In my contribution to the April 2021 webinar The Family and Integral Ecology, I presented a paper entitled “Philosophers’ insights on the family in the light of contemporary challenges”.[1] Therein, I argued that “the kind of giving and receiving that broadly characterizes family relationships is grounded on the characteristic transcendence of conjugal love, which, by definition, is a type of love open to, and morally responsible for, the generation of a new human being”. I further argued that “expanding those kinds of trusting and cooperative relationships beyond family borders, thereby pointing at the ultimate meaning of justice in human relationships, is one of families’ most significant contributions to the larger society”, for which families can be viewed as proper sources of humanization.
The discussion that followed revealed some issues seen as deserving further conceptual clarification because of their relevance for understanding the underlying dynamics of family life. One of them, perhaps the most prominent, was the very nature of love, which is what I will take up here. I think this exercise might also be relevant to mediate between what we could call “romantic” views and “institutional” views of family life.
I will first approach the issue from a linguistic perspective, and then will gradually move toward a more philosophical perspective, in order to show how the manifold dimensions of love can be held together,[2] without diluting its ultimate meaning, namely that of a unifying force that works at all levels of being and is responsive to the goodness of being itself.[3]
1. Different words for different meanings of love
Resorting to philology is a common strategy when it comes to clarifying the meaning of love. In his classical work on this topic, Joseph Pieper discusses the German language’s alleged shortcomings in this regard,[4] and goes on to analyze the Latin and Greek words for love that have influenced modern European languages. Russian thinker Pavel Florenski also argued that, in contrast to many other languages, which need periphrasis in order to clarify the manifold dimensions of human love, ancient Greek was privileged with four specific verbs,[5] namely ἔραμαι, φιλέω, στέργω, ἀγαπάω.
While στέργω designates a quiet and firm sentiment of belonging that follows from the organic bonds between the lover and the loved object, ἔραμαι – from which the word “Eros” comes – incorporates the idea of passion and desire. It goes beyond affection to also incorporate sensuality; although Eros is often used in the restricted sense of sexual desire, it represents the generic pathos of love that is also found in other kinds of love.[6]
Aquinas carefully describes this as a pathos that leads to the unification of the lover and the beloved, causing their mutual indwelling, as well as a sort of ecstasy in which lovers somehow exist outside of themselves. This pathos is source of zeal in the lover, a principle of everything that the lover does, bringing about changes whereby it best adapts to the beloved.[7] Importantly, Aquinas holds that this pathos’s characteristic features are common to all kinds of love, even if they do not originate in sensitive knowledge, but rather in intellectual knowledge or judgment.
More interested in stressing the differences, Florenski recalls that the Greeks used ἀγαπάω to mean the more rational love that follows from appraisal and judgment, which he then describes as “neither passional nor ardent or tender”,[8] precisely because it is grounded on rational discernment, not inclination. Nevertheless, ἀγαπάω is not pure knowledge; it also involves affection, which already inchoates the pathos of love. As we know, Christianity expanded the meaning of this verb, coining the word “agape”, thus incorporating the idea of self-giving and sacrificial love.
Three out of the four Latin words that Aquinas uses[9] to account for the manifold dimensions of love partially echoed their Greek counterparts: “amor” partially echoes Eros; “amicitia”, φιλία; and “dilectio”, from “diligere”, echoes ἀγαπάω. As we can see, στέργω disappears from Aquinas’s list, absorbed in the generic word “amor”, which he found broad enough to incorporate both the attachments rooted in natural inclination[10] and the complacency following sensitive or intellectual knowledge. Finally, caritas represents a specific Christian contribution, the Latin translation of the New Testament agape, even though, in Augustine’s account,[11] caritas includes some aspects of the other three.
Aquinas explicitly observes that amor “has a wider signification than the others, since every dilectio or caritas is love, but not vice versa. Indeed, dilectio implies, in addition to amor, a choice made beforehand; therefore, dilectio is not in the concupiscible power, but only in the will, and only in the rational nature”.[12] Amor broadly represents the Latin version of Eros. Interestingly, Aquinas also noted that many people held amor to be “more Godlike than dilectio”, arguing that “it is possible for man to tend to God by love, being as it were passively drawn by Him, more than he can possibly be drawn thereto by his reason, which pertains to the nature of dilectio”.[13]
On the other hand, he also observes that, unlike amor and dilectio – which are expressed by way of passion or act – amicitia – friendship – “is like a habit”, and caritas can be taken either way. Thus, when he refers to the friendly quality of a particular act of love, he prefers amor amicitiae, which he consistently contrasts with amor concupiscentiae. Finally, regarding caritas, all he says at this point is that it “denotes, in addition to love, a certain perfection of love, in so far as that which is loved is held to be of great price, as the word itself (carus) implies”.[14]
In the case of amicitia, friendship, we can clearly appreciate that human love cannot be fully grasped in terms of ἔραμαι or στέργω, because it always entails a dimension of agape; it is not just a principle of desire, following natural inclination, but also a principle of gift and donation, which does not exist without dilectio, just as φιλέω entails both inclination and self-transcendence. Indeed, in the experience of friendship, we see how intimacy and transcendence are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, we wish the good for our friends insofar as they are intimate to us.
Importantly, there is more to love than just inclination or desire. If they were exactly the same thing, love would disappear once inclination or desire were satisfied; yet, as a sort of complacency with the beloved, love is antecedent to desire and often persists when desire has been satisfied or has vanished,[15] as an effusive force ready to give itself to the other, as the fruit of abundance and plenitude, as agape.
St. John’s focus on this dimension of love enabled him to assert that “God is love” (1 John 4). Were he to have reduced love to Eros, in the Greek sense, he could not have written those words, for, as a perfect being, God is not marked by any kind of desire or necessity. The Aristotelian God was an eternal being that acted as first mover, attracting all things; it was the object, but not the subject of love. It is very different from the God presented in the first verse of the Bible, a God who creates heaven and earth out of nothing. In the Biblical tradition, Creation is an absolute act of divine freedom, and never a necessary emanation from the divine essence. Through Creation, God freely gives being to everything that exists. From this perspective, it is an absolute act of agape. We could say that, unlike human love, God’s love is absolutely creative[16] because it absolutely creates the good, along with the being that is object of this love. By contrast, human love, although creative,[17] is only relatively so, because human beings only love what they somehow antecedently perceive as good, i.e., as appropriate to their own nature.
But human nature is complex; although we share an organic and sensitive nature with many other natural beings, ours is ultimately endowed with reason. This impacts the specific nature of human love, which is neither pure Eros nor pure Agape; we humans are imperfect beings in search of our own fulfillment, and thus naturally and intimately affected by a number of appetites and desires. Yet, we are also rational and free beings, able to give from our own relative plenitude, and thus capable of agape at the natural level. Indeed, insofar as we are endowed with reason, we are able to decenter from ourselves and act gratuitously for the sake of another – i.e., we are capable of benevolence – often to the point of sacrifice.
