Philosophy of 💗 Love
Posted: December 15th, 2022, 12:44 am
In a topic by 3017Metaphysician on the metaphysical philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer - known as both 'The Philosopher of Love' and 'The Philosopher of Pessimism' - it was cited that few philosophers in history have seriously addressed the subject love, leaving the concept mostly to poets. It might explain why it is possible that Schopenhauer - the father of pessimism - has received the name 'The Philosopher of Love'.
The Philosopher of Love Who Lived and Died Alone
In his 1818 essay “Metaphysics of Love,” Schopenhauer writes that “one cannot doubt either the reality or importance of love,” only to name the primary purpose of love as the creation of offspring, an expression of the “will to live,” which was one of his central preoccupations.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/th ... les/95895/
This topic intends to question the validity of the idea of Arthur Schopenhauer that love is fundamentally meaningless.
A quick introduction to Schopenhauer's pessimism philosophy that underlays his theory on love:
Philosophical Pessimism: A Study In The Philosophy Of Arthur Schopenhauer
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewco ... phy_theses
https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/
Schopenhauer’s pessimism resides in two related claims: that “all life is suffering”, and accordingly that the world and life itself “ought not to be”.
Schopenhauer's theory on the three forms of boredom fundamentally underlays his idea "all life is suffering" which makes it appear that his reasoning is based on (personal) experience and feelings related to (a perceived potential of) depression.
The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.
For Schopenhauer, boredom has three forms. The first is when the world shows itself to the bored as lifeless, “dead”, colorless, and “dreary”. Nothing is attractive or interesting and everything is indifferent, detached, and distant. The second form of boredom is when the world shows itself to the bored as valueless, meaningless, and pointless. Schopenhauer says that these feelings of pointlessness, valuelessness, and pointlessness render existence itself burdensome.
In my view Schopenhauer's reasoning on the fundamental meaninglessness of love is wrong. It is only when one attempts to attach oneself to 'value' that one will be in danger for the described experience (depression potential) since the true nature that underlays the world cannot be clinged on to. Emotions serve to propel organisms into the right direction and hence depression has an infinite depth and from the perspective of the experiencer an infinite severity potential - as if it's worse than death. But there is also the opposite with the same infinite potential, which is found in love.
Love in my view is not an expression of the will to live but like the perception of beauty of which Plato wrote the following:
Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but reality, and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God.
With love one perceives true beauty in my opinion which is not a (meaningless) inside-out expression but a perception into the infinite depth of the origin of existence - the trueness behind it all in which 'pure beauty' can be found.
French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas - an icon of Western philosophy that is researched by dedicated scholars today - wrote the following about love which in my opinion touches the subject better.
Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence,... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.
Levinas has written in more depth about love because it is related to his primary philosophy (Ethics as First Philosophy). There is even a book dedicated to his vision on love:
Directly challenging the prevailing interpretation, Corey Beals explores the ideas of twentieth-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's concept of love, love's relation to wisdom, and how love makes the Other visible to us. Distinguishing love from other types of wisdom, Beals argues that Levinas's "wisdom of love" is a real possibility, one which grants priority to ethics over ontology.
Levinas and the Wisdom of Love
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214 ... om_of_Love
Levinas said the following with regard the origin of existence (the cosmos):
"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/
"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)
I would share this vision. The cited 'goodness' would be 'good per se' (good that cannot be valued as origin of value - i.e. 'the origin of the cosmos' - with (moral) valuing being 'signification').
In a sense 'morality' would underlay the physical world and consciousness, and thus Levinas moral philosophy "Ethics as First Philosophy" might be correct from a fundamental philosophy perspective, in my opinion.
What is your opinion on the significance of love? Is it merely functional for reproduction as asserted by Arthur Schopenhauer or ...?
Questions:
1) what is love?
2) what have art and beauty have to do with love?
3) why has the subject love been principally neglected by philosophy in history?
The following film might provide an inspirational philosophical perspective on love. The primary question that is asked in the film is "how does love last?" and it is then described that when one attempts to cling on to love that the beauty of life disappears before ones eyes.
What is love even?
...
Why is it so hard to keep a feeling. Maybe it is better to sit by and watch but never have. The idea of meeting the beauty and magic we see in the world around us to be ours, mine, we end up smothering it. Looking to deeply at it. And then we see how very regular all these things are. I think that magic, beauty and feeling are only real and true when they are free, passing and unscrutinised.
