25. REUNION AND THE MYSTERY OF LOVE What is love? Answering this question is, or at least ought to be, of interest to everyone, even people who know nothing about philosophy. For each of us has experienced love on numerous occasions in the past, though admittedly our awareness of love varies greatly. Some people feel they have rarely experienced more than glimpses of love here and there, while others feel they have to hold love back, lest it rush forth like a raging flood and wash away the objects towards which it is directed. Nearly everyone agrees that love is an indispensable aspect of human life, and that without love it would be difficult if not impossible to live a meaningful life. Therefore it should come as no surprise to hear that love is always one of the most frequently discussed topics (along with truth, death, and the meaning of life) in students' insight papers. When students write about love, there is usually a tendency to emphasize romantic love, and thus view love as primarily a feeling, directed exclusively towards the perfect person known as the "lover". But of course, as is often pointed out, there are many different types of love. And some of these are more properly described in terms of a commitment, directed inclusively towards many imperfect people. One of the most common ways of answering the question of the nature of love is to confess ignorance, by arguing either that no one can define love, or that everyone has their own definition, so that there is no single, all-encompassing definition. In one respect, there is no doubt that this is true: of all the experiences human beings have, love is certainly one of the most mysterious; and because each of us must rely primarily on our own experiences, there are indeed almost as many different ideas about love as there are different people who have given and received love. Where does this leave the philosopher? Is it hopeless to try to give a truly philosophical account of love--that is, one that seeks to describe an underlying similarity between all types of love, and a common factor in all acceptable definitions? In one sense it is. For as we have seen on numerous occasions, some experiences can never be adequately described, especially in terms of analytic logic alone; and in such cases we actually discover that we can sometimes understand our experience better in silence than we can in words. However, in another sense, the philosopher is never satisfied with complete silence, but always holds out a hope that words can somehow be used to express the inexpressible. This is, as we have seen, the purpose of symbolic language, and is made possible by synthetic logic. Provided we do not expect to grasp love completely, as if we could reduce it to a mere formula, but attempt only to learn what it means to be grasped by love, I see no reason why we should not search for a philosophy of love through which the diversity of human experiences can be seen as part of a unified whole. Many philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle right down to the present day, have, in fact, developed theories of love. Since we have no time to examine the whole history of the philosophy of love, let's take a closer look at the ideas of one fairly recent philosopher, whose quest for love's meaning led him to some very interesting conclusions. The person I am thinking of is Paul Tillich, whose idea of faith as expressed in terms of symbols of ultimate concern we discussed in Lecture 23. His insightful little book, called Love, Power, and Justice (1954), devotes most of one chapter to the explanation of "The Ontology of Love". We saw in Lecture 23 that "ontology" can be defined most simply as "the study of being". It might be helpful, however, to look briefly at Tillich's more in depth account of the meaning of this term, which comes at the beginning of his chapter on love. Tillich's account begins by suggesting that the Greek words for "ontology" are best translated as referring to "the 'rational word' [logos] which grasps 'being as such' [on]" (p.18). In order to grasp this "word", he claims, "ontology asks the simple and infinitely difficult question: What does it mean to be? What are the structures [or "characteristics"] common to everything that ... participates in being?" (p.19). Ontology recognizes the "manifoldness" of being, but attempts to unify this diversity by describing "the texture of being itself" (p.20). Everyone who has knowledge engages in ontology, because "knowing means recognizing something as being." He distinguished ontology from metaphysics in the following way (p.23): .. ontology is the foundation of metaphysics, but not metaphysics itself. Ontology asks the question of being, i.e. of something that is present to everybody at every moment.... Ontology is descriptive, not speculative. It tries to find out which the basic structures of being are. And being is given to everybody who is and who therefore participates in being-itself. Ontology, in this sense, is analytical. It analyses the encountered reality, trying to find the structural elements which enable a being to participate in being. Although Tillich never explicitly said so, this passage clearly implies that ontology is both analytic and a posteriori (see Figure 9.4): like logic, ontology is "analytic", yet unlike logic, it is "descriptive" (i.e., it focuses a posteriori on what is rather than on what we think). Metaphysics, by contrast, is synthetic and a priori (at least according to Kant): it asks questions about what is necessary before we experience "what is", but it requires us to step outside of our analytical concepts. Rather than saying ontology is the "foundation" of metaphysics, it