In human love, Eros and Agape do not exist entirely apart from one another. While Eros always entails passivity and desire, it also entails a moment of relative self-transcendence, of self-abandonment. In that moment, it gestures to agape, even if its own movement ultimately returns to the self (amor concupiscentiae); agape, in turn, presents itself as active self-giving (amor benevolentiae), but insofar as no gift can succeed in absence of another who receives it, human agape, too, has an intimate need for the other’s receptivity. This is, by the way, the reason why we tend to think that unrequited love contains an element of tragedy: love calls for a response, but said response cannot be coerced, it must be free. When Christians profess their faith in the One Triune God – a God that consists of reciprocal relations between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – they are pointing in this direction.[18] In more mundane, human terms, we recognize this kind of free, reciprocal benevolence in friendship “inasmuch as friends return love for love, and both desire and do good things for one another”.[19]
This is not to say that being friends with others can be simply equated with ἀγαπάω, any more than it can be equated with ἔραμαι or στέργω. As Florenski notes, the difference between ἀγαπάω – in the pre-Christian sense – and φιλέω lies in the former’s reliance on judgment, in contrast with the latter’s origin in a particular inclination.[20] Likewise, the difference between ἔραμαι and φιλέω lies in that the former focuses on the affective and sensual element, whereas the latter focuses on the mutual immanence of friends, their intimate closeness.[21] Finally, στέργω and φιλέω differ because the former refers to generic qualities such as sympathy, affability or tenderness that are not necessarily linked to a specific person – as in friendship – but to human beings in general.[22]
Accordingly, friendship is marked by the immediacy and spontaneity of its origin – always in light of personal contact and not merely of organic bonds as in στέργω; friendship refers to the whole person, and not just a rational appreciation of their qualities – as in ἀγαπάω; to the warm quality of the sentiment it engenders – without it being passionate or impulsive, and to the closeness and personal intimacy that it encourages.[23]
2. Circularity and transcendence in human love
There is no love without a loving subject and an object of love that is regarded as good or appropriate[24] towards which we develop an affective unity. Hence, the relevance of phenomenological approaches to love, which research on the nature of this act. For, as Scheler has correctly underlined, love is an act, not just a feeling – even if it resonates in feeling.[25] Accordingly, he speaks of three forms of love, corresponding to a triple division of acts, in vital acts, mental acts and spiritual acts, all of which have an intrinsic reference to certain values. In his view, while vital acts would correspond to a dynamism proper to our bodily nature, mental acts correspond to our psychic self, and spiritual acts to our personal condition. All of them, however, “have an essential reference to particular kinds of value as their noematic counterparts”.[26] From a different perspective, Scheler would further distinguish different “kinds” of love, depending on particular qualities characterizing the emotion itself, such as maternal love, the love of home and country, love in the sense of “sexual love”,[27] etc.
In all cases, however, it is important to note, that, being an act, love resides more in the lover than in the object of love, even if it reaches its plenitude in symmetric reciprocity.[28] Ideally, the basic structural distinction between the subject and object of love points at a real distinction: one person loves another. Yet, we also speak of self-love, which contains no real distinction between the subject and the object of love.[29] While, in this case, the affective unity of love follows from substantial unity with oneself, in the other cases, love follows from some likeness with oneself.[30]
The alleged link between love and likeness is present in philosophers as different as Heraclitus, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Montaigne or Hume. Along the same lines, Pieper shows his amusement at the fact that the English word for “liking” is so similar to “liken”, in spite of philological arguments on the contrary.[31] Yet, at times, this connection has been criticized on the grounds that it brings back love of others to love of self. Thus, some hold that the common description of friends as “other selves” – the so-called “mirror” approach to friendship[32] – could be regarded as a subtle form of self-love, which does not sufficiently account for the other’s alterity. Yet this can be interpreted differently, insofar as we take a deeper approach to self-love.
To begin with, we should note that, unlike substantial unity, affective unity consists in a certain connaturalness or complacency of the subject with the object,[33] perceived as fitting, as adequate to the subject, for a variety of reasons that represent the various reasons for love; such complacency, in turn, eventually constitutes the principle of a movement towards real union with that object.[34] In this latter sense, Augustine says (De Trin. Viii, 10) that “love is a vital principle uniting, or seeking to unite two together, the lover, to wit, and the beloved”. In describing it as “uniting” – Aquinas notes – he refers to the union of affection, without which there is no love; and in saying that “it seeks to unite”, he refers to real union.[35]
We may hesitate to call love an act because we sometimes think of it in passive terms, as something that happens to us, given our nature or some antecedent knowledge of what is good. There is an obvious sense in which this second approach seems true, for
“love demands some apprehension of the good that is loved. For this reason – Aquinas notes – the Philosopher (Ethic. IX, 5, 12) says that bodily sight is the beginning of sensitive love: and in like manner the contemplation of spiritual beauty or goodness is the beginning of spiritual love…”.[36] Asserting the priority of knowledge, however, does not mean that perfect love requires perfect knowledge, or that love is just a derivative function of knowledge.[37] Rather, as stated above, it is a different kind of act. Indeed, while the perfection of knowledge “requires that man should know distinctly all that is in a thing, such as its parts, powers, and properties”, the perfection of love only requires that “a thing be loved according as it is known in itself”, i.e., in its alterity. For this reason, a thing “can be loved perfectly, even without being perfectly known”.[38] This might explain Harry Frankfurt’s point concerning why love itself, rather than an apprehended good, can often be taken as a proper source of value.[39]
Just as we speak of a sensitive love that follows sensible apprehension, we can also speak of an “intellectual or rational love” that follows what reason[40] presents us as good. Interestingly, though, ancient and medieval thinkers did not restrict the term love to sentient and rational beings alone. Insofar as they spoke of a natural appetite,[41] they also spoke of “natural love”, meaning the love that every natural being has for whatever is convenient to it, whatever contributes to its flourishing and perfection.[42] In this way, they could say that “plants love water”, meaning that they “need” water to stay alive. In speaking in these terms, they were doing more than projecting a human experience onto nature;[43] they were trying to understand a dynamism they acknowledged in all beings, one that is antecedent to any deliberate plans and purposes.[44] Like every other living being, human beings also have natural love and desire for whatever is convenient to them;[45] yet, unlike irrational beings, whose natural inclination does not follow their own perception and reason,[46] they are endowed with senses and the intelligence to grasp and rationally discern what really constitutes and contributes to their good; such discernment is particularly necessary if we consider that the three forms of love that we mentioned above, do not necessarily go in harmony with one another.[47] Hence “the love of that good, which a man naturally wills as an end, is his natural love; but the love which comes of this, which is of something loved for the end's sake, is the love of choice”.[48]
Insofar as love designates the relationship between a subject and what she perceives as convenient, it always involves some sort of “self-love”. This explains why, following Aristotle, Aquinas speaks of the circularity of love.[49] Yet, while self-love, love for one’s consistency or integrity, is obviously part of natural love, there is a sense in which natural love already brings its subjects beyond themselves simply because, as finite creatures, they are dependent on God, and have a natural desire for God, which is a desire for a transcendent Other. As a matter of fact, Aquinas says that in the state of perfect nature, human beings love God more than themselves.[50] This provides an ultimate reason for what Harry Frankfurt notes about self-love, namely that it is “necessarily derivative from, or constructed out of, the love that people have for things that are not identical with themselves… A person cannot love himself except insofar as he loves other things”.[51]
Stressing this idea is important in order to leave behind the modern controversy about “amour pur,” which, starting with Bossuet (1627-1704) and Fenelon (1651-1715), so heavily impacted on both theological and philosophical thought, making that self-love and altruism were considered to be systematically at odds. The truth is that human love cannot just skip over the natural condition of human beings, which inserts us in a regime of need and desire; yet, as Joseph de Finance once noted, insofar as we are creatures who have their being from God there is a fundamental affinity between us and God, antecedent to every desire.[52] Love thus appears as a principle of unity at different levels, even though, in the human case, the realization of such unity in practice cannot bypass rational deliberation and choice. Early sociologists were not wrong when, concerned with the erosion of social bonds, they assigned love a prominent place in their social theories.[53] A similar approach was also present in the sociological work of Pitirim Sorokin.[54]
Certainly, speaking of natural love does not solve our practical problems. For this we need to consider that, in shaping our natural inclinations and responses, reason opens for us a regime of freedom that accounts for a particular form of self-transcendence. Therein, the other appears in a new light – not just as the object of my love and desire, but also as a proper subject of love and desires. It is only at this point that we can begin to speak of love in relational terms, and appreciate its ecstatic character, i.e., the fact that love brings one outside of oneself.[55] Crucially, by introducing distance from our own inclinations, reason makes it possible for human beings to recognize one another as different, irreplaceable persons, as authentically other selves, and to love one another accordingly,[56] i.e., wishing them well, as they also wish the good for themselves. Rational self-love makes room for genuine love for the other, who is no longer viewed as just another member of the species, but rather as a unique, irreplaceable person.[57] At this level, the natural complacency of the lover in the beloved becomes a celebration of the other’s existence,[58] which echoes God’s original bestowal of being.
