Love and the need for comprehension

Abstract

The question of how well we need to be known, to be loved, is considered. A ‘second-person’ model is argued for, on which love requires that the beloved's demands to be known be respected. This puts pressure on the idea that lovers need to make a beloved's interests their own, taking that to require comprehension of the beloved's interests: a lover would have to appreciate the normative intelligibility and motivating force of an interest. The possibility of love with failure of comprehension is defended, using illustrations from Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead.

Keywords:

• love
• comprehension
• second-person
• Frankfurt

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for the journal and to Diarmuid Costello for very constructive comments. Thanks to the participants at the Reasons of Love conference in Leuven, with special thanks to Jan Bransen, Daniel Cohen, Esther Kroeker, Ty Landrum, and Katrien Schaubroeck.

Notes

See Landy (2004, Ch. 2) on Proust and the “will to ignorance”. Ronald de Sousa remarks that in love the object of love “need not be as the subject believes it to be” (1987, 109). Marcia Cavell argues that Freud in fact has the basis for an “objective view” on which love “motivates an understanding of another's point of view; motivates, that is, a relatively accurate characterization of the object” (1992, 81).

Baier herself, in contrast, champions Hume's view that, “We rejoice … in the presence of a ‘Being like ourselves, who communicates to us all the actions of his mind; makes us privy to his inmost sentiments and affections …’” (Hume 1978, 353; quoted in Baier 1994, 40).

See Helm (2010), especially Ch. 5, and Velleman (1999), especially 360–370, on loving a person as a person. Both appeal to the idea that we love persons as beings who have “the capacity to love” (Helm 2010, 173; Velleman 1999, 365), where this is shorthand for a range of ideas about the beloved's status. In Velleman's terms, a person is to be loved as “an instance of rational nature”, with “a capacity to care about things in that reflective way which is distinctive of self-conscious creatures like us” (1999, 365). In Helm's terms, “persons … are capable of exercising a capacity for autonomy in deliberating about and so determining which values they shall have and so what their identities shall be” (2010, 147–148). Helm ties this to a knowledge requirement: “the kind of intimate identification essential to love requires that the lover has a reasonably accurate understanding of the beloved's identity” (2010, 162).

See also Frankfurt (1998, 165–168).

See Soble (1997) and Friedman (2003).

“In most contexts, a love that is inseparable from the urge to benefit is an unhealthy love, bristling with uncalled-for impingements” (Velleman 1999, 353). Considered in a certain light, “devotion to a beloved's ends has a distinctly sinister side” (Westlund 2005, 14 and surrounding passages). See also Friedman (1989, 4).

See Acocella (2005) for a fuller account of the novel, with particular attention to these father–son pairs.

Helm asks, “by whose standards ought I to assess what affects [a beloved's] well-being ... mine or his?” Helm argues for a “middle ground” on this (2010, 158–161). Susan Wolf points to the value of not being overly confident about what one's interests are (2002, 239).

On Helm's view, “Loving someone … involves valuing what she values for her sake … It should be clear, however, that although I value these things for her sake, I am the one who values them” (2010, 161).

See Soble for discussion of a difficulty in Frankfurt's view concerning the lover's ability to be invested in a non-reciprocating beloved's interests (2005, 12).

“Love is, most centrally, a disinterested concern for the existence of what is loved, and for what is good for it” (Frankfurt 2004, 42). See Frankfurt (1998, 165–168). Scruton says of love for one's child that “all its interests are my interests” (2006, 233).

Friedman says that one learns from friends “what life is like for someone who is motivated by springs of action different from one's own” (1989, 9). See Helm discussion cited above, on finding the “middle ground” in which one acknowledges that the beloved's conceptions and one's own diverge (2010, 158–161). Wolf points to the common experience of parents finding their non-infant children to have interests they do not find worthwhile (2003, 231–232). Frankfurt discusses conflicts with and difficulty in understanding one's children's interests (2004, 62, 88); these seem to be problems, in his view, that represent a falling away from an ideal.

It also seems plausible that demands for comprehension within love can be negotiated differently in relations with different people (a romantic partner might need to comprehend things that one's parents would not, etc.). See Flanagan on revealing oneself differently in different love relationships (1991, 155).

See Stanley Cavell on King Lear. Lear “avoids love”, shunning the mutual recognition that love involves. Love would require, e.g. seeing through to Cordelia and being “seen through” by her (1969, 301).

Thank you to Diarmuid Costello for raising this issue.