would therefore be more accurate to say metaphysics and ontology are two diametrically opposed tasks which nevertheless depend on each other, just as opposites like -- and ++ depend on each other, and just as do the roots and leaves of a tree. The passage in which Tillich set out his ontological description of love is actually relatively brief. It begins with a description of the relationship between love and life itself (p.25): "Life is being in actuality and love is the moving power of life." In other words, when a being ceases to be merely possible, and becomes actual, we can say it is "alive"; and the very power which moves beings into life and through life is called "love". This means being requires love in order to become "actual", and through love we learn what life really is. Of course, this description is so broad that it seems to include nearly everything! So Tillich narrowed his description in the following way: Love is the drive towards the unity of the separated. Reunion presupposes separation of that which belongs essentially together.... [But] separation presupposes an original unity.... It is impossible to unite that which is essentially separated.... Therefore love cannot be described as the union of the strange but as the reunion of the estranged. Estrangement presupposes original oneness. The basic meaning of this passage can be understood quite effectively, I believe, by mapping the key ideas onto the pair of 1LSR triangles given in Figure 12.2 (cf. Figure 7.4). The resulting map, as given in Figure 25.1, shows how estrangement is a necessary step in the process of love, the process by which two "estranged" opposites (+ and -), which were once held together in a mysterious, original unity (0), are brought back together in a "reunion" (1). Almost any pair of opposites could be used to exemplify this process. But an obvious example occurs every time a man (+) and a woman (-) are in love. The two lovers, as they gaze into each other's eyes, want to be closer and closer, until, if possible, they merge into one being (1). Whenever they are together they feel as if they have returned to a long lost home (0); yet there always seem to be obstacles keeping them ultimately estranged. An indispensable point in Tillich's discussion, therefore, is that the reunion itself is not love, but is the goal towards which love drives. Love itself, the being of love, is the power of driving towards reunion. This means it is a mistake to think of love as the goal; love is the unifying power of a relationship, through which two beings drive towards a higher goal. [Figure 25.1: Tillich's Ontology of Love] Tillich warned his readers not to make the mistake of confusing this rather abstract, ontological description of love's essential nature with the emotion which we often associate with love. Love in its true nature can occur without being accompanied by any emotion whatsoever. However, when emotion does accompany love, Tillich argued, the ontology of love helps us explain why it is present. Since love is the drive towards reunion, it is certainly possible to love someone without thinking much about what the final state of reunion will be like. If this happens, then there will be little or no emotion associated with love, for "love as an emotion is the anticipation of the reunion" (p.26). This means that the person who, by contrast, frequently imagines a future state of increased unity with another person will find that a great deal of emotion accompanies the experience of driving towards that reunion (i.e., of love). Once this point is recognized, an interesting paradox arises when we consider what happens when we experience the fulfillment of love: "Fulfilled love is, at the same time, extreme happiness and the end of happiness. The separation is overcome. But without the separation there is no love and no life" (p.27). Tillich's point here is that the very nature of our anticipation of a goal is such that the moment of reaching that goal, the very moment of most intense satisfaction, is at the same time the beginning of a feeling of emptiness at the prospects of no longer having that goal to strive after. This enables us to understand why the romantic emphasis on love as a feeling is so misleading. Feeling is important, of course, for it is aroused by our anticipation of reunion; and if we never anticipate this goal, our love is less likely to develop towards its proper end. But if love between two people is not based more fundamentally on a commitment of the will, then when the "end of happiness" arrives--as it inevitably does--we will be caught off guard, and might even think our love has died, just because the old feelings are gone. This point reveals a very practical insight as to how we ought to view marriage. Lovers who view marriage as the final goal towards which their relationship is headed are likely to be quite shocked once they realize, usually soon after their wedding day, that marriage is not all pleasant feelings: the person who was once viewed as the ideal lover inevitably "changes" into an ordinary, imperfect human being. This is why the typical Hollywood love story is so misleading: I'm sure you've all seen plenty of films and/or read lots of novels in which the man and woman fall in love with each other, struggle to overcome numerous obstacles to the fulfillment of their love, finally get married, and then ride off into the sunset at the end of the film, to live "happily ever after". By the end of such stories most of us are wishing "if only that could be me ...". But beware: the whole thing is an impossible dream, because the end of the film is where the real struggles begin! The lesson this should teach us is to set