3. Amor, dilectio and practical love
As an act that expresses natural affinity or complacency with an object, love can be regarded as the fundamental act of a living being; as such, it is a fundamental act of our will,[59] which accounts for subsequent operations of that being. The practical relevance of love is one of the ideas that marks Frankfurt’s work.[60] For him, human beings’ natural love can be declined according to different, more particular reasons; while some of these reasons can be originally provided by the passions, in order to move us effectively, they have to be sanctioned by deliberate reason and choice. Now, in light of this new, rational horizon, a new meaning of love can emerge whereby one wills the good for another. Aquinas calls it dilectio; Kant calls it practical love[61] and, explicitly distinguishing it from love as a mere feeling, he regards it as a moral duty.[62]
Neither Aquinas nor Kant thought it possible to skip sensitive love since human beings are obviously sensitive beings.[63] Yet, at the same time, both assumed that sensitive incentives are insufficient of themselves to move a being endowed with reason and reflection, for reason is not necessarily tied to sensitive perceptions, but rather makes room for deliberation on the reasons to act in one way or another.[64]
According to Aquinas, dilectio differs from passion in that “it does not seek its object with… eagerness”; but it is also more than benevolence or goodwill, for dilectio involves “union of affections between the lover and the beloved, in as much as the lover deems the beloved as somewhat united to him, or belonging to him, and so tends towards him”.[65] Jacques Maritain emphasized dilectio as the most properly human form of love.[66] Importantly, dilectio has its principle in electio, hence in the choice a subject makes, which can eventually be devoid of passion, but can also consist in introducing order into what passion itself presented as valuable in the first place; in this latter sense, human love is marked by involuntary attraction and deliberate choice that actually seeks the good of the other. Again, eros and agape.
Kantian “practical love” also differs from merely sensitive or pathological love in that it does not have its origin in the inferior faculty of desire; it is also more than benevolence: not so much because it introduces order in pre-existing affections, but rather because it is practically oriented towards beneficence, which is how Kant understands the duty to love one’s neighbor as oneself.[67]
The universal scope of the maxim of benevolence, which is required for practical love, is also present in the attitude of the philanthropist, who “finds satisfaction in the well-being (salus) of human beings considered simply as human beings, for whom it is well when things go well for every other”, and is therefore “a friend of humanity in general”.[68] Yet, as Kant notes, the rather generic interest the philanthropist takes in others just because they are human beings represents the slightest degree of benevolence.[69] This is why, unlike mere goodwill, “practical benevolence” or “beneficence”, as implicit in the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is measured against the love we have for ourselves: for it is clear that, in practice, I take more interest in my own ends than in those of others, i.e. I love myself more than I love others. Accordingly, “practical love” will consist in “making the well-being and happiness of others my end”, very much as I pursue my own ends. In this way, it is reasonable to expect that practical love for others will take the spatial and temporal circumstances of human agency into account: this is how beneficence brings the universality of benevolence down to earth.
Dilectio and practical love place us on the soil of freedom and thus on a moral soil, which, despite its universal scope, makes room for personal differences, based on natural, spatial and temporal circumstances of human agency.[70] When Frankfurt asserts that “loving someone or something essentially means or consists in … taking its interests as reasons for acting to serve those interests”,[71] he places himself directly in this moral terrain:[72]
“Loving something – he notes – has less to do with what a person believes, or with how he feels, than with a configuration of the will that consists in a practical concern for the beloved. This volitional configuration shapes the dispositions and conduct of the lover with respect to what he loves, by guiding him in the design and ordering of his relevant purposes and priorities. It is important to avoid confusing love … with infatuation, lust, obsession, possessiveness, and dependency in their various forms”.[73]
In warning us about the latter confusions,[74] Frankfurt implicitly points at the classic distinction between amor concupiscentiae and amor amicitiae.
