Love's Bond

In this essay, Nozick discusses what constitutes love.  According to Nozick's definition, love is when your own well being is tied up with that of someone or something you love.  According to Nozik. this means that when you are in love you are exposing yourself to some increased risk, because if something bad happens to the person you love it will also affect you negatively.  However, this love also brings increased benefit because the good things that happen to the other person will also benefit you.  I liked this definition of love because it applies to more than just a romantic relationship between two people.  It is applicable to parents love for their children, a citizen's love for their country, or a person's love for their culture.

One thing that confused me about this definition was that it made it seem like you could still be in love even when the other person/thing isn't in love with you.   It seems to me that there is some higher form of love when both people in the relationship are affected by the other's  wellbeing, because then both parties have incentive to try to make sure the other person is happy and they both make efforts to avoid hurting the other person.  It seems like when only one person loves the other, they are putting themselves at greater risk of being hurt than someone who is in a relationship where the love is reciprocated. In my opinion this means that while love might be able to exist in an unrequited situation, this unrequited love is of a lesser form than the love that exists in a relationship where both people are in love with each other.  

Nozick also says that a key element of love is wanting to form a "we" with the other person.  In other words, you wish to create a new identity in which you and your partner exist together and are recognized by others as a single entity,  This desire to form a "we" is what makes lovers so eager to share their social circles with each other and inhabit the same living space.  However, through forming this "we" each partner loses some of their autonomy.  They can no longer make decisions unilaterally because the choices they make also affect the well being of their significant other.  In return for sacrificing their autonomy, they get someone who will help care for them and comfort them in times of need. One thing that I couldn't get out of my head when I read this "But what happens if one person isn't making decisions in the other's best interests?"  I can think of a lot of couples where one person is in love while the other one is only still in the relationship out of convenience.  Does the couple cease to exist as a "we" the second one of the partners stops being concerned with the other's well being? In our culture we place a lot of emphasis on the idea that marriage is a partnership that should last forever (although the divorce rate doesn't reflect this belief).  Howerver, this seems like an unfair expectation.  How can anyone know that the person they are in live with now is going to care for their well being for the rest of their lives?  It seems like something that is impossible to know for sure.  It seems like when people get married they shold have to submit a list designating years of evidence that their desired spouse will make decisions that are in both of their best interest.

One of the things I really liked about this essay as when he was talking about the idea that once you are in love, no one else will satisfy your desire for a relationship in the same way. In other words, someone who is in love will never try to "trade up", because they have already invested so much time and energy into cultivating a relationship with their current lover that it would be silly to invest that kind of effort into someone whe there is no guarantee you will end up as happy as you were with the first one.  Although this reasoning seems like the least romantic way of phrasing it, I really liked this concept because it made it seem like we create our own soul mate. 

Reconciling Eros and Agape

Alan Soble wrote this essay as a response to Singer's essay on bestowal and appraisal.  He points out that a lot of Singer's arguments on the nature of love are contradictory. These essays mainly focus on the 2 different types of love: eros and agape,  They explore how these types of love are involved in personal love between two people.  Singer claims that personal love is a reconciliation of eros and agape, while Soble thinks that humans are incapable of agapic love.

Singer thinks that personal love is a reconciliation of eros and agape.  At first the lover falls in love with the other person based on their merits. This type of love at the beginning of the relationship is erosic love. Once the relationship develops to a deeper level, the lover bestows value onto the person. This bestowal is agapic love, because the lover is creating value in the other person that is not based on appraisal of their positive traits.  Soble disagrees with this idea that personal love has an element of agape.  He says that humans are incapable of agapic love, because all love is based on finding traits we admire and value in another person.  Although we might later create value through bestowal, the first step in getting to that "agapic" love was based on appraisal.  True agapic love wouldn't require any appraisal. The idea that personal love involves appraisal is contradictory to the idea that humans are capable of agapic love.

The main question I had when reading this was whether or not humans are capable of bestowing value even when they have a negative appraisal of the person.  My first reaction was that humans are incapable of loving someone they have a negative appraisal of.  However, when I was talking about this with a friend, he mentioned that priests offer forgiveness to murderers and other evil people. This forgiveness is a form of bestowing value, even though the priest might have a negative appraisal of the person.