high goals in love relationships (indeed, perhaps even absolute goals), so that each small step along the way (each "mini-reunion", so to speak) can bring its extreme happiness and at the same time complete the happiness experienced in the process of driving towards that step, without undermining the basis of the love relationship. In other words, there is always room for any relationship to grow into a deeper level of love: we must never expect to reach "true love", since true love is the process of reaching towards an ultimate goal. The fulfillment of this goal is the end of love, and hence can come only at (or after) the end of life. This is why, as we shall see in Lecture 27, death is such an important topic in ontology. But in the meantime we must recognize that our problems are not solved merely by understanding the essential ontological nature of love; on the contrary, the process of understanding the being of love is, like ontology itself, "a never-ending task" (p.20). Having completed his description of the essential nature of love, Tillich proceeded to explain four distinct ways in which love is manifested. Love itself is "one" way of being (p.27): it is always the drive towards reunion of the separated. But this drive appears in many different forms. The four forms Tillich discussed can be regarded as a perfect 2LAR, constructed out of the two questions: (1) Is this form of love personal? and (2) Is it unequal (rather than mutual)? As such, they can be mapped onto the cross in the following way: [Figure 9.3: Analytic and Synthetic Propositions] This map shows how epithymia and philia are similar in that they both require the loving subject and the loved object to be mutual participants in the love relationship, while eros and agape both require the two parties to have unequal roles; likewise, it shows how eros and epithymia are similar in being primarily impersonal, while agape and philia are similar in being personal. The sense in which "transpersonal" is a special type of impersonal love and "super-personal" is a special type of personal love should become clear as we look more closely at Tillich's account of how each of these types of love illustrates his basic description of the essence of love. The Greek word "epithymia" (which means desire) is roughly equivalent, according to Tillich (pp.28-30), to the Latin term "libido", which has been popularized by Freudian psychologists in this century. These terms refer to the basic instinctual desires which characterize all animals, especially the sex drive. In itself (viewed apart from the other types of love which often accompany it in human beings), epithymia is radically impersonal. One's sexual urges, for example, could in principle be satisfied by virtually anyone, regardless of their personality, just as hunger can be satisfied by any type of food, regardless of how bad it might taste. Normally, the two parties in such an encounter both desire mutually to fulfill each other's urges. In this way, epithymia gives rise to sensual pleasure in the process of driving two separated beings into physical reunion. But, Tillich argued, in a proper expression of epithymia love, "it is not the pleasure as such which is desired, but the union with that which fulfils the desire." That is, the two lovers desire reunion, and this reunion produces pleasure. Hence this basic animal desire has a legitimate right to be called "love", even though it represents only the "lowest" of the basic types of love. When epithymia transcends the mere expression of sexual union and is sublimated in the form of a drive "towards union with the forms of nature and culture" (p.30), it is more properly called "eros". This Greek word (from which the English word "erotic" is rather misleadingly derived) was used by Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers to describe the philosophical search for union with the Ideas--especially with truth, goodness, and beauty. As such, it refers to a transpersonal form of love, which "strives for union with that which is the bearer of values". Unlike epithymia, this higher form of impersonal love is fundamentally one-sided or unequal, in the sense that the "lover" strives towards something which does not necessarily respond with a mutual drive towards unity of its own. Truth, goodness, and beauty often fail to cooperate when we try to apprehend them. Have you ever suddenly realized that what you formerly thought was true is actually false? Have you ever tried to do something right, but ended up doing something you know is wrong instead? Or have you ever had people laugh at your choice in clothing, or in anything else that required a judgment of taste? If so, then you have experienced the struggle which inevitably accompanies the drive of eros towards reunion with a recalcitrant object of value. Tillich referred to the mutual interdependence between eros and "philia" (the Greek word for friendship) as a "polar" relationship (p.31). This is reflected in Figure 25.2 by the fact that these two terms both appear on the "impure" (+- and -+) positions of the cross (though I would refer to this as a "contradictory" form of interdependence). As the truly "personal" love, philia is a prerequisite of eros, since one cannot pass from the impersonal to that which transcends the personal until one has achieved personhood. As such, philia refers not only to conventional friendships, but also to the mutual drive towards unity that characterizes family relationships and all other relationships between individuals in a common group. As Tillich put it (p.32): "Love as philia presupposes some amount of familiarity with the object of love. For this reason Aristotle asserted that philia is possible only between equals." Whereas the first three types of love are closely interrelated in human experience, Tillich claimed that the fourth type, known as "agape" (the Greek word for love used primarily in the New Testament), is radically different (p.33): One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life [i.e., God]. