Toward a Universal Theory of Love
So it appears that we do not in general love people for their qualities.
So writes Michael Huemer in his “Theory of Love”. Do you agree?
Here is my “narrow” view of love.
Love is with us today because our ancestors loved their children. Animals that didn’t love their children are no longer with us (or are less likely to be with us).
We love because doing so helps us survive. Love promotes fitness.
We don’t love everyone. We love our children because they are our children. We love our spouse because he or she is the parent of our children, or because he or she is our spouse. In fact, without children many more of us would probably be divorced. Love for our children helps keep our marriages intact.
We initially fell in love with the person that became our spouse because we thought that person would make a good parent of our children. Why did we think this? I’m not sure that Michael Huemer answers this question. Or does he?
He writes
Why did nature give animals love? Love makes animals want to mate with each other, then stay together while they raise the offspring. Love makes a mother want to protect and care for her offspring. Love makes friends want to help each other. All of these things increased reproductive success in the past. That’s why today we have the capacity for love. It would be very strange if we didn’t have to think about that at all in order to understand the nature of love.
Questions:
Why do gay people love each other?
Why do people that can’t have children love each other?
Why do we initially fall in love with someone?
Can you improve upon Huemer’s theory of love to make it more comprehensive and consistent?
We need a definition. How about this tentative attempt?: Love consists of 1) an unconscious or instinctive sentiment that invites connection, and 2) a conscious commitment to the person (or community?) that is the object of this sentiment.
Given this starting point, I would perhaps say that nature offers us an invitation to love, but can’t give us love. For it to be love, we have to accept the invitation and engage our own will in the effort.
For many years, I’ve thought that love is a strange defense mechanism against a different form of violence. I realize that sounds weird, and believe it or not I’ve never had a traumatic love experience; in fact, I have been with my partner (and now, our daughter) for about 15 years. I think I’ve been in love at least a few times or more, but the concept of love seems to be so rooted in self-defense, universal, that it’s hard to not see love in dimensions of self preservation. To make matters more muddied, I doubt a plurality of children are even born as a function of love, but rather lust. I’m not sure love and lust are necessarily correlated. When I think of love, I think of an asymptotic approach to something that never connects. The sensation is that one is moving toward a specific endpoint, but that place never arrives - it’s always somewhere else, on the continuum of approach. And quite often, it’s that continuum of approach that makes love last.