This idea that humans are incapable of love without appraisal makes it confusing when we try to define the necessary conditions of love.  Even though Singer says that appraisal plays a part in all personal love, he doesn't count appraisal as a necessary condition of love.  He rejects the idea that appraisal is a necessary condition of love because God loves all humans regardless of whether or not they deserve it. The fact that this kind of love can exist without the involvement of appraisal means that love must be able to exist without appraisal.

Bestowal, on the other hand, is a necessary condition of love according to Singer.  What I think he means by this is that whenever someone loves someone else they create value in them that wasn't there before.  However, this doesn't seem to be able to apply to humans relationship with God.  Because God is already perfect, they cannot create new value in him that wasn't there before.  He had already reached the highest possible value that could ever possibly exist. In my opinion this either means that bestowal cannot be a necessary condition of love, or it means that humans are incapable of loving God.  

I disagree with Soble's idea that humans are incapable of agapic love.  I think that love that parents have for their children qualifies as agapic love.  Parents love their children without appraising their positive merits, and they create value in them based on the fact that they love them.  In class, someone said that a parent's love for their children does not count as agapic, because a parent's love for their child is really an extension of love for themselves.  However, if we are using God as the example of agapic love, and we are following the typical Christian belief that God is the creator of humans and he created them in his image, it seems like his love for humans would just be an extension of love for himself.

Don Juan

Kierkegaard begins this essay by comparing the psychical love that was valued by the ancient Greeks with the sensuous love represented by Don Juan.  The main difference between psychical love and sensuous love seems to come down to the fungibility of the object of love.  In psychical love, the lover is in love with one specific person at a time.  They might end up falling out of love with that person quickly and moving on to someone else, but at the time they feel that they are only in love with that one person.  

In sensuous love, however, the person is not in love with any one woman, but rather with women in general.  As a result, every "relationship" that results from sensuous love is identical.  There is nothing distinguishing one encounter from another.  In psychical love, however, each relationship is unique.  Even though they may fall in love many different times, each relationship is different from the last one.

Another thing that distinguishes psychical love from sensuous love is that in psychical love there is an element of doubt.  The lover worries that the other person might not love them back. In sensuous love, there is no element of doubt, because each person could satisfy their needs equally well. It doesn’t matter if one person in particular doesn’t love them back because they can always find someone else to fill that role.

One of the things we talked a lot about in class was seduction vs. enticement.  The class collectively decided that one of the main elements in seduction is manipulation to get the other person to do what you want, with no regard for the other person’s wants or wellbeing.  Another key element of seduction is that the person being seduced can’t know they’re being seduced, because if they figure out they’re being seduced and enter into the encounter willingly then they are no longer being manipulated. If they are aware that they’re being seduced and they still decide to have a relationship then it becomes enticement. 

I thought our definition of seduction differed from the kind Kierkegaard was talking about.  When Kierkegaard talks about Don Juan, he says that “I by no means imagine him slyly formulating his plans, craftily calculating the effect of his intrigues.  His power to deceive lies in the genius of sensuousness, whose incarnation he really is.”

The kind of seduction we were talking about in class sounded like a carefully planned purposeful manipulation, while Don Juan’s seduction sounded like it was just a natural byproduct of his charismatic personality.  He never actually planned to manipulate his conquests.  Don Juan lives entirely in the moment, he doesn’t even think far enough ahead to be able to pull off a plan to manipulate someone.  The women are attracted to him without him even having to put in any effort.

I disagree with the idea of seduction as being deliberate manipulation.  I think what makes seduction different from enticement is that in seduction there is an imbalance of attraction.  One person is more attracted to the other, and this can end up in an imbalance of power where one person’s needs are met more than the others.  However, I don’t think this is intentional on the part of the seducer.  The power imbalance can occur naturally without someone intentionally trying to take advantage of the other.  In a relationship where both people desire the other equally, seduction doesn’t occur, because there is no power imbalance.

Another thing that our class talked about was that an element of seduction was that one person was unwilling to enter the relationship with the other person at first, but they are persuaded by the seductress into a relationship they wouldn’t want under normal circumstances.  In Kierkegaard’s essay, it didn’t seem like the women were unwilling to enter relationships with Don Juan.  It seemed like they were really willing, but the problem was that Don Juan was incapable of loving one woman in particular.  

