The Meanings Of Love: An Introduction To Philosophy Of Love

THE MEANINGS OF LOVE go This page intentionally left blank THE MEANINGS OF LOVE go An Introduction to Philosophy of Love ROBERT E. WAGONER PMEGER Westport, Connecticut London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wagoner, Bob, 1930The meanings of love : an introduction to philosophy of love / Robert E. Wagoner, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-275-95839-6 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-275-95840-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Love. 2. Love—History. I. Title. BD436.W34 1997 128,.46—dc21 96-37115 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 1997 by Robert E. Wagoner All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-37115 ISBN: 0-275-95839-6 0-275-95840-X (pbk.) First published in 1997 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America @r The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright Acknowledgments The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: "The Mess of Love" by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W Roberts, from THE COMPLETE POEMS OF D. H. LAWRENCE by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V de Sola Pinto & F. W Roberts. Copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc. Translation of Gottfried of Strasbourg's Tristan by Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (Pantheon Books, 1956), page 146, note 1. Copyright © 1956 by Pantheon Books. Used by permission of Random House, Inc. "September 1,1939/' from W H. AUDEN: COLLECTED POEMS by W H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Copyright © 1940 by W H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. CONTENTS Preface 1. Introduction vii 1 2. Erotic Love Plato, Symposium and Phaedrus 11 3. Christian Love Genesis 1 to I Corinthians 13 31 4. Romantic Love Tristan and Iseult and Heloise and Abelard 51 5. Moral Love Immanuel Kant and S0ren Kierkegaard 69 6. Love as Power Thomas Hobbes, G.W.F. Hegel and Jean-Paul Sartre 89 7. Mutual Love Aristotle and Luce Irigaray 109 8. Conclusion 135 Selected Bibliography 143 Index 147 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE The good news about love is that it makes life meaningful. The bad news is that there is always a price to be paid. "Free love" is an oxymoron—a contradiction in terms. Moreover, this seems to be true regardless of the diverse meanings that love has for us. There is legitimate disagreement about what love means. One cannot fairly assume that this is due merely to ignorance or perversity. This book assumes that love has more than one meaning and that the first task is to sort out what these meanings are. The second task is to see what each meaning requires. Why a person is captive to one idea rather than another I do not attempt to explain, nor do I argue that one idea is necessarily better than another. Each of the six ideas of love sketched out here is problematic —that is, each is ideal in its own way, but each is limiting in a certain way as well. Where there is no limit, there is no meaning. The discussion of each idea focuses on how love is defined, therefore, and shows what this meaning implies for both our physical and our rational natures. Even though each idea of love is c o n s