Love
“Love” is a word that is subjected to such fantastical delusions that reclaiming its right meaning seems a near-impossible task. The word is flung around to mean anything from fetishistic attachment to co-dependency to “loyalty” towards rabid delusions such as gods and countries.
There are some things, however, that we must be able to agree on if we are to come to some reasonable understanding about how to improve the quality of our relationships
.
Love and Objectivity
First of all, love must be a state that has at least some objective qualities. If love is a completely subjective state, then the concept of “quality” does not exist at all – and thus neither does “improvement.”
Furthermore, saying to someone
“I love you” is a meaningless statement if the phrase merely represents purely internal or subjective preferences. We can say “I love jazz,” but jazz is not a conscious entity and can flow from a CD. To proclaim love for another human being, however, is to say that our
internal state is elicited by another person
. In other words, the “you” in “I love you” involves objectivity, since we experience each other through the medium of empirical reality.
If another person elicits our internal state, then some objectivity
must be accepted.
Secondly, we must also accept that the word
“love” represents something other than a merely
chosen
preference. We cannot pick a woman out of a crowd and command ourselves to love her. In other words, love must be somehow related to the actions of another person, and not simply willed. None of us would feel particularly flattered if someone told us they “loved” us while knowing nothing about us.
Thus
“love” must be in its essence a reaction to the objective actions of another human being.
Thirdly, the feelings of affection
that are elicited by the actions of another person cannot be entirely contradictory. My wife cannot tell me that she loves me because I am honest, and that she also loves my brother because he is dishonest. I cannot love a person because of his loyalty, and then claim to love another person equally because of her disloyalty.
Love – Compared to What?
One of the most fundamental questions in philosophy – and psychology – is the question: “Compared to what?” When I say that a proposition is “true,” then I mean that it is true compared to something else – falsehood, or inconsistency with internal logic or empirical validation.
Similarly, when we look at the question of love
, clearly love is an expression of a preference. Naturally, we must then ask, “
A preference – compared to what?
”
If I say that I love
honesty, then clearly I love it compared to dishonesty. If I say that I love virtue, then clearly I love virtue compared to vice or corruption.
Now, since we can only determine the traits of another human being through empirical observation, our experience of
“love” must involve the actions of another (said actions can include words, of course). Just as our conception of “tall” is derived from the objective (i.e. measurable) characteristics of a man – and “tall” is valid relative to the average height of a human male – just so is our experience of “love” derived from the objective characteristics (words and actions) of another human being.
Thus
“love” must be valid relative to an objective and external standard, which we shall work to define shortly.
Internal State, or External Fact?
The question then arises: to what degree is love valid relative to an objective and external standard?
Love cannot be completely and utterly defined by an objective
and external standard, since that would mean that everyone must love the
one person in the world
who most completely conforms to that standard, which would be absurd. If we said that love was valid relative to height, then everyone in the world must love the tallest person, which flies in the face of the obvious variety of personal preferences the world over.
If I say that I like ice cream, then clearly I
prefer
ice cream to other foods that I relatively dislike. This is a largely subjective matter.
On the other hand, if I say that I prefer good health
, then clearly I am expressing a desire for something that can be measured at least to some degree objectively. I cannot reasonably say that I prefer good health, and that I also prefer dying of cancer.
It is also important to differentiate between standards that can be achieved, and standards that cannot be achieved. If I say that I love
good health, and then define “good health” as never getting a cold, sleeping lightly or having a headache, then clearly what I love is unattainable, and my “love” can only be measured relative to varying degrees of disappointment.
Love and Pleasure
It scarcely seems required, but it is worth noting that love
must be considered a pleasurable experience
. This does not mean that love always entails pleasure – any more than physical health means never experiencing any pain at all – but it must be a positive experience in general.
In other words, the positive aspects of
“love” must vastly outweigh the negative aspects, just as the positive aspects of “health” must vastly outweigh the negative aspects, such as eating well and exercising.
A decent rule of thumb is to expect a positive relationship
to be composed of 9/10 good things, to 1/10 bad things.
To put this together, we can say that love
has the following characteristics:
- It has elements of objectivity
.
It is elicited by the behaviour of another person.
It is a favouring of certain characteristics relative to their opposites, or deficiencies thereof.
It is pleasurable.