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love. Agape is love cutting into love, just as revelation is reason cutting into reason ... Unlike eros, which transcends philia by driving towards a higher unity beyond personhood, agape transcends philia by driving towards a higher unity within personhood. Agape achieves this super-personal kind of love by reversing the goal set by eros. Agape is like eros, however, insofar as they both presuppose a fundamentally unequal relationship between the lover and the object of love: whereas eros is the drive of a person lacking value towards unity with something intrinsically valuable, agape is the drive of a person having value towards unity with that which has in itself no value to the lover. This is the kind of love Christians believe God has for man and we ought to have towards those whom we would not naturally love. From an ontological point of view, it is the most profound type of love, especially since it has the same, analytic a posteriori status as does ontology itself (cf. Figures 1.1, 9.4 and 25.2). This status is expressed in terms of synthetic logic in Jesus' command that we should love our enemies) In conclusion today I would like to use Tillich's ontology of love, and especially his account of the difference between the agape and eros types of love, to rephrase the question I quoted from Lessing (via Kierkegaard) at the beginning of Lecture 17. Do you still remember the question? If not, I hope before forgetting it you spent some time thinking about how you would respond. In any case, let me repeat the question: If God had all truth in his right hand and the lifelong search for truth in his left, which hand would you choose? Lessing, along with Plato and anyone else who emphasizes the search for "heavenly" ideals, chose the lifelong search. Which one do you think Tillich would have chosen? Once we recognize that the "lifelong search" corresponds quite closely to eros, while the attainment of "all truth" corresponds to agape, it becomes quite evident that Tillich would have regarded the two as complementary. In other words, the very idea that we must choose one or the other is a mistake, since each has its proper place in life. Eros and agape represent, in fact, the two forms of breakthrough we have repeatedly come across (see Figure 22.1). We experience agape whenever Truth Itself suddenly breaks into our ordinary ways of thinking and puts us into communication with the Mystery of life. Agape begins when synthetic logic breaks into our ordinary, analytic ways of thinking with a concrete example of the law of non-identity: it teaches us to accept as worthwhile what we thought was worthless in ourselves and others, and to reject as worthless what we thought was worthwhile (A=-A). We experience eros, by contrast, by actively pursuing the eternal quest for a means of breaking through the boundaries that traditionally hold us in place. Eros begins by assuming analytic logic; but once we achieve a breakthrough, we realize that we can speak of this breakthrough only in the paradoxical terms of the law of contradiction: it teaches us that in the quest for Truth we are bound to discover that truth is not Truth (A=A), so that we will be unable to proceed unless we see our quest for literal truth as part of a larger quest for symbolic Truth. With these ideas in mind, we can picture the complementary relationship between eros and agape in the following way: (a) The Mystery of Agape (b) The Paradox of Eros [Figure 25.3: The Logic of Two Kinds of Love] In this and the previous lecture we have seen two examples of how we all experience the mystery of agape. In the next two lectures we will look at two examples of how life's quest inevitably gives rise to the paradox of eros. But in the meantime I should reiterate one of the most important lessons we have learned from Tillich: that both unity and diversity, both the belief in a mysterious, "heavenly" Truth, and a lifelong search for it, must coexist in order for love in its fullest manifestation to continue to grow and prosper. Hence it should be clear that there is no straightforward answer to Lessing's question, for it suggests that, paradoxically, it is more important to keep asking the question than it is to settle upon one side or the other as the exclusively correct answer. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT 1. Could there be an ontology of hate? 2. What does it mean to say two beings who love each other were originally unified? 3. If love's goal can never be reached, what is the use of loving? 4. Could a person who possesses "all truth" still search for truth? RECOMMENDED READINGS 1. Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice: Ontological analyses and ethical applications (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), especially Chapter II, "Being and Love", pp.18-34. 2. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957), especially Chapters I-II, "Is Love an Art?" and "The Theory of Love", pp.9-61. 3. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros: The Christian idea of love, tr. Philip S. Watson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982[1953]). 4. Martin C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love: Lion and unicorn--a study in eros and agape (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1947).