Bad lovin’

To love, on the Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis, is essentially to will the good of another.  Of course, there’s more to be said.  Aquinas elaborates as follows:

As the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 4), “to love is to wish good to someone.”  Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency: towards the good which a man wishes to someone (to himself or to another) and towards that to which he wishes some good.  Accordingly, man has love of concupiscence towards the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship towards him to whom he wishes good.

Now the members of this division are related as primary and secondary: since that which is loved with the love of friendship is loved simply and for itself; whereas that which is loved with the love of concupiscence, is loved, not simply and for itself, but for something else. (Summa Theologiae I-II.26.4)

Take, for example, your love of Italian food, and your desire to cheer up a depressed friend by taking him out to dinner at an Italian restaurant.  Your love of the food would be an instance of what Aquinas calls the “love of concupiscence,” for the food is loved for the sake of some benefit it provides, such as the pleasure it gives you.  But your intention to cheer up your friend reflects the “love of friendship” insofar as you love your friend for his own sake, and not merely for the sake of some benefit he provides.

Note that the term “concupiscence” is not being used here in a pejorative way.  The “love of concupiscence” is, though “secondary” to the love of friendship, nevertheless by itself perfectly innocent.  (“Concupiscence” in the narrower, pejorative sense is not love of a thing for the sake of the benefit it provides one per se, but rather love of that sort which has become disordered.) 

Obviously, a person can also be the object of the love of concupiscence.  Sexual desire would be a standard example, but we can take pleasure in other people in other ways too, such as when we enjoy being around someone because he is funny, or want to maintain a good relationship with someone because he is a good business contact.  Aquinas continues:

When friendship is based on usefulness or pleasure, a man does indeed wish his friend some good: and in this respect the character of friendship is preserved.  But since he refers this good further to his own pleasure or use, the result is that friendship of the useful or pleasant, in so far as it is connected with love of concupiscence, loses the character to true friendship. (Summa Theologiae I-II.26.4)

Notice that Aquinas does not say that friendships based on pleasure or usefulness are bad, any more than the love of concupiscence in general is per se bad.  His point is that they are not friendships in the strictest sense, because the friend is not loved for his own sake.

Now of course, even when we do love someone for his own sake, we still typically take pleasure in the friendship, we desire to be with the person, and so forth.  But it is nevertheless the willing of the other’s good that is what is truly essential to the love.  Aquinas says that “love is spoken of as being… joy [or] desire… not essentially but causally” (Summa Theologiae I-II.26.1).  In other words, the pleasure or joy you take in the person, and the desire you have to be with him, are not themselves the love, but rather the effect of the love. 

A related point is that, since to love is to will the good of another, it is essentially active and within our power, rather than entirely passive the way an emotion is passive, even though in us (unlike in God) it has a passive aspect.  Writes Aquinas:

 [I]n ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it is called, moves through the medium of the sensitive appetite. Hence, in us the sensitive appetite is the proximate motive-force of our bodies.  Some bodily change therefore always accompanies an act of the sensitive appetite... Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called.  Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. (Summa Theologiae I.20.1)

While pleasant emotions are typically associated with love, then, love can exist without them insofar as one can will another’s good even if that person generates in us no pleasant affective response.  This is what happens when, for example, we follow Christ’s command to love our enemies.  Christ is not demanding that we have warm feelings toward someone who does us wrong, or even necessarily that we somehow get rid of the negative feelings he generates in us.  Those negative feelings are perfectly natural, after all, and often impossible to extirpate.  Rather, Christ is saying that, whatever it is we feel, what we will should be the enemy’s good -- which might, by the way, include his being punished (since punishment is in general good for the offender), though always also his repentance.

To summarize, then, we have four main points: First, love is primarily a matter of will rather than passion.  Second, pleasant feelings are therefore not of its essence, even if they are usually associated with it.  Third, love is a matter of willing what is good for the beloved.  Fourth, love of another for his own sake has priority over love of another merely for some benefit he provides. 

That much is standard classical and medieval wisdom. But modern people tend to get love badly wrong on all four counts.  Not always and consistently, of course, but very often both in practice and notionally.

Perhaps the root error is to confuse the desires and emotional effects or concomitants of love with love itself.  Hence modern people almost always characterize love as a “feeling” of a certain sort, and when the feeling is gone conclude that love is gone.  Needless to say, this happens most often in the case of marriage, but can occur also with friendships and relations with siblings and other relatives.  Hence when the feelings wither or die the relationships often wither and die with them.

Now, feelings of the sort in question are indeed natural and important, and there is no point in denying or minimizing that importance.  Nature puts the feelings in us as an aid to the will, and while they are bound to fade to a significant extent, when they have entirely disappeared or even turned negative, something is wrong.  It is, perhaps, at least in part in overreaction to too bloodless a conception of marital love that modern people have tended to overemphasize the affective side of things. 

All the same, love is primarily a matter of will rather than feeling, so that the modern attitude is simply superficial -- indeed, it is childish, since it is characteristic of childhood to be moved more by feeling than by reason and will, and a mark of maturity to reverse this tendency.

De-emphasizing will and overemphasizing pleasant feelings, it is no surprise that modern people tend also to overemphasize what Aquinas calls the “love of concupiscence,” even to the point of reversing its subordination to the “love of friendship.”  For if love is thought to be essentially about having certain pleasant feelings, then the quest for love naturally comes to be understood as essentially a matter of finding someone who will generate in oneself pleasant feelings of the sort in question, and showing love to others comes to be understood as essentially a matter of generating in them pleasant feelings of the sort in question.  And insofar as the quest for love is seen as a matter of finding someone who will benefit oneself in this way, love comes to be seen as a matter of self-fulfillment.

