'First love, and then do whatever you will'

The great Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard referred to Christianity as the supreme Paradox; Christianity is the 'historical' faith rooted at the intersecting-point between 'time and eternity' through the life of a Jewish carpenter's son. Not possessing Kierkegaard's powers of penetrative insight, I shall point out here, today on Christmas Eve, a less profound 'paradox' at the 'sociological' level.

On the one hand, we live in a world that is, so to speak, over-swamped by 'love'. It is in the 'name of love' that teenagers rebel against their parents, trans-religious and cross-cultural alliances are formed, separations and divorces happen, a billion-dollar music-and-video industry fleeces the 'children of love', protracted and seemingly interminable legal disputes are conducted, music stars and movie actors are idolised, anti-Establishment slogans are voiced, and so on and on. And yet. And yet, on the other hand, ask the apparently simple question, 'But what is this thing that you call 'love'?', and be prepared to face the full onslaught of a barrage of replies of the following type : 'Oh, but it all depends on what you mean', 'Well, who knows? Who even cares?', 'I have no clue, you tell me!', 'Love is a loss of valuable energy', 'It never existed anywhere', 'Oh, if only I knew what love is!', and 'You know, love is 'just relative'. The list never ends.

Surely, I shall say, that is a paradox? That a generation that swears by the word 'love' (and is willing to die for it, or at least that is what it claims) is prepared to let that question go unanswered. Before I proceed, though, here is a disclaimer. I do not intend to imply in what follows that a person must first be able to define 'love' before s/he can experience 'love' (whatever that is). That could be called the 'fallacy of misplaced definition', the fallacy of arguing that you cannot experience X unless you have clearly defined X in so many words. With 'love', in particular, it may indeed be the case that you are in a position to define it only after you have, as we say, 'been in love'. So why, then, is it necessary to write about 'love'?

In response to that question, I offer an axiom : If A is something that we believe is intrinsically valuable in our lives, it is also a valuable enterprise in itself to try to understand what A is and whether A is possible. So if A is 'love', in this context, it is necessary to understand something about the 'reality/possibility of love'.

I shall now go on to describe two notions of 'love'. Broadly speaking, for those who are interested in 'intellectual archaeology', the former is the Advaitin Hindu and the latter is the Roman-Catholic Christian notion; but here I shall not bring in any religious terminology so as to allow the discussion to flow on as smoothly as possible.

(a) Love is not only impossible but also pointless :

According to the first world-view in which this notion of 'love' is located, we human beings are self-enclosed monads. That is, we are essentially complete/perfect within ourselves, but because of various reasons (such as our 'cosmic ignorance') we fail to 'realise' this essential plenitude deep down within ourselves. Consequently, love becomes for us a kind of(reproachable) 'need', and our love is actually a (masked) form of self-seeking through which we try to 'possess' the Other. We love only in order that we may receive something in return, and consequently our love becomes a ceaseless sequence of self-referential acts.

Therefore, to carry on with this line of argument, love becomes (but) a sophisticated form of narcissism. Since we are metaphysically complete within ourselves and cannot, strictly speaking, 'need' anything 'outside' ourselves, our yearning for love is a product of our false ego-centredness. If we succeeded in dissolving this false centre and became truly 'con-centred' in our-self, the infinite ocean of supreme, unqualified, and ineffable bliss, we would then realise that the outward-looking turn through which we seek 'love' is actually an ego-centric move through which we try to 'project' ourselves onto the Other.

To summarise, therefore : (a) love is impossible, because the word 'love' refers to no (substantial) reality, and (b) love is pointless, because the more we 'love', the more we entangle ourselves in our 'cosmic ignorance'.

(Before moving on to the next notion, I may point out that a 'secular' version of this Advaitin Hindu understanding is also quite well-known. According to this version, love is a disguised form of the 'will to Power', so that by loving the Other we are actually seeking to dominate the Other. At best, all love is a kind of (disguised) paternalism. The problem with all such Nietzsche-inspired versions is this : Are these supposed to be 'sociological descriptions' of how some 'lovers' behave, or 'essentialist definitions' of what 'love is/should be'? In truth, they are the former, but one is skilfully led to believe that they are the latter.)

(b) Love is not only the 'supreme possibility' but is also the 'whole point' :

Though this notion is diametrically opposed to the former, there are certain perspectives associated with it that are quite parallel to the ones that we have already examined in the previous world-view. (I have referred to this notion above as the Roman-Catholic one for the sake of brevity, and I shall continue to bring out the specifically Roman-Catholic overtones in what follows; in fact, however, most traditions of Judaism, Islam, and South Indian Vaishnavism, will also accept some version of it.)

