And what about the commandment to love God?

What does that have to do with it? If anything, then the commandment to love one’s fellow is more relevant. The question here dealt with values, not commandments. And even regarding commandments, as I understand it, they are not imposed on emotion.

That is exactly the question: what is the commandment in loving God if it is an emotional thing with no value? Even according to Maimonides’ view, that the commandment is to contemplate the world in order to arrive at love of Him, it is clear that the value is the feeling of love attained through contemplation. Is there a kind of love that is not emotion that, in the Rabbi’s view, is what the commandment refers to?

As for loving one’s fellow, loving the convert, and so on, there it may be a practical matter of interpersonal conduct, or of showing a special attitude toward converts in order to support them; that is different.

See column 22 and the references there.

Thanks for the reference. I read it and studied the points there; it is definitely a different way of understanding Maimonides’ words—that love itself is intellectual, and the emotion is only a kind of trigger, or an additional aspect of love, and not what we are commanded about. I had always understood that the commandment is to act in order to attain love—to contemplate, etc.—to reach the ideal, and that striving toward it is the fulfillment of the commandment through those actions.

Maybe this also fits somewhat with the commandment to love your fellow “as yourself”—as one’s own person—and in the Sages this is treated as a rule formulated negatively: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”—because here it makes more sense to define self-love as something intellectual rather than feelings of self-love or a kind of narcissism. The commandment is a categorical imperative of definition, perhaps even a moral one, for how to act toward one’s fellows and friends.

Thank you. Following up on my question: do you mean that it is proper to cultivate the emotion of love because of psychological reasons—that is, it is proper to cultivate emotions that keep us sane—or also, as I’m getting at, that it is valuable in an ethical sense to cultivate such an emotion? The complete person is one who is full of love; love is a pure emotion, and someone who has love is a good person. What do you think?

Yes. It helps one do what one should and creates a healthier society.