled and meaningful life. If we are not able to love, we are not able to live meaningfully, so all experts on love claim. Can it be that, indeed, love is the meaning of life?

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Symposium, 202d-203a.

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Freud, Sigmund, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (ed. Strachey, J.), London: 1957, The Hogarth Press. Geyskens, Thomas, Never Remembered: Freuds Construction of Infantile Sexuality. Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (2002). Haring, Bas, De ijzeren wil. Over bewustzijn, het brein en denkende machines. Amsterdam: 2003, Pandora. Janssens, Petrus, Hoofdbegrippen uit de Platoonse dialogen Lusis en Sumposion. Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor in de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht. Maastricht: 1935, Gebrs. van Aelst. Kirk, G., Raven, J., Schofield, M., Die vorsokratischen Philosophen: Einfhrung, Texte und Kommentare, Studiumausgabe. Stuttgart and Weimar: 2001, J.B. Metzler Verlag. Kirwan, Christopher, Augustine [from the series: Honderich, Ted (ed) The Arguments of the Philosophers]. London and New York: 1989, Routledge Publishing. Kuhn, Helmut., Liebe, Geschichte eines Begriffs. Mnchen: 1975, Ksel Verlag. McKirahan, Richard, Presocratic Philosophy in: Shields, Christopher, (ed) The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: 2003, Blackwell Publishing Ltd Morgan, Douglas, Love; Plato, the Bible and Freud. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1964, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Plato, The Symposion. Edited, with introduction, critical notes and commentary by R.G. Bury, Litt. D. Cambridge: 1932, W. Heffer and sons Ltd. Rist, John, Augustine: Ancient thought baptized. Cambridge: 1994, Cambridge University Press. Scholz, Heinrich, Eros und Caritas. Die platonischen Liebe und die Liebe im Sinne des Christentums. Halle (Saale): 1929, Max Niemeyer Verlag. Santas, Gerasimos, Plato and Freud: Two Theories of love. Oxford: 1988, Basil Blackwell Limited. Scofield, C. (ed), Holy Bible. Authorized King James Version. New York, London, Toronto: 1967, Oxford University Press.

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