According to the world-view in which the latter notion is 'embedded', we human beings are essentially/metaphysically incomplete within ourselves. However, we forget this fundamental truth about ourselves and instead try to seek self-completion through the wrong means of trying to possess/grasp the Other. That is, we are unable to accept the 'anxiety' of (our metaphysical) incompleteness that is a necessary co-relate of our 'creaturely' status, and seek to overcome this in the false ways of seeking to brutalise/dominate the Other, an act which diverts our attention temporarily from this gnawing 'anxiety'.

This is why we human beings in the 'fallen' state are incapable of 'true love'. Our frail human loves are always tinged with a certain element of self-seeking, a component of self-referentiality, and a 'care' for our own finite 'projects' which we seek to achieve through the instrumentality of the Other.

In certain ways, therefore, this second ('Roman Catholic') understanding has certain resonances in the first ('Advaitin Hindu') world-view which tells us that 'love' is a form of self-seeking. The differences, though, between the two notions of 'love' are these :

(a) According to the world-view we are currently discussing, there is nothing 'illusory', 'unreal', 'contemptible' or 'impossible' about love. Indeed, if anything, Love is the highest metaphysical Reality. The word 'metaphysical' is crucial here : that is, love is not merely a subjective emotion or a transient psychological state that one might have for five minutes (though love is that too). Love is also, more fundamentally, a Real metaphysical entity, and this entity is termed (in English) 'God'.

(b) It is this Love that makes human love possible. That is, if Love were non-existent, so would human love be. Note that this is not, by the way, an argument 'for the existence of God'. We are not saying : Because (human) love, therefore Love (and hence 'God'), but : Because Love, therefore (human) love. In other words, it is only because Love operates through our innermost existence, opening us outwards, that we become capable of loving the Other without seeking to dominate It. In the remarkable words of that 'pessimist', Blaise Pascal : "I would not have gone looking for You if You had not already found me'.

(c) We have seen that the first world-view says that we are basically complete within ourselves so that love is a form of (unreal) 'need'. We can hear an echo of this claim in the second world-view too which says that our human loves are always 'fallen' unless they are regenerated by Love, and consequently we shall continue to experience love as a kind of 'ego-centric need'. The difference, once again, is this : whereas the first world-view condemns this need, the second claims that this need is one of the fundamentally constitutive features of 'being human'. Indeed, from the perspective of the second world-view a man who says to his beloved : 'I don't need your love' is displaying not 'high-minded spirituality' but 'pride/arrogance', for he is (wrongly) claiming that he is so (metaphysically) complete/perfect within himself that he does not require anything 'outside' himself. Indeed, one way of defining 'pride' would be : 'The claim that one does not need love/Love in the (false) belief that s/he is metaphysically complete'.

(d) To repeat, all of this does not mean that we are actually capable of loving the Other without an element of self-seeking. The whole point of the above argument (about Love enabling love) is that we human beings, all too clearly, do not have this capability (as yet). But the 'prayer' that could be raised within the horizons of the second world-view on Christmas Day could go as follows : 'O' Love, fill us more and more with Your presence so that we may learn to love the Other without seeking to dominate the Other, or seeking to find our own self-reflection in the Other. As long as we live on this earth, we know that this perfection shall not be realised within our mortal frames. We hope, nevertheless, that this shall be a most perfect reality in the life eternal, when all our impure loves shall be purified by the holy flame of your Love and like molten gold shall then flow into You'.

(e) To conclude this section, here is a possible argument from within the second world-view to followers of Nietzsche : 'But of course, human beings often disguise their brutal will to Power under the cloak of 'love'. However, what all of this shows is that not love is impossible (for it is Love that makes love possible) but precisely what happens to human beings when they wilfully discard the offer that is extended to them by Love. As long as they are unregenerated by the indwelling of Love they shall, sadly, continue to seek 'power' in the 'name of love''. It is in this context that we can begin to understand the comment, from St Augustine, at the beginning of this essay : 'First love, and then do whatever you will.' This can be paraphrased as : 'First allow love/Love to fill you, and whatever actions you perform thereafter shall flow from this love/Love which shall progressively spread outwards into the world from you as its centre.'