Simone De Beauvoir 213-216

In this essay, Simone De Beauvoir discusses the different roles love plays in men's and women's lives.  One of the things she seems most concerned about is that while love is a small part of men's lives, for women being  desired by men and falling in love with them seems to be the whole focus of their existence.  She also examines the differences in the ways men and women express love. For women, love means submitting her body and soul to her lover. Men, however, don't give up any part of themselves when they are in love. According to Beauvoir, men's love is the desire to possess their lover.  I'm not sure I agree with Beauvoir's view on this. I think men's desire to possess their lover would be better categorized as lust than love.  I think of love as sort of a mutual vulnerability between two people. I don't think it's possible to be in love without both parties giving up a part of themselves to their lover.  While it does seem true that historically women have had to give up much more (such as careers, education, etc.) when they enter a relationship/marriage than men do, I disagree with Beauvoir's claim that men don't give up any part of themselves.

One of the parts of the essay I found most interesting was when Beauvoir was explaining why women want so badly to be in love.  She talks about how men are seen as sovereign, essential objects, encouraged to have bravery and ambition. while women are seen as "inessential creatures", who are doomed to dependence. Beauvoir talks about how males are held up almost to the same level as gods.  Women know that they can never be equal to men, so their only way of becoming important is to align themselves with a man. "She seeks to share in their masculinity by having one of them in love with her."  I thought this part was really interesting because she says that women are in love with the idea of masculinity, so it doesn't really matter which specific man she falls in love with. The entire point of love for a woman is to increase her social standing. It's also kind of sad how women as  they are portrayed in this essay have no identity of their own.  Their entire identity depends on the man with whom they enter a relationship with. 

This part reminded me of the controversy today over the practice of women taking their husband's last name when they get married. There are a lot of feminists who oppose this practice because they think that it signifies a woman giving up her own identity in favor of becoming part of her husband's. I can definitely see the merit in that argument.  Our name is a huge part of how we identify ourselves, and it does seem pretty weird that it's a social norm for women to give up the name they've identified with for their entire lives while men are not expected to do the same.  It makes it seem like marriage is a bigger part of the woman's identity than the man's, when it seems like it should be represented as equally important to both of them. 

Another part of the passage I thought was worthy of discussion was when she talked about how women resign themselves to a life of submission because it is easier than having to make their own decisions.  She talks about how in adolescence males are willing to submit themselves to being mothered and learning from older women, but this is merely a stage they pass through which would be socially unacceptable for them to stay in.  They are encouraged to challenge themselves and become independent.  Women, on the other hand, are taught to take the easy way out.  They are told that they will get everything they could ever want or need by being submissive to a man, so they have no reason to try to challenge themselves and make their own decisions.  When they eventually realize that being submissive has not gotten them everything the wanted, it is too late to change because they have already gotten used to being dependent on someone else to provide for them.  I wonder what Beauvoir would think of our culture today.  I feel like for the most part women today (at least in America) are encouraged to be independent and provide for themselves.  However, there are still a lot of ways in which women are encouraged to be more submissive than men, as evidenced by the fact that women who are assertive are considered "bossy" while in men assertiveness is considered a desirable trait.  

 

Feminism

The article begins by talking about a few of the specific movements of feminism.  “First wave” feminism was the political movement of the 19^th century where women fought for the right to vote.  “Second wave” feminism of the late 60’s/early 70’s sought to achieve greater equality for women in education, the workplace, and the home. The feminist movement we are in now is considered “third wave”.  This movement places a greater emphasis on intersectionality.   Some scholars object to this “wave” model because it ignores resistance of male dominance that occurred outside outside of these designated movements or timeframes.

The next section of the article seeks to define what feminism is.  The author says that feminism rests on 2 sets of beliefs: the normative claim and the descriptive claim.  The normative claim states that men and women are entitled to equal rights and respect.  The descriptive claim says that women are currently disadvantaged compared to men in terms of rights and respect. There are many disagreements within feminism about the ways that women are disadvantaged in comparison to men, and also the reasons for why these disadvantages occur.  One thing I liked about this section of the article was when it said “Feminists are not simply those who are committed in principle to justice for women; feminists take themselves to have reasons to bring about social change on women's behalf.”  One of the frustrations I have right now with the world is that it has become trendy to identify as feminist, even when one doesn’t actually reall know what feminism is or what it is trying to achieve.  Whenever a celebrity (such as Taylor Swift) identifies themselves publicly as a feminist, they receive a lot of praise even though they haven’t actually done anything to change things on women’s behalf. It’s great that these people are identifying themselves as feminists,  and it’s definitely better than trying to distance themselves from the word “feminist” because they fear it will make them seem like they hate men, but the next step after identifying themselves as feminist should be to use their fame to try to bring about social change.  If they claim to be a feminist but then don’t actually use their voice to speak out against the disadvantages women face, they are not actually a feminist. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that celebrities like Taylor Swift are publicly proclaiming themselves feminist, I just wish we would wait to praise them for being feminist until they’ve actually taken specific actions to try to achieve equality for women.