4. Amor concupiscentiae and amor amicitiae
Interestingly, Aquinas’ approach to this distinction is not primarily a moral one. For him, amor concupiscentiae represents a particular kind of love, namely the love that we feel for something that we experience as convenient and thus want for ourselves. By contrast, amor amicitiae represents the love that we feel for someone for whom we want something.[75]
Thus, when I want a bottle of wine, I actually “love” two things: I love the wine with amor concupiscentiae, and I love myself with amor amicitiae. Of course, if I want the bottle of wine for you, then it is you that I love with amor amicitiae,[76] provided that there is some communication. Indeed, “neither does well-wishing suffice for friendship, for a certain mutual love is requisite, since friendship is between friend and friend: and this well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication”.[77] Max Scheler’s reluctance to use the word “love” for just pleasant things, such as food or wine[78] can be explained because of his focus on personal love, which entails some sort of communication and reciprocity. After all, as Socrates made clear at the beginning of philosophy, human love has much to do with the desire to communicate with those we love.[79]
Thus, while both amor concupiscentiae and amor amicitiae are rooted in natural inclination and are thus marked by sentiment and affection, the quality of that sentiment is different; it follows from a different apprehension of the kind of union in which that bond of affection consists. Unlike amor concupiscentiae, which is simply based on personal convenience and desire, amor amicitiae is specifically marked by a regard for the other and reciprocal communication. As Aquinas puts it,
“When we love a thing, by desiring it, we apprehend it as belonging to our well-being. In like manner when a man loves another with the love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self, in so far, to wit, as he wills good to him as to himself. Hence a friend is called a man’s ‘other self’ (Ethic. ix, 4), and Augustine says (Confess. iv, 6), ‘Well did one say to his friend: Thou half of my soul’”.[80]
In other words, in friendship, “the lover stands to the object of his love as to himself”; but, in concupiscence, the lover stands to the object of his love “as to something belonging to himself”.[81] While the latter is moved by affection and is not just sheer instrumentality,[82] such affection and intimacy are not of the personal kind – you do not love the other as another self, but rather as something belonging to you.[83]
Reflecting on this difference could help frame one of the problems confronted by the philosophy of love, namely, whether love is compatible with autonomy.[84] We should consider that although love certainly establishes a bond, which apparently restricts our freedom, friendship is actually experienced as an expansion, not a diminution thereof. Kant himself points into this direction when he highlights the freedom resulting from finding someone with whom one can share one’s thoughts without fear of betrayal. In that moment, one “is not completely alone with his thoughts, as in a prison, but enjoys a freedom he cannot have with the masses, among whom he must shut himself up in himself”.[85] Freedom is not necessarily opposed to bonds: “positive bonds engender not only dependence, but also freedom and autonomy”.[86]
Summarizing Aristotle’s thought on the matter, Aquinas mentions five things proper to friendship, which account for the way in which friendship expands the scope of individual freedom: “in the first place, every friend wishes his friend to be and to live; secondly, he desires good things for him; thirdly, he does good things to him; fourthly, he takes pleasure in his company; fifthly, he is of one mind with him, rejoicing and sorrowing in almost the same things”.[87]
These features show how love of friendship, focused on the good of the other, responds better to the ecstatic nature of love than love of concupiscence does. Indeed, “in love of concupiscence – Aquinas observes – the lover is carried out of himself only in a certain sense; in so far, namely, as not being satisfied with enjoying the good that he has, he seeks to enjoy something outside himself. But since he seeks to have this extrinsic good for himself, he does not go out from himself simply, and this movement remains finally within him”; by contrast, “in the love of friendship, a man’s affection goes out from itself simply; because he wishes and does good to his friend, by caring and providing for him, for his sake.[88] Thus, while both types of love incorporate the feeling and pathos of love, only the love of friendship really respects the personal status of the other. This is why, in his account of friendship, Kant speaks of a delicate balance between love and respect.[89]
Friendships based on interest or pleasure fall short of the entire meaning of friendship, namely free reciprocal benevolence in which we want what is good for the other. Indeed, given the personal status of the other and their status of an end in themselves, loving other human beings can never be reduced to the pleasure or utility that they provide me with; rather it requires actively willing what is good for them, very much as we love ourselves. For this reason, human love cannot be reduced to pure Eros, but always entail a moment of agape, whereby we make the other’s ends our own ends. Ultimately, genuine love for other persons represents a culmination of love for oneself as a rational being who is open to the other as such.[90]
Taking these distinctions into account further explains the sense in which “love” can or cannot be the object of a command: while there is no point in commanding the passion of love, the natural predisposition for loving human beings can and should be cultivated. As Kant rightly notes, the practical commitment to advancing our neighbors’ ends often brings about adequate sentimental dispositions towards them. Stressing this latter aspect is relevant to moderate Scheler’s critique of Kant’s approach to the duty of love in terms of practical love.[91] Indeed, if active benevolence – doing good things to others – can be called love only in a derivative sense, the sentimental disposition that emerges from it can also be called love in a practical way, precisely because it is preceded by reason.[92] Accordingly, the duty to love our neighbor does not merely command us to do good things to our neighbor – which could eventually be done without love – but also, that, in doing so, we cultivate the love of human beings.
Actively cultivating this disposition, through practical benevolence, is important. After all, even friendship, which has its roots in a natural inclination, can hardly remain at that level. Human love can and should be educated through rational and practical discernment of what counts as a real good for the other. Aristotle himself points in this direction when he says that “friendship is a virtue or involves virtue”.[93] Listening to our friends, understanding their circumstances, supporting them in their reasonable projects… are friendly qualities that do not rely on inclination alone. Thus, while the sentiment of friendship can emerge spontaneously – and is, in this sense, independent of reason and morality – its consolidation requires time, judgement, and ultimately virtue, thus exhibiting friendship’s intrinsic moral dimension.
Raising a child to live and love that way requires surrounding her with that kind of love in the first place, for nobody can give what they have never received. This is what a child is supposed to experience in the family; it is also the reason why parents and educators should pay attention to the kind of companionships that children develop, for friends tend to become similar to their friends.
Based on the self-transcendence peculiar to the love of friendship, Aquinas projected the Aristotelian doctrine of friendship beyond the natural limits Aristotle himself set in order to explain the very structure of Christian caritas.
5. Caritas
As pointed out before, the word “caritas” is meant to indicate the extreme worth of the object of love. In theological contexts, this is none one other than God himself, and those who God loves. Aquinas asserts that caritas is a form of friendship.
At first sight, the assimilation of caritas to friendship could sound strange for two different reasons. First, given that we have no sensible knowledge of God, it is not easy to see how the sentimental dimension that is proper to friendship has a place in caritas and, second, and perhaps more importantly, because friendship entails some sort of equality, which does not exist between human beings and God.
Yet, Aquinas thinks that such friendship is possible for two interrelated reasons: first, because he thinks that God, who created us, is more intimate to us than ourselves and, second, because, as a Christian, he is convinced that God’s grace not only restores and strengthens our original love for God, which was distorted by sin,[94] but also elevates human nature to an entirely new dimension,[95] making human beings capable of sharing and communicating in God’s own intimate life with an amor amicitiae that is itself God’s gift.[96] It is this caritas that gives place to “the highest Christian phenomenon of ‘love in God’ (amare in Deo)”, as Scheler puts it.[97]
Indeed, charity is a form of friendship not only because it is a “movement of the soul towards the enjoyment of God for His own sake”,[98] but also because it entails “communication between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates His happiness to us”.[99] Just like every act of dilectio involves an affective union between the subject and the object of love, caritas creates a bond of affection between human beings and God.
In addition, but also following the dynamics of friendship, Aquinas points out that “Charity likens us to God”.[100] Accordingly, just as God loves all human beings, charity activates love and mercy for all other human beings.[101] Ultimately, charity engenders in us a “psychology of friendship” with our neighbors, even those who, at first sight, do not resonate with our nature or character.
The latter possibility, of course, does not neutralize the natural dynamic of human friendship. Aquinas makes this clear when he discusses whether it is more meritorious to love one’s enemy or one’s friend.[102] Ultimately, the dynamism of charity assumes the natural dynamism of friendship; but charity also introduces an additional reason for overcoming natural differences among human beings, and even for developing a psychology of friendship with everyone. The fact that such a psychology finds some natural resistance, the fact that it rarely reaches the ideal of free reciprocity found in friendship, is not necessarily bad news. On the contrary, it represents a guarantee of the transcendence of love, including the very love of friendship, proving that it does not remain confined to the narrow limits of our particular inclinations.