Love: A Tentative Definition
I’m going to put forward a tentative definition of love
, which conforms to the above requirements. We shall examine this proposition in more detail below.
Love is our involuntary response to virtue.
Science has elements of objectivity, insofar as it relies to some degree on personal inspiration, but must be validated through reason and evidence.
Love also has elements of objectivity
, insofar as it relies to some degree on personal preferences, but must be validated through reason and evidence.
Of course, the idea of
“validating” love offends our sensibilities to some degree, since love is so often considered to be a form of divine madness or inspiration. What, then, is meant by “validating love”?
Well, in the realm of romantic relationships
, we are motivated to a considerable degree by biological attraction, or raw sexual desire. In the same way, we may feel an irrational exuberance of greed when we see an overturned Brinks truck spilling banknotes into the wind. We may even seize some of these banknotes, before shaking our heads and returning our ill-gotten gains.
Philosophy
is required because our instincts can lead us astray, as in the case of eating and certain phobias. We may be sexually attracted to certain characteristics such as large breasts or bald heads, but those desires lie squarely in the realm of animal reproduction, rather than what would properly be called “love.” Teenagers may get a fairly strenuous degree of sexual satisfaction from their hand, but this would scarcely be called love.
The world looks flat, but in truth it is round. Some people are sexually attractive, but that does not mean they are lovable.
Since love has elements of objectivity, the objective elements of love must be tied to universal values, the existence of which I proved in my previous book on Universally Preferable Behaviour.
Again, this does not mean that all love
is identical. The concept of “health” has elements of objectivity, but is also measurable relative to a variety of standards. A “healthy” AIDS patient is quite different from a healthy athlete. The “healthiest” person in a cancer ward is not healthy relative to the majority of people.
In the same way, we can assume that there is one person in the world who is the very best person for you to be with. Does that mean that you could never be happy with anyone else?
Of course not.
As with all disciplines, we have to weigh the pros and cons of perfection versus attainability. There is also only one
“perfect” job in the world for us as well, but we can quite easily starve to death looking for it.
If we look at something like
“honesty” as a behavioural trait that elicits admiration, it is true that everyone has differing degrees of commitment to – and execution of – honesty, but there is still an objective difference between honesty and dishonesty.
If I value honesty
– and I am honest myself – then I will value somebody who is honest 99% of the time more than somebody who is honest 90% of the time. (100% honesty can be considered an unrealistic goal, like 100% health, or being “perfectly reasonable.”)
Naturally, I would prefer to be with someone who is as honest
as possible, but I will likely have to “settle” for the most honest person that I can find. The fact that I am willing to compromise my standards with regards to honesty – partly borne of a reasonable humility regarding my own capacity for honesty – does not mean that I will value a liar. If I am a mathematician, some of my proofs will doubtless fail – but that does not mean that failing to achieve perfect consistency is exactly the same as starting out to commit a fraud.
Love as a Response
If I stand in front of a mirror weighing 300 pounds and smoking my 40
th
cigarette of the morning and say “I am healthy,” have I affected my health in any objective manner?
Of course not. I have merely chosen to say the words
“I am healthy” rather than achieve actual health through consistent actions.
My words have not affected reality
at all. I have merely put the cart before the horse. If I lose weight and quit smoking, I can reasonably stand in front of the mirror and say “I am healthy” (or at least “I am healthier”). My words thus become an accurate identification of an objective state – a state which has
preceded
my words and in a sense
provokes
them.
My words are thus a
response
to my empirical behaviour, measured in objective terms (weight loss, smoking cessation).
Similarly, if I stand in front of you and say
“I love you,” this statement only has validity if it is a
response
to your behaviour. I can stand in front of the most evil and hateful human being on the planet and also say the words “I love you,” but my preference does not make that person any more lovable – any more than telling myself that I am healthy unclogs my arteries.
As I talked about in my book
“On Truth,” people in general prefer – or find it far easier in the short term – to do whatever they please in the moment, and then redefine their actions as “universally virtuous.”
It is equally true that people in general prefer – or find it far easier in the short run – to date whomever they desire, and then redefine their partner as
“lovable.”
Ask most young women what they are looking for in a man and you will hear various variations on the theme of tall, dark and handsome – or, if they are slightly younger,
“cute and funny.”
I have asked this question of many people, and I have never heard the word
“virtue” mentioned once.