Din the section The duty of philosophy, we publishannually an abridged version of the text winner of the Philosopher competition, which is held in the college network. For the 2023 edition,the question was “What does love commit to?” “.
No need for a grill: hell is the Others” said Garcin in Behind closed doors. Like this quote, popular culture constantly reiterates its resentment towards love and its “lies”.
Today, the dream of the perfect union that children’s stories teach us is crushed in the face of statistics on divorce or the observation that Tinder often leads to inconsequential encounters.
The disorder of disillusionment with love has existed for centuries, as has its cure. What I describe as trouble is the observation that the perfect union between body and mind that love desires is in contradiction with what it commits to, pushing us towards two divergent practical definitions. The failure to emancipate himself from what he represents in his ideal gives rise to an immature conception of love: forced fusion.
This perverted form of the relationship is what Erich Fromm describes as a masochistic or sadistic symbiotic union. Like Fromm, I consider that this must be overcome with the help of a second conception: that of mature love, which simultaneously recognizes union and integrity and which exists beyond the phenomenon of reification on which a forced fusion ends.
Mythology
It is relevant to address the mythical manifestations of this romantic ideal, that of the refused heavenly union. Consider first the myth of Aristophanes as stated in Feast of Plato. Aristophanes begins his story by evoking a previous nature of the human being composed of three types of species resulting from the fusion of homogeneous and heterogeneous genera: a back, four hands, four legs, two faces and two genitals.
He then describes the arrogance of these creatures who tried to provoke the gods. They refused to tolerate their impudence and chose to punish them by separating them: “each, regretting his other half, went to her; and, embracing and embracing one another with the desire to merge together, men were starving for inaction, because they did not want to do anything without one another” (Plato).
At the same time, Adam and Eve, also created by a divine force, lived in a state of original union: Eve being formed from Adam’s rib. Their disobedience, synonymous with revolt, earned them punishment: a fall, condemnation to sexual modesty and the pain of giving birth.
It would be a great mistake to discard such myths simply because they have the same esoteric tone as the stories of soul mates and twin flames or even Christian doctrine. Indeed, according to Carl G. Jung, the myth is populated with symbolic images: “the models of the mother, of the Father of the Self, but also of the divine Couple, of the Child God, of Birth, of Unity » (Gazalé). Thus, it would be relevant to raise the constants of these stories which inhabit the collective imagination.
On the one hand, union is considered a higher ideal: the fulfilled human being. On the other hand, the separation turns out to be a punishment for his arrogance. Ultimately, the sexual act is thus devalued as a fusion or ephemeral pleasure, as long as it does not lead to biological union, to the conception of a new life. Thus, any form of human relationship only amounts to a quest for the impossible: love as a total fusion. “The reason for love’s centrality to our happiness and identity is not distant from why it constitutes such a difficult aspect of our experience; both are linked to the modalities of institution of the self and identity” (Illouz).
Immature love
Apart from this mythical exile, it is relevant to highlight a similar fall: that of our birth. Indeed, awareness of oneself as a separate and distinct being is not immediate.
The child considers the mother as an extension of himself since he is still entirely dependent on her; the two are united by a phantom umbilical cord. Thus, Fromm argues that the child is only capable of immature love (“I love you because I need you”), while maternal attachment is conversely mature: “I need you , because I love you. »
However, immature love is not specific to children: it is problematic when it follows them into adulthood and manifests itself in the form of a positive or negative symbiotic union.
Active manifestation, or masochism, is a means of escaping loneliness by means of inflating one’s ego: “The sadistic person seeks to escape solitude and imprisonment by making the other a part of himself. It expands and improves by incorporating the other, who admires it” (Fromm).
Furthermore, such a conception of the other is similar to the affirmation of solipsism: the conviction of my existence as the only absolute. I argue that a Cartesian solipsism constitutes a narcissistic impasse to love, because what it considers to be an absolute “I” commits to nothing except solitude and alienation. The failure to think of others as masters of an existence similar to ours deprives them of their dimensions as a subject.
Consequently, it becomes an object like the others, existing only when I perceive it; a quantum puppet that defines itself when I observe it.
Conversely, a passive or masochistic manifestation involves submission from one individual to another. He admires him like an all-powerful god: “I am nothing if not a part of him” (Fromm).
Indeed, the recognition of one’s own value is only possible through the active power of the other and gives rise to a love of idolatry. Among the most famous couples, Sylvia Plath claims to have maintained such love towards Ted Hughes in one of her last letters addressed to the DD Beuscher. Those who know the end of their story will be of the same opinion: the passive relationship is neither healthy nor sustainable.
Hell
Now, what about the famous quote from Sartre which supposes that “hell is other people”? The phenomenon of reification, as put forward by Jean-Paul Sartre, supposes that the view of others is just as reductive as ours and is neither megalomania nor masochism, but an insurmountable constant in our human relations.
Indeed, it is impossible to deny the absence of objectification in our relationships with others, because the human being, a social being, inevitably asserts itself through the gaze of others, or at least through a projection of what it supposes to be an external consciousness. However, the pessimism of such an observation must absolutely be overcome by the means of a mature union.
“Mature love is union with the condition of preserving its integrity” (Fromm). According to Erich Fromm, instead of finding a part of pleasure in the act of submitting the other to one’s desires, one must actively “give”, which is not, however, giving in or seeing oneself the victim of a theft to our individual complexity which characterizes reification.
By engaging in a “mature” relationship, the individual knows how to accomplish the gift of self, without feeling the anxiety of loss. On the contrary, the gift is necessary to access the union of the couple: the “we” does not deprive the “I” of its singularity. This act, fundamental to interpersonal fusion, is not motivated by the search for emotional profit from the gift of oneself: it feels an intrinsic pleasure in the act itself.
It is for this reason that mature love is difficult to apply to the new relationship, which often involves concern about the freedom and merits of the other. That said, I still consider that mature love is a discipline like any other; it requires practice and knowledge. Love then involves a mediation of the paradox which opposes integrity to union, the contingent and the voluntary, something which requires a degree of mastery and wisdom, hence the title of Fromm’s work: The art of loving.
Finally, our relationships with others are not solely or necessarily “hellish”, any more than they involve an impossible and therefore painful quest for knowledge. It is then imperative to replace the symbiotic union, or forced complementarity, with an unequivocal recognition of the other as an honest and autonomous being.
Harmony
Love rather involves its most “mature” manifestation, that is to say, a perfectly imperfect harmony. I also maintain that love involves horizontality, because despite an apparent rejection of a religious conception of the world, the aspiration towards transcendent ideals retains its hold on it.
As soon as human beings become aware of their solitude, they idolize love as the supreme happiness. Once disappointed, he hates him like his executioner and his hell. Instead of perceiving it as a meager reproduction of what it constitutes in this perfect state, love must be valued as a truly human phenomenon and experience, otherwise it will continue to elude us.
Thus, integrity is not the enemy of the romantic relationship, but an essential dimension of it, because its power is not that of eliminating loneliness, but of giving rise to a new being together.
To suggest a text or to make comments and suggestions, write to Dave Noël at [email protected]