Of course, love is indeed in part a matter of self-fulfillment.  Spouses fulfill themselves in being good husbands and wives, parents fulfill themselves in being good parents, friends fulfill themselves in being good friends.  But such self-fulfillment is an effect or byproduct of love rather than the aim of love.  When it becomes the aim, the beloved is no longer loved for his own sake, and the concupiscent tail begins to wag the dog. 

Thus do we have the sentimentalization (or Burt Bacharachization) of love, on which a “loving” community or society comes to be understood as a society in which pleasant feelings of a certain sort are widespread.  Unsurprisingly, loving one’s enemies comes to seem incompatible with punishing them.  For isn’t the will to inflict punishment typically associated with negative feelings toward the one being punished?  And doesn’t its infliction cause unpleasant feelings in the one being punished?

Furthermore, where matters of sex are concerned, if pleasant feelings of a romantic or affectionate sort exist between any two people, how could this fail to count as “love,” and thus something any Christian ought to celebrate?  And if disapproval of people’s sexual behavior causes in them unpleasant feelings (for example, feelings of guilt, or the unpleasantness associated with being judged), how could such disapproval fail to count as “hatred”? 

This is all quite silly given an analysis like Aquinas’s, on which unpleasant feelings can be associated with what is good (for example, getting the punishment one deserves) and pleasant feelings can be associated with what is bad (for example, sexually immoral behavior), and on which love is essentially a matter of the will rather than a matter of having certain feelings.  Hence, since love is essentially a matter of willing what is good for someone, it is perfectly possible to love someone while affirming that some behavior that gives him pleasant feelings is bad (as when one disapproves of an adulterous relationship), or while harboring negative feelings about him (as when one finds it agreeable to see a criminal getting his just deserts, even though one also sincerely hopes and prays for that criminal’s repentance). 

But that brings us to the last and most grave respect in which modern people go wrong where love is concerned.  Love, again, is essentially a matter of willing for someone what is good for him.  But modern people often deny that goodness is an objective feature of reality; rather, following thinkers like Hobbes and Hume, they often locate goodness in the subjective valuations of the agent, valuations we tend to project onto reality and thus wrongly regard as objective features of the world.  (Here too, the claim isn’t that all modern people take this view or do so consistently, but only that this way of thinking is very common in the modern world.) 

Now, moral subjectivism and moral relativism are not the same thing, but they are closely related.  For one thing, it is difficult to be a moral relativist without being a subjectivist about moral value.  For example, if X is good relative to culture A but not good relative to some other culture B, then it is hard to see how the goodness of X could be an objective feature of the world.  For if it were, then it seems we’d have to say that culture B is simply wrong about X, and that is just what the moral relativist does not allow for.  So it is hard to see how moral relativism can fail to be committed to the view that moral goodness exists only in the subjective valuations of individuals or groups of individuals.

It is also difficult to be a subjectivist about moral value without being a kind of moral relativist.  For human beings do not in fact agree in their subjective valuations, and even if they did, there could always in principle have been human beings who had very different ones.  Moreover, if moral subjectivism is right, there could be no objective criterion by which to determine which sets of subjective valuations were the “right” ones.  So, given moral subjectivism, it is hard to see how to avoid the conclusion that what is morally good is relative to the valuations of individuals and groups of individuals, or at best (if all actual individuals happened as a matter of contingent fact to agree in their subjective valuations) relative to the valuations that all human beings happened as a matter of merely contingent fact to share.

Now, as I argued in a post on relativism, moral relativism is really a kind of eliminativism about morality in disguise.  At the end of the day, if moral relativism were true, then it wouldn’t be that moral goodness is a real feature of the world, but is relative to cultures or the like; rather, it would be the case that there simply is no such thing as moral goodness at all, but only the illusion of moral goodness.  Now, for reasons like the ones just indicated, I would say that the same thing is true of moral subjectivism.  If moral subjectivism were true, then this would entail, not that moral goodness is real, but really something subjective; rather, it would be the case that there simply is no such thing as moral goodness at all, but only the illusion of moral goodness.

When we add subjectivism about goodness to the mix, we can see that the sentimentalization of love in modern times is doubly assured.  To love, again, is to will the good of another.  But in place of the will, the modern tends to emphasize pleasant feelings and desires; and in place of the good, he tends to put subjective feelings of approval, which can vary from individual to individual.  Add in too the radical egalitarianism about feelings and desires toward which democracies tend -- so penetratingly described by Plato in Book VIII of the Republic -- and we have a recipe for the idea that love is pretty much anything anyone wants it to be.  Which, come to think of it, pretty much sums up the jurisprudence of Justice Anthony Kennedy (of “sweet mystery of life” fame).

But here’s the kicker.  If there really is no such thing as goodness, but only the illusion of it, then -- given that to love is to will the good -- there can really be no such thing as love either, but only the illusion of it.  Goodness drops out, and will alone remains; or rather, what remains is will as guided by subjective feelings and desires rather than by any objective standard.  The lover becomes, in effect, the man who declares: I will this, period.  Or as Woody Allen famously put it, “the heart wants what it wants.”

So, from willing the good of another to the heart wants what it wants.  From Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas to Burt Bacharach, Anthony Kennedy, and Woody Allen.  That’s the story of -- not exactly the glory of -- modern love.

Further reading:

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