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Chapter 2 Learning Objectives
Upon reading this chapter, the student should be able to:
- Identify what the popular views of love typically are and the problems associated with those views.
Watch this video or scan the QR code to see understand more about why we love.
It has been said that love is that wonderful feeling you will know the instant you have it; that when you fall in love, you will know it. It has been said that love is the solution to the problem of man’s alienation from himself, from others, and from the world. That love is aim-inhibited sex. That love is the result of an act of will. That love is the spirit that draws man’s soul to the heights of truth, beauty, and goodness, and makes him be like the gods. That God is love. That love is holding hands. That love is the power that illumines men’s actions, but so often also plunges them into darkest despair.
All the above sound not unlike the self-styled descriptions of concoctions sold by nineteenth century medicine men as they hawked their wares to the multitudes. This wonderful elixir picks you up from dropsy, perks you up on those dull, lifeless days, gets you rolling again when you can otherwise hardly stand; it lets insomniacs find blissful sleep, but miraculously also shakes off drowsiness for those who need to be alert. It is unlike anything else ever invented. Its taste is distinctive. The moment you try it, you know it works. It will let you charm your enemies and love your friends more steadfastly, and it will even help you enter the gates of heaven if you should die, which is unlikely if you drink it as a daily tonic.
Love has been described as involving care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving. Rollo May says there have been four types of love in Western tradition (page 37 of Love and Will)— sex or lust; eros, the creative drive; philia or friendship; and agape, the love devoted toward the welfare of others. And far too often, I am afraid, love has been thought of as one (or, as above, four) static kind(s) of thing(s), the same or similar for all people and for all time. Love seems to be regarded as something that you either have or feel or that you do not. You are either in love or you are not. There may be slight variations on this theme, but there is only one theme, and it is supposedly basic.
But I think all this is wrong. Love is not described by telling what it can do, any more than water or Dr. John’s soothing snake oil is described by telling what it does—cures thirst or melancholy. Telling what something does is not to explain what it is. To say, for example, that the heart pumps blood and that blood transports oxygen and carbon dioxide is not to tell someone, who does not already know, what the heart or blood actually are. And I will contend later that there is no one set of ingredients of love — that it is different at different times, for different people, and often for the same person at different times, in different