The next section of the article talks about how feminism interacts with the diversity of women.  One of the critiques of feminist movements has been that they have mainly focused exclusively on the issues that affect white, heterosexual, upper or middle class women.   This ignores all the ways that other women who do not fit this archetype are oppressed.  Although the goal of feminism is to end sexism, this cannot be achieved without attempting to end the other forms of oppression that women face, such as racism, classism, ableism, homophobia etc. Basically, feminism that is not inclusive of the experiences of all women is not an effective form of feminism.  Sexism is the oppression of women because of their gender, and it can take the form of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systematic violence The main focus of feminism is to combat sexism, but it cannot do that without addressing the other ways in which women are oppressed. “The commonality among the cases is to be found in the role of gender in the explanation of the injustice rather than the specific form the injustice takes.”

One of my favorite parts of the article was where it talked about how “it is a crucial feature of contemporary accounts, however, that one cannot assume that members of the privileged group have intentionally designed or maintained the system for their benefit.  The oppressive structure maybe the result of an historical process whose originators are long gone, or it may be the unintended result of complex cooperative strategies gone wrong.”  I thought this quote was so relevant to a lot of arguments I’ve had with people who are anti feminism, and I think I might print it out so that I can read it to them next time we’re in an argument.  One of the most frequent misunderstandings I’ve come across is people thinking that feminists hate men and blame them for the disadvantages women face. In my experience, I have never come across a feminist who feels this way.  Their anger is not at men, but at the patriarchal system we all live in. 

Singer: Appraisal and Bestowal

Singer begins by saying that love is a way of affirming the goodness of the object.  It is an act of prizing, cherishing, or caring about the object of love.

There are 2 ways of assigning the value of the object of love: appraisal and bestowal

Individual appraisal is deciding what an object is worth to oneself, or deciding how well it fits our own personal needs and preferences Objective appraisal is deciding how much something is worth based on how well it fits a community’s needs or preferences. Or, how the majority of a group of people would value it. It is a branch of empirical science, specifically directed toward assigning value. Bestowal is the value assigned by lover.

Bestowal is not dependent on an objects ability to fit the needs of someone.  It is a value the lover assigns to his beloved by himself, and it is not dependent on the beloved’s actual qualities. To use Singer’s confusing wording “For now, it is the valuing alone that makes the value.”  Bestowal is also what differentiates love from strong liking

One thing that I thought was interesting was that he says that we as humans are always setting a price on other humans through our judgement of their good or bad qualities, but when we are in love we cease to do so.  The initial appraisal may be why we enter relationships, but once we fall in love the actual qualities of our beloved don’t matter as much.  According to Singer, we place a value on them beyond that which can be measured by appraisal.  He loves her as more than an instrument to satisfy needs.  It ceases to be about how well she fits his needs, and turns into how well he can help fulfill her needs. I’m curious about if the bestowal still applies if after we fall in love we find out our initial appraisal was wrong.  If we fall in love with someone because we think they are kind and trustworthy, and later we find out they were lying about who they were, does the bestowal that resulted from our initial positive appraisal still stand, or is it disqualified?

Bestowal is also interesting because it seems to be the turning point at which love becomes selfless.  While appraisal is all about how the other person can fit our own needs, bestowal is about how we can fulfill their needs.  To me it seems that through doing all these things to fill the needs of the beloved, the act of bestowal would raise the appraisal that their beloved has of them.  However, Singer never mentions how the beloved feels about this bestowal, so that is purely speculation on my part.  In fact, Singer never mentions anything about the love needing to be reciprocated by the beloved, so it seems possible that he thinks love is valid even when it is unrequited.

