Friday, March 04, 2005
Who or What?
Our recent discussion has brought an old philosophical question to my mind. I first remember hearing this discussed by Jacques Derrida, although the question is much older than his work, and I have thought about it considerably in the last year and a half. When we say that we love someone, what is it that we love? In particular, do we love the Who-- the absolute particularity of the person we love-- or do we love the What-- do we love that person's characteristics or qualities or the things they do (ie, something [perhaps even everything] about them)? This is a difficult question, and perhaps one that isn't quite answerable: on the one hand, how can you love someone apart from their characteristics (what is left to love), but saying we love the characteristics and not the person means that we would/could love ANYONE with those qualities (which makes the individual person interchangeable or accidental). The question is equally applicable to friendship as to romantic love, but eros has an exclusive nature (as opposed to friendship's openness) that makes it a particulary fruitful ground for addressing the question of "do we love the Who or the What?" While many of us might characterize our current living situations as "lonely", I know that there are many among us who are or have been in love, so I think we can all benefit from hearing one another's experiences. Apart from being discussion-worthy on it's own merits (its repercussions multiply as in an echo chamber), I also feel that this question has implications for two conversations we are currently carrying on: of course, it has a lot to do with our debate about dating services, but I think it might also have less obvious implications for our conversation about civil unions. So what do you think: do I love her absolute and irreplaceable particularity, or do I love her virtues, qualities and characteristics?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
From some of your earlier postings, it seems to me that you would be of the persuasion that you, as a lover, can have no access to her "absolute particularity" which, it seems to me, is the same thing as her "person." Don't you say that you only have access to that which she produces: her text(s)?
Perhaps I have misread you earlier: let me know.
Here's the particular quote to which I'm referring:
A person may be more than a text, but can we really [love] them in non-hermeneutical way? That is, if our experience of the world is fundamentally hermeneutical, how can we circumvent the hermeneutical structures of our knowledge and experience in order to achieve a "personal" knowledge that exceeds the textual? Understand, I'm not talking about the fundamental fabric of all existence because I don't have access to it. I'm talking about the world as experienced by human beings, and, if our experience is fundamentally hermeneutical, how can there be anything outside the text?
It is true that I can never have absolute knowledge of another person-- they are, after all, Other than me. The question remains, though, of whether perfect knowledge is necesary for love. I would think that, yes, you must know someone to a certain degree before it is possible to love them and that knowledge would most likely (though not certainly--Levinas would argue not) be hermeneutically mediated, BUT I must point out two things:
1)If ALL human experience is mediated hermeneutically, then knowing her particularity and knowing her qualities both fall into the category of textual experience. It doesn't help or hinder eiher possibility.
2)If perfect knowledge is not necessary to love someone (and I think we can all agree that it isn't), then our knowledge of the beloved person increases after we begin to love them. In fact, love might be a necessary predecessor to a certain kind of knowledge-- in other words, you might not be able to know a person (at least in certain ways) unless you love them first. While this brings up a slightly different question (does love come before knowledge or after it), it doesn't demand a particular answer the question of "Who or What?" [Note: it is also very important to keep in mind the difference between "know/saber" that refers to a textbook kind of knowlege and "know/conocer" that applies to knowing people.]
I think some confusion may come from my earlier use of "text"; in my earlier discussion I said that a person not only produces texts but IS a text (that is, I experience her hermeneutically). Thus, even her initterable (unrepeatable) particularity is textual.
Wow, Grady, thanks for that thoughtful addition. I think I know what you are saying, and I think that the phenomenon you describe most assuredly occurs. I'm not willing to go the whole way with you, however. You are right that the self loves itself and often projects its own image onto any-and-everything: let's call this self-projection "the Same". The self loves the Same because it loves itself. I want to hold out some hope, however, of experiencing and loving the Other (that which is truly other, truly separate from the Same). I am going to prove Grady's point about self-love by quoting myself from a different post:
'Here's a dangerous concept of love. Imagine the possibility of loving someone who isn't just like you-- someone who would challenge you to re-examine what you think and how you live. Imagine a love that might change who you are.' I add to that: imagine the danger of loving the truly Other, of accepting the Other's claims on your self and loving something beyond the Same.
