Compos Mentis

Silence, or, De Amor

(Eds. note: Writing has become more difficult for me lately. Partially this is because I find myself very busy, partially this is because I have been reading fewer books that make me think very hard, and partially this is because I've reached a kind of watershed mark on some subjects, and I now have to dig deep into them rather than just play around the edges. I also have four posts that I've started writing here but then abandoned because I didn't like them. But all of this is my problem. Here's something a little different from my notebook. My only warning is not to take it too seriously.)

Love, of course, means nothing. It is a vacuologism, and perhaps the basis of many others. It is also one of the best teaching tools the human race has at its disposal, being generally painful, scratching, aggravating, exhausting, inspiring and yet desired. I would explore this side of love more but I doubt my poetic abilities. So I look at love as a linguistic phenomenon.

'Love' is one of the most broad terms as used in general experience. You can love toast, books in general, a particular book, a pet, a place, a spouse, a parent, and even a God without being inappropriate. This is what is said: "I love toast," "I love my wife," "I love God." Three tokens of the same type, but used in very different ways. No one has been so moved by their love of toast that they felt compelled to write great verse or compose or paint or sculpt. The love for some things indicates only an emotional emphasis on the pleasure one receives from the particular thing - "well, he may like toast, but I love it." The speaker is describing the same relation, but with emphasis to indicate his desire or the pleasure he receives from toast is greater than the other person's.

Elementary. This is clarifying meaning. But difficulties arise when we use 'love' in a different way: "I love him, I know it." What does it mean to love someone else? Or what does it mean when one says, "I love him?" In some cases, surely, the meaning is the same as that of toast above. Some instances of "I love him" mean "I enjoy his presence," or at least "I enjoy what he does with/for/to me." But hopefully we can say with many others that love goes farther, that saying "I love you," - perhaps after forty or fifty years of knowing and being with each other - is something entirely different.

What would this mean? Well, let us see first if it is true. Perhaps all love is of the first kind, an acknowledgment of desire and articulation of appreciation. Some of the love I alluded to - that which inspires poetry and other art - could possibly fall under this category. Unrequited love, certainly, if particularly powerful, as desire tends to grow when unfulfilled. And perhaps we can say that, sometimes, mere desire is not truly love, even in the sense that we've acknowledged; if I see a girl out the corner of my eye and I am attracted to her, I cannot say "I love her" seriously, even in the same sense as loving something like toast. She has nothing to do with me. I cannot claim to have gained any enjoyment from seeing her, not enough to require the emphasis. So why do people say, in that moment, at that juncture in two lives, "Oh, I love her!" if they can't put in any more poetic, beautiful, or alternatively sappy way?

I think we know or expect that there is more to loving people than just this pleasure and this desire. We can see changes in lovers who stay together as they age; and we can see its absence in those who may live together but not have the same connection.

"There!" you may say, we have it. We have a word. Love is a connection. Let us play the Aristotelian game, let us be followers of Porphyry and outline the differentia from all other connections. How would we describe such a connection? Or better, how would we explain what we mean to someone else? If we have not felt that connection ourselves, we have to float about for an explanation, latching on perhaps to examples we have seen, heard of, or read about. Similarly, if you try to tell me about your great love, you will describe instances. I may be able to form a kind of picture in my mind based off of those examples, but unless I was a complete fool, I would not assume that my experience would match the picture you had drawn. Here, I believe, we must fail. There are no words to describe love in the same way we can use words to describe or define books. Perhaps definition is not as precise as we once thought it to be, but with some things it fails completely. I worry about falling into cliche when I say love is something unspeakable, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that to be the case.

Are other things like this? Things like virtue, and friendship, the things Socrates tried so hard to define in the early dialogues? How about philosophy, etymologically 'love of wisdom'? Maybe. But love, I hope, I believe, is the most important of all, and it may be that we can say nothing meaningful about it. Poetry may evoke it, music may feel it, and art may be inspired by it, but what past that? I suppose I am calling for the destruction of the fabled ivory tower, where Great Men sit around pondering the problems in life (I imagine here the 'School of Athens'). Some problems, perhaps, may be knots we are unable to untie with words, but only with choices, action, and courage.

posted by Emmett @ 20:20