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.