Coye, please clarify: "in my earlier discussion I said that a person not only produces texts but IS a text (that is, I experience her hermeneutically)." And please clarify, as I think the two are related, ". . .you don't exist unless you're present to my consciousness."
If I am only what the conditions of your consciousness allow you to interpret, understand and react to, then you are already, by default, already lost in yourself. Yet, even as I write this, I know you would disagree with my line of thinking. I don't know what other lines of thinking exist, though. Perhaps you can fill me in [an interesting turn of phrase!].
So let me simply clarify my question to this: how can you maintain the existance of what you call the "Other"--and even a hope to be INFUENCED by it--if you continue to stress that "a person not only produces texts but IS a text (that is, [you] experience her hermeneutically)." and that ". . .you don't exist unless you're present to my consciousness." Doesn't Other mean that Other dosen't exist yet in your prejudgments, that is in your herminutic, that is, in your consciousnes?
---
And, hmmm, in all this talk of love, I would think we whould have to be talking about grace and the cross of christ the sin-effects-killing effects therein. I am convinced the cross is the ONLY way out of our death in ourselves and our life in His love.
OK, first of all the "you don't exist unless you're present to my consciousness" line is really just a joke. Its only legitimate value is making us realize that we often live as though that were true. I can see how it would be terribly confusing if you thought I was serious about that. Sorry, Dave. I know that you are worried about it, but, as I see it, experiencing the Other hermeneutically does not devalue them since ALL of our experience is hermeneutically mediated. Emanuel Levinas thinks that an unmediated experience of the Other is possible through the Face of the Other, but I am skeptical about this immediate access to the inner being of the other person. Also, I'm trying to avoid strong claims about EXISTENCE by focusing on EXPERIENCE (I am a phenomenologist, after all).
Grady, Plato's Symposium gives about six definitions of love; I am giving none. This whole conversation is a way of exploring and opening up our concept of what it means to love another person. A definition would do the opposite.
As to your continued and re-enforced cynicism, I suppose that what you suggest is a possibility, but I still want to HOPE that we can truly love the truly Other. It is the character of hope to, as Abraham did, hope against hope. I also have personal, philosophical and theological reasons for believing that love can be more than the ego's wish-fulfillment fantasy, but this comment is already too long and they would easily triple its length.
"The question is equally applicable to friendship as to romantic love, but EROS has an exclusive nature (as opposed to friendship's openness) that makes it a particulary fruitful ground for addressing the question of "do we love the Who or the What?"
"Plato's Symposium gives about six definitions of love; I am giving none. "
Though you didn't give defintion of love, dosen't eros have a pretty specific meaning?
If you are wanting to talk about eros, I'm not too interested. Eros is a concept that formed in the greek mind, and, as far as I can tell, it has little to do with the covenant-generated kind of love which the scriptures speak of and which I seek to persue in my marriage.
Ok, so "eros" can have a specific definition in some circles, but I was pretty much just tired of writing out "romantic love" and was searching for an acceptable synonym. I'll write some more later, but I need to get a little sleep before I go back to work tonight.
"If you are wanting to talk about eros, I'm not too interested. Eros is a concept that formed in the greek mind, and, as far as I can tell, it has little to do with the covenant-generated kind of love which the scriptures speak of and which I seek to persue [sic] in my marriage."
Dave, here's a question: I think I understand what your statement would mean if the covenant was entered into before you fell in love, but I don't take this to be the case in your marriage. I assume that you and Sarah loved each other before you entered into the covenant of marriage. I'm not saying that there isn't a "covenant-generated" love at work in your relationship with your wife, but you loved each other when the covenant didn't exist, so I wonder if the issue might be more complex than "covenant-generated=good; non-covenant-generated=bad/unimportant". How do you explain the love that made you want to bind yourself to her? How would you characterize that? That love may or may not be "eros", but I think it's important and worth talking about.
Post a Comment