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.