Singer also mentions that the beloved cannot be fungible.  There must be something about the particular person that you are in love which makes you value them above all others.  This is the difference between love and simple desire.  Sexual desire could be fulfilled by anyone, but to be in love there must be some sort of special, irreplaceable connection to one person.

He also says that love/bestowal is a way of compensating for any negative appraisal others might give. If the lover sees has any negative appraisal of his beloved, it is another need of hers that he can fill. “Love confers value no matter what the object is actually worth.”

When he talks about love and morality, he says in love we must only try and help a person change if they want to change, not because we think they should change.  But he also says part of loving is caring about our beloved’s wellbeing.  If this is the case, how are we supposed to respond in the case of if, for example, the person we love is a drug addict?  They may not want to change, but if allow them to continue doing drugs, we are neglecting their wellbeing. What is the point at which caring for their wellbeing outweighs accepting the choices they make?  Also, he says that love is a positive affirmation.  Is it possible then, to love someone while still disapproving of certain characteristics they have? Singer says that the lover treats the beloved as if they were perfect, but over a long term relationship, there are always going to be times in which you get mad or frustrated with the person you love. It seems to me that as long as the majority of our relationship is based on positive affirmation, you can still have moments where you have negative feelings toward our loved one and still be in love.

Symposium Socrates' speech 198-212

We have heard speeches from almost everyone at the dinner party, and now it is time for Socrates to give his.  He starts off by saying that he is worried he will not be able to give a speech as beautiful as the one Agathon just gave.  It’s interesting how Socrates seems to always start off his speeches with some sort of self deprecation, even everyone including himself knows that he is always the smartest one in the room.    Socrates goes on to assert that part of the reason Agathon’s speech was so beautiful is because he was praising a fictitious version of love embellished with the grandest and most beautiful qualities, rather than praising the actual love. Socrates says that he would like to tell the truth about love using questioning, his preferred way of giving speeches.  He says that he would like to do his speech in a different style so he can avoid being compared to Agathon.

Socrates says that since love desires that which is beautiful and good, and since you can only desire that which you do not already have, Love is not beautiful or good. I thought this idea that you cannot desire that which you already have was really interesting.  Recently I read an article that said people who write down a list, or “count their blessings” reported feelings of being much happier at the end of the study. However when Socrates said “Whenever you say ‘I desire what I already have’ what you really mean is “I desire what I have now to be mine in the future as well” it made me think that these people in the study might not be as content with their lives if they thought there was a possibility they might lose what they have in the future.  So perhaps their newfound happiness is all a form of self delusion.   They are not happy with what they have, they are happy with the belief that what they have will still be there in the future.  It made me wonder how people who are living in war zones can find any contentment with their life at all, because there is always a chance that they could lose everything they have.

Socrates then moves on to the part of his speech where he is restating a speech given by Diotima.  In this, he says that even though love is not beautiful or good, it is not ugly or bad either.  It exists in a middle ground between the two extremes. This part as interesting because it seemed to me that they were drawing a parallel between love and philosophers in this part.  Philosophers also exist in a middle ground, only they are caught in between knowledge and ignorance.  They are not ignorant because they know that they desire knowledge, and the fact that they desire it means they don’t have it yet.

The part of the passage that I found the most interesting was when Diotima was talking about how love doesn’t desire beauty, but rather reproduction and birth in beauty.  Diotima says that reproduction is really amazing because it is how mortals achieve immortality, and therefore she seems to think of it as a godly act. She says this desire for immortality is why even animals love their offspring so much they sacrifice their own well-being to protect them.  I thought it was funny how she said that humans will sacrifice far more in the pursuit of honor than they will for the well-being of their children.  She seems to place those who try to preserve their immortality through producing children in a lower class, almost on par with animals.  The highest class is those who give birth to wisdom and virtue, which I interpret to mean philosophers.  What I thought was really interesting about this section was that while they said purpose of love was to reproduce, they talk about how the most immortal form of reproduction is giving birth to wisdom.  However, I don’t see why it is necessary to love another person in order to give birth to wisdom.  It seems like something a person could do by themselves. I also thought it was interesting how they said that everyone is in a pregnant state even before they meet their lover.  It makes it seem like whatever they are going to give birth to already exists solely in one person, but they can’t access it until they fall in love.