0. Arguments for Kierkegaard’s position:

· absolute commitment

· the way that descriptions of the beloved always fall short of the true reason

1. Here is a solution.  It is not Kierkegaard’s, but mine:

o       Or is it that everybody is lovable?  So we do not need to give reasons for loving a person, because everybody is lovable, just for being a person.  This isn’t the view Kierkegaard espouses, but it would give a solution.  There is no need to give a reason for love, because love is always justified.  Everybody is worthy of love, because just being a person is such a great good that it makes one lovable.  (This works particularly well if you think in theistic terms: every person either is God or is created by God;  this gives reason to love.) 

o       But of course one can’t be good friends with everybody;  one can’t be married to everybody.  So perhaps the answer is this: We should love everyone.  But love takes different forms.  Some people we should only love to the extent of helping them when they are in great need.  Others we should be close friends with.  We do not need to give a reason why we love someone, but we should give a reason why we love her in the way we do.  Remember one thing we learned from Aristotle: character friendship takes different forms depending on the relationship—parent-child, husband-wife, friend-friend, brother-brother, ruler-ruled, etc.  Now, we can give reasons for why we love the person the way we do.  Indeed, we need to give such reasons.  But we do not need to give reasons why love her at all—for, everybody is lovable.  We should love everybody.

o       This explains how we can be absolutely committed to someone who may change.  She may change, but she will remain the same person, and so we can love her for being herself—even if being oneself is something everybody has.  But how we love her differs.  If a woman is married to a man who beats her and her children, even though she should continue to love him, she should move out.  She should not love him in the way people who live together do, but in the way people who live apart do.  What would it mean for her to love him?  Well, she should desire good things for him, and if she can, help him achieve them.  For instance, if she can, she should try to get him to see a counselor.  She might even, out of love, pay for the counseling.  Her love would change shape, but remain.  She should not begin to hate him.  Her initial love was unconditional, because it was not dependent on reasons.  But the form of the love is conditional.

o       The form of love has to be conditional, because love involves doing good things for another and appreciating the other’s good qualities.   As the other’s needs and qualities change, obviously the form of love has to change—otherwise, the love would not remain true to the other, it would not match the other.

o       And there is nothing wrong with even a bit of randomness in the form love takes.  Perhaps it’s just chance I met my wife.  So what?  If I did not meet her, I would not have loved her romantically.  But ideally, I would have loved her as a fellow human being.  So her lovability is not denied by my admission that under other circumstances I would not have loved her romantically and yet things might have been well for both of us, if we met other people equally good for us.  (Actually, in my case, I don’t think we met by chance, and I don’t think other people would be equally good for us.  But suppose it were so: it would not undercut love were it so.)

o       This is an argument for universal love, charity.  I think this gives the idea that we have in the New Testament.  There is a single thing, love, that one should have for everyone.  The New Testament does not make distinctions between philia and erôs, say.  Rather, it talks of love.  But of course this single thing must be responsive to the beloved—it must take its shape from the beloved.

2. Need-love and Gift-love

·       These are ingredients in one's love, and they can be intertwined in all kinds of complex ways.  A good human being should have both.

·       The four kinds of love—affection, friendship, eros, charity—have different combinations of these ingredients, and particular cases of the four kinds might be different.  Charity, for instance, is all Gift-love.  Eros is Gift- and Need-love together in harmony in such a way that it is hard to tell them apart.  Affection differs in different cases.  Friendship includes Appreciative-love and other ingredients.

·       Nearness of Likeness to God: Gift-love makes one be more like God.  But it doesn’t necessary make one nearer in Approach to God.  Being really powerful makes one be more like God.  A dictator, by gaining power, becomes more like God (in terms of power).  But this didn’t make him be near in Approach to God.  Quite the opposite!  Need-love makes one approach God, because it is a recognition of our need for God and for others.  While God, according to CSL, has only Gift-love, we are not closer to God if we only have Gift-love.  That way lies the danger of demoniac pride.  (When CSL talks of the “demoniac”, he is referring to the idea that the demons are proud and treat themselves as gods.)

