Q&A: Love That Does Not Depend on Anything
Love That Does Not Depend on Anything
Question
Hello and blessings. In several places you’ve spoken about loving a person as such, and not their characteristics. But I’m not sure I fully understood your position, so I’d be happy to get answers to the following questions:
- You argued that a person’s traits are the reason for the love, but the love is for the person himself. In other words, are the traits a sufficient condition for love? (Of course, certain traits and not others.)
- Is the existence of those traits a necessary condition for love? In other words, is it possible to love someone without really having become acquainted with his traits?
- Following up on question 2: what happens in a situation where the traits that caused me to love the person disappear? Seemingly, if they are a sufficient condition, then once they disappear the love can remain only if something else causes it (if A then B. If there is no A, that doesn’t mean there is no B, but for B to remain something else would have to cause it).
- A question related to the others—if the claim is that I love the person only because of his traits (and there is no other reason), then if the traits disappear the love disappears. In that case, what is the meaning of “love that does not depend on anything”? After all, it does depend on traits (since if there are no traits, or the traits change into ones that do not cause me to love that person, I suddenly no longer love him).
Thank you!
Answer
1. No. The traits are the medium through which I encounter the person. But through them I encounter the person himself. In principle, it is possible for there to be another person with similar traits and I still would not fall in love with him, because what I encountered through those traits would not cause me to love him.
2. Of course not. All the more so from my answer to 1.
3. That is exactly the implication. You can continue to love him. And indeed there are many such cases. Psychologists may attribute this to remnants of the memory of the previous personality. I see this on the philosophical plane, not the psychological one.
4. Love that depends on something is not love. That is exactly my claim. Whoever argues that people love traits should explain it himself (one could force the issue and say that this is love that depends on something else, not traits).
Discussion on Answer
1. I don’t think so. There are deterministic influences, but there is also an element of decision there, unlike the Cupid model.
2. Every rapid falling-in-love is like that, but I don’t know whether such a process is not deterministic in a Cupid-like way.
4. Obviously. Even if love depended only on traits, it is possible that a person would love bad traits.
1. Could you say a few more words about the idea of an element of decision? This whole notion of choosing an emotion isn’t so clear to me. I mean, an emotion is something that awakens in me, not something I choose. Maybe one could say that I choose to see the good in life and to engage with the beauty of creation and so on, and then I love people more in general. Is that what you meant?
4. So in fact is it possible that a species of creatures with a brain structure different from mine would mainly love people with bad traits? (And love for people with good traits would be rare, the way love for bad traits is among us.) And in that same context, why is it common for people to stop loving someone when he starts developing bad traits? This is really the same question: what is the connection between certain traits (bad or good) and love for a person? (Aside from the fact that through them we know the person and then love him, it seems that the traits have a more specific connection to love.)
1. If there is an element of decision here, that means the emotion expresses it rather than generating it. A person decides to love another person, and then he loves him. It is not just a spontaneous awakening of emotion.
All the commandments of emotion in Jewish law assume that one can choose an emotion; otherwise, what would be the point of commanding it?! True, I wrote in the past that in my view those commandments are not really commandments about emotion, but not because it is impossible to produce an emotion. Rather, it is because there is no value in the existence of an emotion, but that is not the topic here.
4. Yes. When people stop loving because of bad traits, that can express the fact that the love from the outset was not genuine love, but was attached to traits. But of course the traits can interfere, and even if I love someone, his traits can neutralize that. Beyond that, I wrote in the past that there can also be a mixed situation: I love someone from one aspect and hate him from another.
1. Interesting. Would you say that love is something deterministic? Even according to your answer, what causes me to love the person is the person himself and not the traits (I encounter him through them, but they are not the reason for the love), but I don’t decide to love him; rather, it arises in me spontaneously when I encounter a certain person and not another.
2. Do you know of an example of this kind of love, in which the traits play no role (even an example from literature)?
3. Indeed, love for a person whose traits have changed is a familiar case. That fits very well intuitively.
4. Do you agree with the claim that it’s possible to love someone even though his traits are very bad (for example, he steals and murders)? And another case—could I continue to love someone whose traits became that bad? If the answer is yes, though not likely, it seems there is some kind of connection between specific traits (good ones and not bad ones) and our love for a particular person. What is that connection?