Ultimately, charity assumes and redeems the other kinds of love, which might otherwise turn into subtle forms of egoism, as C.S. Lewis famously argued.[103] From this perspective, there is reason to speak with Florenski of the “antinomy of philia and agape”, an antinomy that cannot be solved in theory, but that is extraordinarily fruitful in practice, collaborating to the shaping of a meaningful life.[104] St. John Henry Newman picked up this idea, when he spoke of the complementarity of friendship and charity, the fact that we cannot dispense with any of them, if we want to articulate, without downgrading them, the multiple dimensions of love. I conclude with his words:
“By trying to love our relations and friends, by submitting to their wishes though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming their occasional waywardness with kindness, by dwelling on their excellences and trying to copy them, thus it is that we form in our hearts that root of charity which, though, small at first, may like the mustard seed, at last even over-shadow the earth”.[105]
REFERENCES
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2017.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Aristotle, On the Soul, with an English translation by W.S. Hett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. XCVIII, 3 Martii 2006, pp. 217-252.
Curcio, G.G. Il volto dell’amore e dell’amicizia tra passioni e virtù. Una riflessione etica su Jacques Maritain, Rubbettino Editore, 2009.
Escrivá, Saint Josemaría, Furrow, Scepter, London-New York, 1987.
Escrivá, Saint Josemaría, The Forge, Scepter, London-New York, 1987.
Finance, J. Essai sur l’agir humaine, Roma: Presses de l’Université Grégorienne, 1962.
Florenski, P. La columna y el fundamento de la verdad. Ensayo de teodicea ortodoxa en doce cartas, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2010.
Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Gallagher, David, “Desire for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas”, Medieval Studies, 58, 1996, 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MS.2.306861
González, A.M. “Naturaleza y elementos de una concepción cognitivo-práctica de las emociones”. Pensamiento. Revista De Investigación e Información Filosófica, 67(253), 487-516.
Illouz, E. Why love hurts, Cambridge: Polity, 2012.
Kant, I. Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Kant, I. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, tr. Victor Lyle Dowdell, Southern Illinois University Press, 1996.
Kreft, N. Was ist Liebe, Sokrates? Die grossen Philosophen über das schönste aller Gefühle, München: Pieper Verlag, 2021.
Kuhn, H. Liebe. Geschichte eines Begriffs, München: Kösel-Verlag, 1975.
Lewis, C.S. The four loves, London: Fount Paperbacks, 1989.
Lippitt, J. Kierkegaard and the problem of self-love, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Newman, J.H. Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. II, nº 5, London: Rivingstones, pp. 259-64.
Nygren, A. Agape and Eros, tr. Philip s. Watson, New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Outka, G. Agape: an ethical analysis, Yale University Press, 1977.
Pieper, J. Über das Liebe. München: Kösel, 1977.
Rivadulla, A. “El concepto de amistad en Kant”, Isegoria, nº 61, 2019: 463-481. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2019.061.03
Rivadulla Durán, A. “Freedom and Bonds in Kant”, Con-Textos Kantianos, 9, 2019, pp. 123-136. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3252364.
Scheler, M. The nature of sympathy, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2008.
Scheler, M. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Sorokin, P. The ways and power of love: types, factors, and techniques of moral transformation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1954.
Spaemann, R. Reflexion und Spontaneität: Studien über Fénelon, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990.
[1] http://www.pass.va/content/scienzesociali/en/events/2019-23/family_ecology/gonzalez.html
[2] For an introduction in the main topics of a philosophy of love see Kreft, N. Was ist Liebe, Sokrates? Die grossen Philosophen über das schönste aller Gefühle, München: Pieper Verlag, 2021. Philosophical reflection on love is also relevant for theological discourse, just like theological reflection has an impact on the way we approach human love: “Überall gilt: Sage mir, was du von der Gottesliebe denkst, und ich werde dir sagen, was dir Menschen-liebe bedeutet- ein Satz, der sich umkehren lässt. Wenn also die Voraussetzung von der Wesenseinheit der Liebe irrig sein sollte, dann könnte es auch keine Geschichte des Liebesbegriffes geben”. Kuhn, H. Liebe. Geschichte eines Begriffs, München: Kosel-Verlag, 1975, p. 14.
[3] Max Scheler stressed this aspect by saying that “love has an intrinsic reference to value”, and cannot be reduced to a mere feeling, because it is a spontaneous act, never a reactive condition. Cf. Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers, 2008, pp. 141-2.
[4] Pieper, J. Über das Liebe. München: Kösel, 1977, p. 22.
[5] Florenski, P. La columna y el fundamento de la verdad. Ensayo de teodicea ortodoxa en doce cartas, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2010, p. 352.
[6] See also Pieper, J. Über die Liebe, p. 28.
[7] See Aquinas, Th. Summa Theologiae, S.th. I-II q. 28.
[8] Florenski, P. Columna y fundamento de la verdad, p. 352.
[9] S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 3.
[10] I link στέργω to “natural inclination”, taking the latter both in the classical and in the modern sense. Aquinas incorporates the Stoic notion of “natural inclination” in his account of natural law (S.th. I-II q. 94 a. 2), where he refers to the goods proper to natural beings, sensitive beings and rational beings. Yet, he assumes that behind every “natural appetite” or “natural inclination” there is always an intelligence that grasps the good appropriate for that being, namely God’s intelligence. Leaving aside the metaphysics, Kant retains the intrinsic connection between knowledge and inclination, although stressing the sensitive dimension of the latter. Thus, for him, inclination is “a subject’s sensuous desire which has become customary (habit)” (Anth. 7: 264. #80). The closest Kant comes to the idea of a natural inclination, in the stoic sense, is propensity (propensio), which he defines as “the subjective possibility of having a certain desire arise, which precedes the representation of its object”. Kant, Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view: Anth. 7: 264. #80.
[11] Which Anders Nygren criticized in his famous Agape and Eros, tr. Philip s. Watson, New York: Harper & Row, 1969. For a discussion of the way theologians have approached the notion of agape see Outka, G. Agape. An Ethical analysis, Yale University, 1972. For an exposition of the Catholic view on love see Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est. In: Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. XCVIII, 3 Martii 2006, pp. 217-252.
[12] S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 3.
[13] S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 3 ad 4.
[14] S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 3.
[15] “Desire implies the real absence of the beloved: but love remains whether the beloved be absent or present”. S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 1 ad 1.
[16] See Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 62-63.
[17] Love is always creative, as Plato already emphasized in the Symposium. Scheler underlines this idea when he notes that love is not just the reaction to something experienced as valuable: it also includes a movement towards the ideal values implicit in the object of love (The Nature of Sympathy, p. 153). Indeed, in loving someone, the lover does not merely discover existing values, but also anticipates the ideal image of those values. Therein lies the creative dimension of love, which needs not be interpreted in a pedagogic or moralistic way, as Scheler himself makes clear: genuine love does not “idealize” its object, rather it opens the eyes for the highest value implicit in the loved object (pp. 157-161).
[18] Yet, when Christians profess their faith in the Incarnation of God the Son, i.e., when they profess their faith in Jesus Christ as true God and true man, these reflections acquire an entirely new dimension, with implications for how they understand both humanity and divinity. Therein, the reciprocal relationship between the Father and the Son receives a human translation in the human acts of Jesus Christ, specifically in his desire to fulfill the will of his Father; and, at the same time, Jesus Christ’s human acts, such as his compassion for the sick, his friendship with and tears for Lazarus, can also be attributed to the divine person that constitutes one part of the Trinity.
[19] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 2.
[20] Florenski, o.c. p. 354.
[21] Florenski, o.c. p. 354.
[22] Florenski, o.c. p. 354.
