Topics Love

Question Does love exist, or is it really love, without some amount of selfishness? Put it another way, if you want the best for someone and care about someone, but get no pleasure from simply knowing them, is it 'love', yet something like pity or hypocrisy? Considering that that is how it is, does it anyway apply to all sorts of loving; is mother's love, for example, an exception? Or should we say that though a mother always thinks of her children first, it is also selfish, because by being a mother she is able to express that side of herself?

Accepted:
July 6, 2006

Comments

"Love means never having to say you're sorry." "Love is blind." "Love is patient." "God is love." There are so many definitions of love. Here It seems you've defined love at least as (a) wanting the best for someone and (b) caring for someone. After that you raise the question of whether love requires that one must also ( c) get pleasure simply from knowing the person for whom one cares and for whom one wants the best.
In exploring this question you seem to present the following possible argument for thinking that love isn't possible at all, that even calling a + b love is wrong. Here's the argument as I understand it: On the one hand, it seems that getting pleasure from someone else can't be love because it's self-serving. On the other hand, it seems that if one doesn't get pleasure from the person loved it's not really love either, but better described as something like pity. Since one must either get pleasure or not get pleasure from the person one cares for and wants the best for, love must be impossible.

For myself, I don't think this is a sound argument. And I do think that love defined as "a + b + c" is possible. Here's why: I don't think that receiving pleasure from someone makes one's relationship with that person selfish. This is a common mistake I find in discussions about whether people act only selfishly. One is selfish only when the reason for one's conduct is primarily to serve oneself. That one receives pleasure or is otherwise served by a relationship as a by-product or as a secondary feature of that relationship does not make the relationship selfish. The relationship must be undertaken for the sake of self interest in order to be selfish; it's not sufficient for selfishness that one's interest happens to be served. So, a mother might receive pleasure from her children and from expressing herself as a mother. But unless that pleasure serves as the exclusive or primary reason for her having children, her relationship with her children is not selfish.

To care for someone, to want the best for that person, and to receive pleasure from that person is coherently described as love; and I see no reason to regard this sort of love as impossible.