·         It seems to me that one should also add another ingredient that CSL recognizes: appreciation.

3. Liking (not quite love).  Distinction between the pleasures that are satisfactions of desire and those pleasures that aren’t.  The latter has a focus on reality: “How lovely the smell is.”  This focus leads one to wanting others to appreciate it.  Something wrong would be with one if one didn’t appreciate the thing.  à experience machine

4. Affection.  This seems to come in two basic varieties: the kind based on need-love and the kind based on gift-love.  Still, these are not that different, because often an affectionate gift-love needs to be received.  (You will hurt your aunt’s feelings if you don’t have some of that coffee crumble.)

·        Possibility of perversion:

o       Need can become devouring.

o       Can “give” in a way that drives others crazy.  Selfish selflessness.  Mrs. Fidget.

§        “Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love.  It must work towards its own abdication.”

·        Affection is not enough to live on.  “Affection produces happiness if—and only if—there is common sense and give and take and ‘decency.’  In other words, only if something more, and other, than Affection is added.  The mere feeling is not enough.” (pp. 54-55)

5. Some notes on Friendship.

· Friendship is less “natural”.  It is not a basic human relationship, but something we create.

· It can develop out of a recognition of another person’s character, but not just of the goodness of their character, but of its likability.

· It can develop out of a common interest.

· Lovers are face to face.  Friends are side by side, looking at one thing.  Friendship results from a common interest, and it is on this common interest that the friends focus.  While three is a crowd in Eros, in Friendship the more the better.  Suppose you are close friends with someone with whom you share a common interest in saving the environment.  Then surely the greater the number of people who can enter into the relationship, the better.  The better for the environment, that is, and the environment is the point of the Friendship.

· Friendship is not an end in itself.  Complaining that one has no friends and trying just to find a friend to relieve loneliness won't work.  Rather, you need to get an interest, and find friends to match that interest of yours.

· CSL includes under "Friendship" all three Aristotelian friendships.  Aristotle's character-friendship has the friends having interest in something common, too, after all: virtue.  But there is a difference in emphasis.  In character-friendship, the focus really is on the persons.  In CSL's Friendship, the focus is on the common interest.  As it happens, the two coincide in Aristotelian character friendship—the focus is the virtue of self and others.  Technically this fits into CSL's theory fine, but somewhat uncomfortably.  CSL focuses on outside interests as definitory of Friendship.  These outside interests need not, however, be down-to-earth as in A's utility-friendship.  CSL talks of seeking God, truth and beauty together.

· For CSL, Friendship is not an end in itself, unlike for A.

· CSL's Friendship can be good or bad, like love for Pausanias.  It all depends on what the common interest is.  "From such a moment art, or philosophy, or an advance in religion or morals might well take their rise;  but why not also torture, cannibalism, or human sacrifice?" (p. 79)

· There is danger in Friendship.  A bunch of friends naturally start forming a clique.  At first they banded together because of a common interest.  Now they start thinking that they are superior because they're in the band.  A Friendship must start out exclusive.  But the exclusiveness can become, rather than a necessary ingredient, something gloried in.  The Friendship itself can become a god.  And then things are very bad indeed.  The pride of Friendship.  (p. 86)

· To stay sweet, Friendship needs God's help.

· Through Friendship, God shows us the beauty of our friends.  We should not pride ourselves in our good taste in friends.  Rather, God's providence has been at work here.  Much depends on chance in meeting others, etc.  This gives another insight on the question: If love is not for a reason, is it mere chance?  Not chance—providence.

6. Eros.  CSL distinguishes Eros from Venus.  Venus is the specifically and literally sexual part of Eros.  ("Venereal" = etymologically "having to do with Venus".)  Eros is more than sexuality.  One can have sexuality without Eros and Eros without sexuality.