[23] Florenski, o.c. 352.
[24] S.th. I-II q. 27 a. 1.
[25] See Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, p. 140-144.
[26] Specifically: “vital acts to the values of the ‘noble’ and the ‘mean’ or ‘base’; mental acts to the values of knowledge and beauty (cultural values); and spiritual acts to the values of the ‘holy’ and the ‘prophane’”. Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, p. 169.
[27] Characteristically, Scheler thinks that such “quality” is proper to the emotion itself, so that one would not need to consider the object to which it applies. See Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, p. 171.
[28] “Schon in den frühen erörterungen über die Natur der Liebensbeziehung, die im Kreis der Sokratiker um die Wende vom 5. Zum 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Zu Athen stattfanden, brachen sich zwei Einsichten Bahn: einmal, dass die Liebe mehr in dem Liebenden ist als in dem Geliebten; ferner, dass erst in der Wechselseitikeit die Liebe ihre Vollendung findet. Doch die wechselseitige Liebe lässt noch eine weitere Unterschediung zu: Sie kann symmetrish oder assymetrisch sein, und das heist, der Anteil an Aktivität und entsprechend an Passivität kann auf die Partner gleich oder auch ungleich verteilt sein.” Kuhn, H. Liebe. Geschichte eines Begriffs, München: Kösel-Verlag, 1975, p. 10.
[29] Scheler stresses this fact in order to differentiate love and sympathy: while one can love or hate oneself, one cannot sympathize with oneself. He takes this to mean that alterity is not part of the notion of love. (Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, p. 150). Yet, as I argue in the text, Aquinas’ approach to self-love shows that it is ultimately rooted in love for God, and thus in love for the Other.
[30] S.th. I-II, q. 27, a. 3. “Everything loves what is one with itself. So, if this be one with it by natural union, it loves it with natural love; but if it be one with it by non-natural union, then it loves it with non-natural love. Thus, a man loves his fellow townsman with a social love, while he loves a blood relation with natural affection, in so far as he is one with him in the principle of natural generation”. S.th. I q. 60 a. 4.
[31] Pieper, J. Über die Liebe, p. 32.
[32] Lippitt, J. Kierkegaard and the problem of self-love, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 14-30.
[33] “… The appetible object gives the appetite, first, a certain adaptation to itself, which consists in complacency in that object; and from this follows movement towards the appetible object…”. S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 2.
[34] “Union has a threefold relation to love. There is union which causes love; and this is substantial union, as regards the love with which one loves oneself; while as regards the love wherewith one loves other things, it is the union of likeness, as stated above (I-II: 27:3). There is also a union which is essentially love itself. This union is according to a bond of affection, and is likened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover stands to the object of his love, as to himself, if it be love of friendship; as to something belonging to himself, if it be love of concupiscence”. Again, there is a union, which is the effect of love. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of his love. Moreover, this union is in keeping with the demands of love: for as the Philosopher relates (Polit. ii, 1), “Aristophanes stated that lovers would wish to be united both into one”, but since “this would result in either one or both being destroyed”, they seek a suitable and becoming union – to live together, speak together, and be united together in other like things”. S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 1 ad 2.
[35] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 1.
[36] S.th. I-II q. 27 a. 2.
[37] Scheler (The Nature of Sympathy, p. 148) insists that love and hate represent ways of behaving when confronted with valuable objects, and as such neither love nor hate are cognitive acts. Yet, this account does not exclude that in order to love something one needs to perceive it (either with sensible or rational knowledge) as good, i.e. as convenient, which in turn implies an antecedent appetite for what is perfective of oneself.
[38] S.th. I-II q. 27 a. 2 ad 2.
[39] “The lover does invariably and necessarily perceive the beloved as valuable, but the value he sees it to possess is a value that derives from and that depends upon his love. Consider the love of parents for their children… I do not love my children because I am aware of some value that inheres in them independent of my love for them. The fact is that I loved them even before they were born -before I had any especially relevant information about their personal characteristics or their particular merits and virtues…” Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 39.
S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 3 ad 4.
[41] The idea of natural appetite involves that natural beings, insofar as they are active and yet imperfect beings, are intrinsically moved to search for the good according to their own nature, i.e., the good that makes them act and shine in their fullness. Influenced by Plato’s theory of participation, Aristotle interpreted such movement as the way natural beings have to imitate the eternal and divine. See Aristotle, On the soul, II, 4, 415 a26- 415 b9.
[42] “Love is something pertaining to the appetite; since good is the object of both. Wherefore love differs according to the difference of appetites. For there is an appetite which arises from an apprehension existing, not in the subject of the appetite, but in some other: and this is called the ‘natural appetite’. Because natural things seek what is suitable to them according to their nature, by reason of an apprehension which is not in them, but in the Author of their nature, as stated in I:6:1 (Reply to Objection 2) and I:103:1 (Reply to Objections 1 and 3). And there is another appetite arising from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite, but from necessity and not from free-will. Such is, in irrational animals, the ‘sensitive appetite’, which, however, in man, has a certain share of liberty, in so far as it obeys reason. Again, there is another appetite following freely from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite. And this is the rational or intellectual appetite, which is called the ‘will’.
Now in each of these appetites, the name ‘love’ is given to the principal movement towards the end loved. In the natural appetite the principle of this movement is the appetitive subject’s connaturalness with the thing to which it tends, and may be called ‘natural love’: thus, the connaturalness of a heavy body for the center, is by reason of its weight and may be called ‘natural love’. In like manner the aptitude of the sensitive appetite or of the will to some good, that is to say, its very complacency in good is called ‘sensitive love’, or ‘intellectual’ or ‘rational love’. So that sensitive love is in the sensitive appetite, just as intellectual love is in the intellectual appetite. And it belongs to the concupiscible power, because it regards good absolutely, and not under the aspect of difficulty, which is the object of the irascible faculty”. S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 1.
[43] Scheler criticizes this anthropocentric view in The Nature of Sympathy, p. 155.
[44] “It is common to every nature to have some inclination; and this is its natural appetite or love. This inclination is found to exist differently in different natures; but in each according to its mode. Consequently, in the intellectual nature there is to be found a natural inclination coming from the will; in the sensitive nature, according to the sensitive appetite; but in a nature devoid of knowledge, only according to the tendency of the nature to something…”. S.th. I q. 60 a. 1.
[45] Although modern authors such as Kant no longer speak in these terms, he nevertheless connects life with the faculty of desire.
[46] “Natural love is nothing else than the inclination implanted in nature by its Author”. S.th. I q. 60 a. 3.
[47] “The profound differences between these three forms of love are clearly brought out by a variety of circumstances. Firstly, by the fact that the same person can be the object of hatred and love, in each of their three forms, on all these levels of existence and value at the same time (while sensual attraction may take yet another course of its own). Thus, we can love a person deeply, for instance, without his inspiring a ‘passionate attachment’ in us, indeed while finding his whole bodily aspect extremely repellent. It is equally possible to be fired with a violent passion for someone – not just sensual attraction – without thereby finding anything to love in his mentality, the cast of his emotions, his intellectual interests, or the nature of his spiritual make-up… People who display such an evident disparity and conflict in their love and hatred are usually described as ‘maladjusted’ characters. But this very fact that there can be such a variety of ‘maladjustments’ here, suggests that these functions of love are essentially separable, and continue to be so even when they actually work together in harmony and have but one object. A ‘well-adjusted’ character is to that extent a special gift of fortune…”. Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, pp. 170-171.
