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Chapter 8 Learning Objectives
Upon reading this chapter, the student should be able to:
- Examine the plausibility of the initial definition of love and the three elements that can help one analyze and evaluate all relationships, whether they involve love or not.
Watch this video or scan the QR code to see what other people feel that love is.
With the previous chapters about feelings, satisfactions, and ethics as prologue, I will try to show that it is plausible to mean by “A loves B” that:
(1) A has strong feelings of attraction in general, or to some reasonable extent, for B,
(2) A, in general or to some reasonable extent, enjoys B (that is, A in general or to some reasonable extent is satisfied by B and by the things B does), particularly in areas of psychological importance (or meaningfulness) to A, and without particular disappointment or dissatisfaction in other such psychologically important (meaningful) areas, and
(3) B is good for (or to) A; that is, the things B does are good for A.
[This last condition will be stated more correctly after the section on ethics, but for now, this is a sufficient statement of the ethical content of a love relationship.]
To say then that A and B love each other is to say that 1, 2, and 3 are reciprocal — that A and B both have strong feelings of attraction for each other in general, that in general they satisfy (or enjoy) each other, and that they are good for each other.
Some remarks about the analysis:
Notice that the criteria are stated in terms of what actually is the case, not in terms of what A or B, or anyone else, believes to be the case. Insofar as one believes A and B are attracted to each other, satisfy each other, and are good for each other, one will believe A and B love each
other; but if one is wrong in any of those beliefs, one is then also wrong about their loving each other. This is true even if the believer is A or B themself. Certainly people can be mistaken about whether the above conditions actually are met and whether they are in love; and many times people have said things like: “I thought I loved him, but I know now I was just infatuated.” One easy way someone might mistakenly believe they are in love is to incorrectly think the other person is good for them just because they enjoy that person’s company and are deeply attracted to them. Hence, in the kind of case mentioned earlier where a parent and child disagree about whether the child really is in love with someone or not, a parent might point out specifically why he or she thinks the other person is not good for the child. Or the child may be unknowingly neglecting things important to its well-being because of the relationship. The
parent would have to point out what this is specifically and hope the child will understand it and believe it in order to see the point. This, of course, is not always easily accomplished; but it at least gives better focus to the disagreement than just continually simply disagreeing about whether