Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

1
Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

• Who is the book dedicated to by Singer?
• Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love
• Who wrote the Forward and how does he value the
  book?
• Alan Soble
• this is first book one should read
• its a very personalintellectual autobiography
  as well as it is an exploration of love and sex
  (xi-xii)

2
Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

• What other major texts are referred to in the
  Foreward?
• Thomas Nagel, Sexual Perversion, 1969
• Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, 1966
• Ander Nygren, Agape and Eros, 1930-36
• Eric Fromm, The Art of Loving, 1956
• How would you classify this book?
• History of ideas (informal)
• Apologia pro mente sua
• a defense of ones life
• What is Singers philosophy?
• See p. 14

3
Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

• What does Singer mean by this being a partial
  summing-up?
• Selective look at his previous work
• Philosophy has no final outcome or solution
• What do you learn about Singers background and
  the motivation behind his study?
• Trained in analytic philosophy
• He wanted to study the ordinary use of love
• Digression on Wittgenstein and view that the
  meaning of a word is found in how its used in a
  particular language-game

4
A Broad Historical Overview

• Ancient conceptions
• Christian conception
• Courtly love Middle Ages
• Shakespeare pivotal transitional figure
• Romantic love
• Benign romanticism
• Romantic pessimism

5
Is Romantic Love a Recent Idea?

• What is this kind of love and how does Singer
  answer this question?
• Romantic love sexual, interpersonal phenomenon
• Although the concept belongs to the development
  of Romanticism at the end of the 18th century, it
  is part of a longer historical continuum.
• The claim that Romantic Love is an invention of
  the latter period is therefore of limited value,
  and on the face of it, mistaken (2).

6
Characteristics of Romantic Love

• frequently presupposes a basic hostility
  between male and female (4)
• but also a dream that this fundamental
  difficulty could be overcome
• The importance of passion is central to Romantic
  love passion alone makes life worth living
  (42).
• Romanticism has also provided the foundation for
  the democratization of love (81ff).

7
Varieties of Romantic Love

• What are they?
• Benign romanticism
• Romantic puritanism (Rousseau) one can be a true
  lover without sex and this is enough for a
  meaningful life.
• Romantic pessimism Romantic love is always
  doomed (40).
• Schopenhauer, Freud, Tolstoy

8
Plato (429347 B.C.E.)

• What is Singers view about the significance of
  Platos writing on love?
• Plato is where we must begin our study (see p.
  7).
• Platos doctrine is the most fertile and
  powerful single body of thought about love that
  anyone has ever created throughout Western
  civilization (12).

9
Plato (429347 B.C.E.)

• But Platos views are curious and Singer
  ultimately opposes them.
• What do we learn about Platos views?
• Several works Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic,
  Laws
• Aristophanes speech
• Homosexuality for or against?
• A Continuum
• Sex (physical) Love - Go(o)d
  (Transcendent)

10
Beyond Idealism

• Why does Singer reject the Platonic view?
• Pluralism, against one theory, or one definition
  (14-15)
• A central question for our course is thus, is
  there one central conception of love, one common
  essence?
• Compare Marions view (4-5)
• Singer is not a visionary, while the other
  authors we shall be reading are.
• What are the main Platonic concepts Singer
  opposes?

11
Concepts of Transcendence and Merging

• Transcendence the idea that to explain love one
  must refer to a higher, metaphysical reality
• For Singer love is a product of the manifold
  forces that operate on this planet (18).
• Merging the idea that love involves a certain
  oneness with the other
• For Singer this is a very dangerous idea that
  is not true to what it is to be a person (18).
• What kind of oneness?

12
The Concept of Merging

• Singer wishes to replace merging with wedding
  i.e., the idea of being joined together in a
  kind of oneness without losing ones
  individuality (22).
• In the Middle Ages this was the way the religious
  love of God was conceived, but later in
  Romanticism theres a quasi-religious love of
  the other person (23).

13
The Concept of Merging

• Singer raises the question why would one want to
  merge with God? In other words, where does this
  concept of merging originate?
• One answer God is a perfect being, and we want
  to be perfect ourselves.
• Another Life beings with a merging, and thus we
  wish to return to this primordial state.

14
Courtly Love and Its Successors

• An important observation about Ancient Greece and
  the claim that their thinking about love was
  alien to the views we have nowadays (28)
• What is Singers view of agape?
• Christian idea of Gods bestowal of love
• a momentous concept in world history
• but contra Nygren, misguided in thinking that
  love only originates from God (29)

15
Courtly Love and Its Successors

• Courtly love was an effort to humanize Christian
  thought in the Middle Ages (29).
• Based on Christian ideology, but now the point is
  to relate to another person with the same kind
  of attachment that the church ordained in the
  love of God (30).
• Courtly love led to the democratization of
  lovethe idea that almost anyone could love, and
  do it well (31).
• But varieties of courtly love, no single notion

16
How to define love

• Is love a concept?
• The etymology of love
• Love ME, fr. OE lufu akin to OHG luba love, OE
  leof dear, L lubere, libere to please bef. 12c
• Indo-European root lubhyati desires
• Related to Latin libet it is pleasing, and
  libido desires

17
Greek Words for Love

• Eros sexual love based on physical attraction,
  erotic or romantic love
• Philia brotherly love, love based on a common
  interest, not sexual attraction, also love of
  wisdom, related to virtue, friendship
• Agape term used for love in New Testament,
  unconditional love of God for humans and humans
  for neighbors, charity
• Storge familial love, affection

18
Appraisal and Bestowal

• This distinction lies at the basis of Singers,
  love trilogy, which begins love is a way of
  valuing something. It is a positive response
  toward the object of lovelove affirms the
  goodness of this object. (The Nature of Love 3).
• Here Singer also distinguishes love from liking
  and lusting (desiring obsessively), which he
  says dont necessarily affirm goodness