The Philosopher of Love Who Lived and Died Alone
In his 1818 essay “Metaphysics of Love,” Schopenhauer writes that “one cannot doubt either the reality or importance of love,” only to name the primary purpose of love as the creation of offspring, an expression of the “will to live,” which was one of his central preoccupations.
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/th ... les/95895/
This topic intends to question the validity of the idea of Arthur Schopenhauer that love is fundamentally meaningless.
A quick introduction to Schopenhauer's pessimism philosophy that underlays his theory on love:
Philosophical Pessimism: A Study In The Philosophy Of Arthur Schopenhauer
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewco ... phy_theses
https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/
Schopenhauer’s pessimism resides in two related claims: that “all life is suffering”, and accordingly that the world and life itself “ought not to be”.
Schopenhauer's theory on the three forms of boredom fundamentally underlays his idea "all life is suffering" which makes it appear that his reasoning is based on (personal) experience and feelings related to (a perceived potential of) depression.
The basis of all willing is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain. If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of willing, because it is at once deprived of them again by too easy a satisfaction, a fearful emptiness and boredom comes over it; in other words, its being and its existence itself becomes an intolerable burden for it. Hence its life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.
For Schopenhauer, boredom has three forms. The first is when the world shows itself to the bored as lifeless, “dead”, colorless, and “dreary”. Nothing is attractive or interesting and everything is indifferent, detached, and distant. The second form of boredom is when the world shows itself to the bored as valueless, meaningless, and pointless. Schopenhauer says that these feelings of pointlessness, valuelessness, and pointlessness render existence itself burdensome.
In my view Schopenhauer's reasoning on the fundamental meaninglessness of love is wrong. It is only when one attempts to attach oneself to 'value' that one will be in danger for the described experience (depression potential) since the true nature that underlays the world cannot be clinged on to. Emotions serve to propel organisms into the right direction and hence depression has an infinite depth and from the perspective of the experiencer an infinite severity potential - as if it's worse than death. But there is also the opposite with the same infinite potential, which is found in love.
Love in my view is not an expression of the will to live but like the perception of beauty of which Plato wrote the following:
Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but reality, and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God.
With love one perceives true beauty in my opinion which is not a (meaningless) inside-out expression but a perception into the infinite depth of the origin of existence - the trueness behind it all in which 'pure beauty' can be found.
French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas - an icon of Western philosophy that is researched by dedicated scholars today - wrote the following about love which in my opinion touches the subject better.
Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence,... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.
Levinas has written in more depth about love because it is related to his primary philosophy (Ethics as First Philosophy). There is even a book dedicated to his vision on love:
Directly challenging the prevailing interpretation, Corey Beals explores the ideas of twentieth-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's concept of love, love's relation to wisdom, and how love makes the Other visible to us. Distinguishing love from other types of wisdom, Beals argues that Levinas's "wisdom of love" is a real possibility, one which grants priority to ethics over ontology.
Levinas and the Wisdom of Love
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214 ... om_of_Love
Levinas said the following with regard the origin of existence (the cosmos):
"in renouncing intentionality as a guiding thread toward the eidos [formal structure] of the psyche … our analysis will follow sensibility in its pre-natural signification to the maternal, where, in proximity [to what is not itself], signification signifies before it gets bent into perseverance in being in the midst of a Nature. (OBBE: 68, emph. added) "
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/levinas/
"The creation of the world itself should get its meaning starting from goodness." (Levinas in film Absent God 1:06:22)
I would share this vision. The cited 'goodness' would be 'good per se' (good that cannot be valued as origin of value - i.e. 'the origin of the cosmos' - with (moral) valuing being 'signification').
In a sense 'morality' would underlay the physical world and consciousness, and thus Levinas moral philosophy "Ethics as First Philosophy" might be correct from a fundamental philosophy perspective, in my opinion.
What is your opinion on the significance of love? Is it merely functional for reproduction as asserted by Arthur Schopenhauer or ...?
Questions:
1) what is love?
2) what have art and beauty have to do with love?
3) why has the subject love been principally neglected by philosophy in history?
The following film might provide an inspirational philosophical perspective on love. The primary question that is asked in the film is "how does love last?" and it is then described that when one attempts to cling on to love that the beauty of life disappears before ones eyes.
What is love even?
...
Why is it so hard to keep a feeling. Maybe it is better to sit by and watch but never have. The idea of meeting the beauty and magic we see in the world around us to be ours, mine, we end up smothering it. Looking to deeply at it. And then we see how very regular all these things are. I think that magic, beauty and feeling are only real and true when they are free, passing and unscrutinised.