[48] S.th. I q. 60 a. 2.
[49] “…The appetitive movement is circular’, as stated in De anima iii, 10; because the appetible object moves the appetite, introducing itself, as it were, into its intention; while the appetite moves towards the realization of the appetible object, so that the movement ends where it began. Accordingly, the first change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object is called ‘love’, and is nothing else than complacency in that object; and from this complacency results a movement towards that same object, and this movement is ‘desire’; and lastly, there is rest which is ‘joy’. Since, therefore, love consists in a change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object, it is evident that love is a passion: properly so called, according as it is in the concupiscible faculty; in a wider and extended sense, according as it is in the will”. S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 2.
[50] S.th. I 60, a. 5 ad 4. “In the state of perfect nature man referred the love of himself and of all other things to the love of God as to its end; and thus, he loved God more than himself and above all things. But in the state of corrupt nature man falls short of this in the appetite of his rational will, which, unless it is cured by God’s grace, follows its private good, on account of the corruption of nature…”. S.th. I-II q. 109 a. 3.
[51] Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, p. 85.
[52] De Finance, J. Essai sur l’agir humaine, Roma: Presses de l’Université Grégorienne, 1962, p. 193.
[53] See Kuhn, H. Liebe. Geschichte eines Begriffs, p. 17.
[54] Sorokin, P. The Ways and Power of Love: Types, factors, and techniques of moral transformation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1954.
[55] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 3.
[56] This is important for overcoming the suspicion that love for one’s friends is a disguised form of self-love. See Lippitt, J. Kierkegaard and the problem of self-love, p. 17.
[57] This is one of the aspects of Scheler’s approach to love that Nora Kreft stresses most in her book. See Kerr, N. Was ist Liebe, Sokrates?, pp. 62 ff.
[58] Pieper, J. Über das Liebe, p. 43.
[59] S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 1.
[60] “It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about, or… something we regard as important to ourselves. In certain cases, moreover, what moves us is an especially notable variant of caring: namely, love. In proposing to expand the repertoire upon which the theory of practical reason relies, these are the additional concepts that I have in mind: what we care about, what is important to us, and what we love”. Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 10-11.
[61] Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, MS, 6:449-450.
[62] Kant, MS, 6:401-4022.
[63] Kant refers to “aesthetic pre-notions for receptiveness to moral duty”, among which he includes philanthropy. See Kant, MS, 6: 399.
[64] González, A.M. “Aproximación a un concepto cognitivo-práctico de las emociones”, Pensamiento. Revista De Investigación e Información Filosófica, 2011, 67(253), 487-516.
[65] S.th. II-II q. 28 a. 2.
[66] See Curcio, G.G. Il volto dell’amore e dell’amicizia tra passioni e virtù. Una riflessione etica su Jacques Maritain, Rubbettino Editore, 2009.
[67] Kant, MS, 6: 451.
[68] Kant, MS, 6: 450.
[69] Kant, MS, 6: 451.
[70] Sometimes it is argued that morality and love make different if not opposing claims on us, for the former are universal, whereas the latter are personal and particular. This opposition results from linking morality exclusively to reason, and forgetting that human reason is rooted in a material nature, which provides a reference for what Augustine called “the order of love”. As a result, the realm of the “reasonable” is excluded from the moral realm, which is then equated with the purely and abstractly rational. Yet, morality is first articulated around natural conditions one is more obliged to one’s parents or to neighbors than to distant others, simply because they happen to be closer to us, and thus make the maxim of benevolence practicable.
[71] Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, p. 37.
[72] Even if this means expanding his own idea of morality: “Morality does not really get down to the bottom of things. After all, it is not sufficient for us to recognize and understand the moral demands that may properly be made on us. That is not enough to settle our concerns about our conduct. In addition, we need to know how much authority it is reasonable for us to accord to those demands. Morality itself cannot satisfy us about this”. Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, p. 9.
[73] Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, pp. 42-43.
[74] A few lines before the preceding quote, he had sharply disentangled the sentimental and the rational dimensions of human love: “Love – he notes right before the preceding quote – may involve strong feelings of attraction, which the lover supports and rationalizes with flattering descriptions of the beloved. Moreover, lovers often enjoy the company of their beloveds, cherish various types of intimate connection with them, and yearn for reciprocity. These enthusiasms are not essential. Nor is it essential that a person like what he loves. He may even find it distasteful. As in other modes of caring, the heart of the matter is neither affective nor cognitive. It is volitional…”. Frankfurt, H. The Reasons of Love, p. 42.
[75] “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…”. S.th. I-II q. 26 a. 4. See also S.th. I 60 a. 3: “A thing may be loved in two ways; first of all, as a subsisting good; and secondly as an accidental or inherent good. That is loved as a subsisting good, which is so loved that we wish well to it. But that which we wish unto another, is loved as an accidental or inherent good ... This kind of love has been called by the name ‘concupiscence’ while the first is called ‘friendship’”.
[76] Gallagher, David, “Desire for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas”, Medieval Studies, 58, 1996, 1-47. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.MS.2.306861
[77] S.th. II-II q. 23 a. 1.
[78] “The highest form of love is … that which relates to objects (or persons), having the intrinsic value of holiness; mental love is that which the self has for cultural values of any kind; while vital love relates to the ‘noble’. Objects whose value is simply that of being ‘pleasant’, engender neither love nor hatred. There is just a feeling of pleasantness (including reflexive modes of this, such as ‘enjoyment’), together with an ‘interest’ in things that are pleasant, or indirectly pleasing, and so ‘useful’; but there is no love for them. For although we may speak, colloquially, of ‘loving’ a food, the expression is quite unsuited to the phenomenon it describes. Merely ‘pleasant’ things cannot be suitable for love, seeing that they are incapable of an enhancement of value in the sense implicit in the nature of love. Hence there is no such thing as ‘sensual love’, so far as the word ‘sensual’ in this expression is taken to denote a particular kind of love, and not just a way of saying that love, in this instance, is accompanied and interspersed with sensual feeling and emotion. A purely ‘sensual’ attitude to a person, for example, is at the same time an absolutely cold and loveless attitude. It necessarily treats the other as merely subservient to one’s own sensual feelings, needs and, at best, enjoyment. But this is an attitude wholly incompatible with any sort of intentional love for the other, as such”. Scheler, M. The Nature of Sympathy, pp. 169-170. See also Scheler, M. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. 223.
[79] The idea is articulated by Nora Kreft in this fictive dialogue: “Ich habe ja schon erlautert, dass ich die Liebe zu einer anderen Person als Verlangen nach einem philosophischen Gespräch mit ihr verstehen. Denn so kommen wir der Weisheit näher… Wenn wir nach Anderen als Gesprächspartnern verlangen, dann verhalten wir uns zu ihnen als Mitakteuren in dem gerade geschilderten Sinne. Denn miteinander sprechen, nachdenken -all das sind Handlungen, für die man frei sein muss. Oder für die man die eigene und die Freiheit des Anderen wenigstens annehmen muss. Sonst funktioniert es nicht…”. Kreft, N. Was ist Liebe, Sokrates?, pp. 86-7.