19
Appraisal and Bestowal

• Appraisal the ability to discover value, in
  oneself or in other people this is objective
  and in principle verifiable
• (e.g., consider the appraisal of a house and a
  business relationship)
• Bestowal a way of creatinga new kind of
  value, an engendering of value by means of an
  affirmative relationship, an affective value
  (Philosophy of Love 52)
• this value isnt reducible to objective value, as
  the valuing alone makes it valuable something or
  someone has an importance beyond the objective
  value the other has value for its/her own sake

20
On Freud

• What is Freuds place in the philosophy of love?
• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic
  Life
• What is Singers estimation?
• Freud didnt understand bestowal, only appraisal
• For Freud love is an illusory overvaluation, but
  Freud is deluded according to Singer.
• But Freud is interesting because he raises the
  question about the role of science in the
  philosophy of love. (53-59)

21
On Schopenhauer (and Nietzsche)

• The great pessimist and the teacher of the
  overmanwhat are they doing here?
• For Schopenhauer one must repudiate the Will
  (the cruel and valueless force of nature)
• Love is to be understood as the Wills
  manipulating us to have sex to bring about the
  next generation (The World as Will and
  Representation, The Metaphysics of Sexual Love)
• Thus, passionate, marital love is a delusion.
• But companionate love may offer a viable
  possibility of happiness. (70)

22
A Note on Hume

• Hume, like Schopenhauer, distinguishes two kinds
  of lovesexual and companionateand both are
  viewed more positively, although he leaves it for
  readers to decide which is preferable.
• Link to Humes Treatise of Human Nature
• Of the Amorous Passion, Or Love Betwixt the Sexes
• And Of Love and Marriage

23
On Nietzsche

• For Nietzsche, contra Schopenhauer, one must
  affirm the Will.
• Still, he too generally has a negative, cynical
  view of love.
• Love is a state in which a man sees things most
  decidedly as they are not. (The Antichrist, Sec.
  23)

24
More Nietzsche Quotations

• What else is love but understanding and
  rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in
  a different and opposite way to ourselves? That
  love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by
  joys, we must not remove or deny those contrasts.
  Even self-love presupposes an irreconcilable
  duality (or plurality) in one person. (Human,
  All Too Human, Sec. 75, Love and Duality)
• It is true we love life not because we are used
  to living, but because we are used to loving.
  There is always some madness in love. But there
  is always, also, some method in madness. (Thus
  Spoke Zarathustra, On Reading and Writing)

25
More Nietzsche

• But a more positive view can be found in what he
  intends by amor fati (literally the love of
  fate).
• Singer interprets this as a wrong-headed cosmic
  love of everything (see 62 96), but it can be
  interpreted more positively as a way of affirming
  all aspects of ones existence. (Is this a kind
  of bestowal?)
• I want to learn more and more to see as
  beautiful what is necessary in things then I
  shall be one of those who make things beautiful.
  Amor fati let that be my love henceforth! . . .
  And all in all and on the whole some day I wish
  to be only a Yes-sayer. (The Gay Science, 276)
• http//www.nietzschecircle.com/index.html

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What is Singers Philosophy of Love?

• No simple answer (110)
• Appraisal and Bestowal (51ff)
• Interdependence rather than dependence
• Acceptance Contra Sartre, the look of love
  involves an accepting of another person. (91)
• Sharing love is a sharing of selves (91)
• The love of love (96)
• Different kinds of love, but no hierarchy (110)
  (i.e., the plurality of love)

27
The Plurality of Love

• Not all love can be reduced to sexual motivation
  as Freud thought.
• Singers view is that love is something that can
  happen in any number of different, pluralistic,
  ways.
• There are different kinds of love that have to
  be understood in terms of their own variability
  and their own individual dimensions. (75)

28
Group Discussion/Timed Writing

• Form groups of 3-5 students
• Discuss and write an answer to the following
  questions (hand in one sheet per group)
• Questions What are the strengths and weaknesses
  of Singers Philosophy of Love? Identify two of
  each.

29
Strengths

• An accessible, broad historical introductory
  overview of the philosophy of love which include
  a number of useful distinctions
• (e.g., courtly and romantic love, passionate and
  companionate love, appraisal and bestowal)
• An occasionally provocative consideration of
  certain philosophers
• (e.g., Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre)
• A case for a pluralistic philosophy of love
• Open to interdisciplinary work on love
• An interesting, personal apologia pro mente sua

30
Weaknesses (Concern 1)

• Shouldnt a philosophy of love be one that values
  love? In which case the pessimistic philosophies
  of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud, and Sartre
  should not be as prominent as the philosophies of
  Spinoza, Kierkegaard, and Scheler, which are
  centered on love.
• Problem with considerations of Sartre (cf. 86
  97)
• Interpretive problem with Nietzsches amor fati

31
Weaknesses (Concern 2)

• In what sense is this a phenomenological
  blueprint of love? (58)
• Doesnt the concept of bestowal involve
  transcendence? (see 53)
• Singer also writes that love is pervasively
  bound up with the relationship between the
  abstract and the concrete (102).
• Yet he shrugs his shoulders when confronted with
  notions of transcendental spirit, and he thinks
  that love is an emanation grounded in matter,
  and comparable to its parental origin (105).

32
Weaknesses (Concern 3)

• Which perspective shall we take in exploring the
  philosophy of love, a pluralistic one or a
  unitary one. Which is preferable? Which is more
  edifying?
• A perspective like Singers that expresses the
  plurality of love and opposes the search for a
  univocal concept, or one like Jean-Luc Marions
  in The Erotic Phenomenon that opposes the desire
  to make numerous distinctions and instead argues
  for a concept of love that is distinguished by
  its unity (5).