Topics Love

Question How can I ever know my wife loves me when there is no one definition for love?

Accepted:
October 15, 2005

Comments

I expect that you think that there are things you know to be true. Presumably the terms that figure in those claims are ones for which you lack definitions as well. So it doesn't seem as if the possession of definitions is necessary for knowledge. Of course, you have to know what the terms in the claim mean; you might say, you have to know how to use them properly. But that doesn't require having explicit definitions of them at your fingertips. (Perhaps, you will want to respond, "Well, why doesn't it!?")

Here is one thing you can try. In what sense of "love" do you love your wife (assuming you do)? Then ask whether she loves you in that sense. If you can assert truthfully that you love her in that sense, and you can defend that assertion, then in principle you should be able to determine whether she loves you. By the way, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, argued that we cannot know while we are alive whether we love someone else. I can know that I love you only after you are dead, since only then is it impossible for me to get anything from you. If my love for you continues in the absence of my expecting to get something from you, then I know it is genuine. I do not think Kierkegaard would be open to a counterfactual version of his thesis, viz., my love for you now is genuine if it were to continue after you die. We cannot know the truth value of such a counterfactual. We have to wait for the other's death. Woe is we. (Of course, as you see, Kierkegaard's claim must depend on a particular, and rather strict, notion of "love.")

Question How can I ever know my wife loves me when there is no one definition for love? Accepted:October 15, 2005

Question How can I ever know my wife loves me when there is no one definition for love?

Accepted:
October 15, 2005