[80] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 1
[81] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 1 ad 2.
[82] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 2.
[83] “Love of concupiscence is not satisfied with any external or superficial possession or enjoyment of the beloved; but seeks to possess the beloved perfectly, by penetrating into his heart, as it were. Whereas, in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself; and his friend’s will as his own, so that it seems as though he felt the good or suffered the evil in the person of his friend”. S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 2.
[84] See Kreft, N. Was ist Liebe, Sokrates?, pp. 130-151. For a sociological discussion of this topic, see: Illouz, E. Why love hurts, Cambridge: Polity, 2012.
[85] “If he finds someone intelligent – someone who, moreover, shares his general outlook on things – with whom he need not be anxious about this danger but can reveal himself with complete confidence, he can then air his views. He is not completely alone with his thoughts, as in a prison, but enjoys a freedom he cannot have with the masses, among whom he must shut himself up in himself”. Kant, MS, 6: 472.
[86] Rivadulla Durán, A. “Freedom and Bonds in Kant”, Con-Textos Kantianos, 9, 2019, pp. 123-136. Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3252364.
[87] S.th. II-II q. 25 a. 7.
[88] S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 3. This is also the reason why, unlike the zeal involved in love of concupiscence, which “is moved against all that hinders his gaining or quietly enjoying the object of one’s love”, the zeal involved in love of friendship “causes a man to be moved against everything that opposes the friend’s good”. S.th. I-II q. 28 a. 4.
[89] Kant, MS, 6: 470. See Rivadulla, A. “El concepto de amistad en Kant”, Isegoria, 61, 2019: 463-481. https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2019.061.03
[90] Aristotle’s distinction of two meanings of “self-love” is relevant here: “Those who use ‘self-love’ as a term of reproach describe as self-lovers those who assign themselves the larger share of money, honors and bodily pleasures. For it is these that the masses desire and take trouble over as if they were the greatest goods; and this is why they are objects of competition. People who want more than their share of them are gratifying their appetites and their feelings in general, and the non-rational part of their soul. And since the masses are like this, the word has taken its meaning from the most common self-love. And because such self-love is bad, those who exhibit it are justly reproached. It is evidently those who assign things like this to themselves that the masses usually describe as self-lovers; for if someone always takes trouble that he of all people does what is just or temperate or whatever else is in accordance with the virtues, and in general always makes what is noble his own, no one will call him a self-lover or blame him. But a person like this seems to be more of a self-lover. At any rate he assigns to himself what is noblest and best above all, and gratifies the most authoritative element within himself, obeying it in everything. And just as a city or any other organized body seems to be above all the most authoritative element within it, the same is true of a human being; and therefore, someone who likes this part and gratifies it is most of all a self-lover”. Aristotle, NE, IX, 8, 1168b 14-34.
[91] “There is no ‘practical love’ as a special quality of love, only love that leads to practical ways of comportment. But the latter cannot be commanded, either. On the other hand, things other than love can lead to practical ways of comportment, too, e.g., ‘goodwill’ as well as ‘good-doing’. The latter can be commanded. But both are basically different from the act of loving, and they can exist without being consequences of love…”. Scheler, M. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 225.
[92] As a matter of fact, Kant himself counts love of human beings – Menschenliebe – as one of the “Aesthetic pre-concepts for the mind’s receptivity to concepts of duty” for the receptivity to moral concepts. See Kant, MS, 6: 399.
[93] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1, 1155a 1-2.
[94] S.th. I-II q. 109 a. 3.
[95] S.th. I-II q. 109 a. 3 ad 3.
[96] While the finite will cannot love God as a friend if God himself does not infuse his charity in our will, Aquinas quotes Augustine to say that, “in uniting man’s mind to God, charity makes it possible for man to approach God ‘not by steps of the body but by the affections of the soul’”. S.th. II-II q. 24 a. 4.
[97] According to Scheler, “man rises above all laws, even the laws of God…, by virtue of the fact that he knows himself to have the immediate power of an essential identity with the spiritual principle of life … through which all ‘commandments’ find their only possible (and also necessary) justification”. Scheler, M. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 223. In my view, Scheler goes too far in speaking of “an essential identity” of man and God; grace is a participation in God’s intimate life, in Christ’s divine filiation. Yet our filiation is adoptive, not natural. On the other hand, while acting out of love is certainly different from acting out of duty, stressing the spontaneous character of love should not lead us to forget human limited nature, implicit in the connection between friendship and commandments, that Jesus himself raises in the Gospel: “You are my friends if you do what I command you”. John, 15:14. If both things can go together is because in spite of the difference, friendship and obedience have something crucial in common: the identification with God’s will.
[98] S.th. II-II q. 23 a. 1, sed contra.
[99] S.th. II-II q. 23 a. 1.
[100] S.th. II-II q. 30 a. 4 ad 3.
[101] “The sum total of the Christian religion consists in mercy, as regards external works: but the inward love of charity, whereby we are united to God preponderates over both love and mercy for our neighbor”. S.th. II-II q. 30 a. 4 ad 2.
[102] At this point, he makes a relevant distinction as to whether it is better, or more meritorious, to love one’s friend or one’s enemy depending on the neighbor whom we love, namely friend or enemy, or depending on “the reason for which we love him”.
Thus, “in the first way, love of one’s friend surpasses love of one’s enemy, because a friend is both better and more closely united to us, so that he is a more suitable matter of love and consequently the act of love that passes over this matter, is better, and therefore its opposite is worse, for it is worse to hate a friend than an enemy”. Yet, in the second way, “it is better to love one’s enemy than one’s friend, and this for two reasons. First, because it is possible to love one’s friend for another reason than God, whereas God is the only reason for loving one’s enemy; Secondly, because if we suppose that both are loved for God, our love for God is proved to be all the stronger through carrying a man’s affections to things which are furthest from him, namely, to the love of his enemies, even as the power of a furnace is proved to be the stronger, according as it throws its heat to more distant objects. Hence our love for God is proved to be so much the stronger, as the more difficult are the things we accomplish for its sake, just as the power of fire is so much the stronger, as it is able to set fire to a less inflammable matter”. Interestingly, however, he concludes that “just as the same fire acts with greater force on what is near than on what is distant, so too, charity loves with greater fervor those who are united to us than those who are far removed; and in this respect the love of friends, considered in itself, is more ardent and better than the love of one's enemy”. S.th. II-II q. 28 a. 7.
[103] Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves, London: Fount Paperbacks, 1989. See also Saint Josemaría Escrivá: “Earthly affections, even when they aren’t just squalid concupiscence, usually involve some element of selfishness. So, though you must not despise those affections – they can be very holy – always make sure you purify your intention” (The Forge, n. 477); or “If the love of God is put into friendships, they are cleansed, reinforced and spiritualised, because all the dross, all the selfish points of view and excessively worldly considerations are burned away. Never forget that the love of God puts our affections in order, and purifies them without diminishing them” (Furrow, n. 828).
[104] Florenski, P. La columna y el fundamento de la verdad, p. 367.
[105] Newman, J.H. Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. II, nº 5, London: Rivingstones, pp. 259-64. Quoted by J. Lippitt, o.c. p. 32.