To summarise, therefore : (a) love is the 'supreme possibility' for this is realisable (only) through Love, the supreme reality, and (b) love is the 'whole point', for that is precisely what Love is, the 'whole point' why this world exists in, as we say, the first place.

In conclusion, three remarks.

(A) I must emphasise that my argument is a not an exercise in 'social anthropology' (I am not even qualified to conduct such an exercise). That is, I have not carried out any sociological investigation into the question of what 'percentage of the urban/rural population, so to speak, believes in love', 'what college-students/software-engineers/house-wives/street-beggars/homeless-children mean by 'love'', 'what fraction of the population is cynical about love', and such (extremely interesting, sociologically speaking) questions. My 'investigation' above is of a metaphysical nature, that is, it is about what can exist and what cannot exist. It is not quite an argument against it to say that, for example, '23% of the urban population in Soho, London, believes that love does not exist'. That might well be a very interesting sociological datum, but that is just what it is - a datum, nothing more, nothing less. Just as the question of whether an electron exists or not cannot be conclusively decided simply by carrying out a statistical survey of opinions of people in Tanzania as to its existence or non-existence, so too the question, 'Does love exist?', can be conclusively answered neither in the affirmative nor in the negative simply by collecting 'people's' opinions in this matter. (By giving this analogy, I do not mean to say that the (putative) existence of 'love' can be 'proved' in quite the same manner in which we go about 'proving' the electron's existence, but that just as in the latter case we base our investigation on the principle that 'numbers do not guarantee truth' so too in the former case we should follow this same principle.)

That sounds 'elitist', even 'academically' so. Am I saying that the 'people' have 'no say in the matter?' Actually, the opposite. It is always the 'people' who must speak on what they think 'X' is, where X is anything from Abortion to Euthanasia to De-centralisation to Love to Parenthood to Reservation (in fact, who else could answer such questions? Angels? Spirits?Martians?), but it is precisely for this reason that we must also remember, at the same time, the simple rule that 'numbers do not prove anything.' To carry on, this is exactly the reason why we must not allow the 'cynics of love' to perpetuate the illusion that they have given us an 'essential definition' of 'what love is/should be', when all that they provided us is someone's Ph.D. conclusion on what percentage of a certain population in Outer Mongolia believes that 'love is an illusion'.

(B) Neither is the above a 'phenomenological' enquiry into the various manifestations of 'love', such as parental, filial, (hetero/homo-) sexual, romantic, and so on. It is an enquiry into the 'reality/possibility' of 'love'. It would be quite pointless (or would that rather be precisely 'the whole point'?) to make an extensive list of the various 'forms of love' if we secretly believed that this 'love' is ultimately an illusion, a pointless diversion, or a dispensable option.

(C) For example, consider these two claims : (i) 'We human beings are essentially complete/perfect within ourselves, and therefore any 'outward turn', in the 'name of love', is not only unncessary but also pointless, futile, and destructive of our true natures'; and (ii) 'We human beings are radically incomplete/imperfect within ourselves, and therefore any 'outward turn', in the 'name of love', is not only necessary but also the 'supreme point', meaningful and genuinely creative of our true natures.'

I have tried to bring out here, as clearly as possible, the distinction/s between these two world-views and their respective notions of 'love', through these two summarial claims. As one can see, these are 'metaphysical' claims; that is, no amount of sociological-anthropological data-collection about what people think 'love' is (or is not) will either prove or disprove either of these claims. However, and this is the crucial point, one might suspect that when people's views on 'love' are closely examined these views may be found to fall, sooner or latter, into either one of these 'ideal-types'. That is, most people who are cynical about the existence of love might be harbouring, even perhaps unknown to themselves, views which are localisable within the first world-view, and those who believe in love as the most fundamental reality in the world and are yet dissatisfied with the fragmented reality of our human loves may happen to hold views which belong, perhaps at long reach, to the second world-view.

By all of this I mean, quite simply, that I have no straightforward reply for someone who comes to me and says : 'But I don't believe in love! It's all a majestic sham.' To that person I can only say, somewhat weakly, though, perhaps, in the spirit of one of my masters, Soren Kierkegaard : 'I am sorry, but I believe it is, ultimately, the only sham that is meaningful.' And yet. And yet 'mere Kierkegaard' is never enough. On the one hand, we are perhaps condemned to live in the prison of the 'broken middle'; on the other hand, there is a hope for the liberation through a promised resolution.

Is that hope an illusion? Words begin to break down under the strain.