Topics Love

Question Hi! I have two questions that are related. So, instead of making two different entries, i will try to sum up everything now. My first question is regarding love: Can someone love something/someone that is perfect? If so, Is it meaningful? When i ask myself this i think in love as a desition, as a judgment, as a promise. Something that "requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.” (Fromm, 1957). With this in mind, i see perfection as something imposible to love because it is easy to accept it. If love is practice, then you cant love anything and anyone that doesnt require patience and discipline. I think in the start of a relationship, when everything is perfect and the world is in colour pink, that feeling wouldnt be called love. But at the same time, i find myself thinking in people that care about others, people that listen and are willing to help. Selfless people. Do they love? So, besides the question of loving someone perfect, Can someone love a stranger?Or Can someone love an acquaintance? My second question its related to the first one because it implies the same concept of love but doesnt revolves around a romantic relationship: Who can be consider as a friend? If love is a fundamental part of friendship the it requires it hard work. Should i consider highschool friends as "friends"? Or anyone who i havent kept in touch with but i had have a amazing relationship in the past. But also coworkers or classmates, people who i can connect with and have a great time but no necessarily choose to be with. We just are in the same time at the same place. Our relation is mediated by an activity or an institution. Well, i hope i was clear. Moreover, i hope someone can answer this or at least give me some reading recommendations. Thanks for your time!

Accepted:
August 20, 2019

Comments

Great questions. An initial

Great questions. An initial observation: Fromm's view of love seems compelling, though I am uneasy about his claim that love is not a feeling. It seems that one might have discipline, patience, faith... and care for another person, but without FEELINGS (the emotions) of delight in the one you love and sorrowing when the beloved is injured, I am not sure you would have a case of love. So I think Fromm's claim that love is not a feeling, but a practice, is open to challenge. Maybe he might have made the point that love is not MERELY a feeling.

Over to your first question: Because there seem to be very few evident perfect persons (even Gandhi had his faults), I think your (excellent) question would probably best be posed in the philosophy of religion. Classical Judaism, Christianity, Islam and theistic Hinduism believe in the divine (God, Allah, Brahman) as a perfect, maximally excellent reality. I suggest love of the divine in such practices would include the cultivation of awe (or praise or worship or delight) in response to the divine and the pursuit of what these faiths identify as sacred: loving other persons, pursuing justice and mercy, being good stewards of creation / the natural world. This would seem to require discipline, concentration, patience, faith and the overcoming of narcissism. Viewed this way, I suggest that one can love a perfect reality and fulfill Fromm's depiction of love as a practice

On your second point, philosophers have spent time thinking about different kinds of friendship and their value. It appears to many that friendship (ideally) involves reciprocal care stemming from a combination of what some philosophers call beneficent love and unitive love. The first involves desiring the good of the beloved and the second involves a desire to be with the beloved. Being friends with a stranger would seem to fall short of friendship unless there was reciprocal affection and a desire to get to know each other so that you both are no longer strangers. As for time and space and friendship, allow me to suggest that this depends on one's values and focus. If you develop a friendship with a co-worker but once you leave work for another job you two make ZERO effort to care for each other (and if the former co-worker contacted you, you would not reciprocate or even read their emails pleading for your attention because they are diagnosed with cancer) then I suggest this was a friendship of convenience. On the other hand, let's imagine the friendship is stronger: maybe you have fallen out of communication, and yet IF the co-worker were to reach out to you, you would respond with loving care, then I suggest the friendship is still there and has enduring (rather than temporary) value.