INTRODUCTION
There are certain phenomenon that we tend to take for granted—gravity, life and love are all concepts that we have a tendency to assume universal, meaning, that we assume them to be known and understood by all. In proposing a theory on Love I hope to start a dialogue around a topic that, in my opinion, lack a greater formal treatise that in a systematic and structured fashion presents the topic of love. I want to go so far as to argue that without a proper theory the conception of love will forever be in the unknown. Just like Newton needed witness the fall of an apple before he could contemplate gravity, we too need to stop to ask some important questions about love in order for it to be contained as a concept and there through be made available for our understanding. In order to devise a theory of love, we first establish the meaning of love, second, we question the validity of our definition through a critique of love that aims to make available the very essence of love. From this exercise I hope new truths relating to love will be made available.
ON THE MEANING OF LOVE
Love is commonly expressed in terms of objects, ideas, and people as a universal constant for a strong intense feeling so pure and true that it cannot be questioned. As such love can be said to be the set of all emotions that have the characteristics of being pure and true. By stating that a feeling is pure and true I mean to say that it is sincere and honest, that is to distinguish it from feelings that are manufactured or reactions and behaviours that are calculated and therefore not natural. A corollary of this definition is the view of a loving act as one where the motive of the conduct is to honour the thing, idea or person to which the act is directed. Important to note here is that the thing, idea or person, i.e. the “object” of honour, is here the end of the action. To clarify, we say that an act is loving where the motive of the action is to honour the object. To honour an object is in this sense to regard it as an end in itself, and not as a means to some other end. This distinction, I want to argue, is at the very heart of understanding love. Before deriving in full what I believe to be the framework for love, I want to summarise the preceding arguments with the following definition and corollary.
Definition 1: Love is the Set (E) of all actions, which motives are to honour the object as an end in itself. I.e. Love = {E: E is an element of the subset of all actions that honour the object as an end in itself}
Corollary 1: An element is in E if, and only if, it is also in the subset of all actions that are both True and Pure.
A BRIEF CRITIQUE OF LOVE
From the previous meditation on the meaning of love it should be clear that our understanding of love rests on us comprehending in full two main concepts—the notion of a motive, and further the notion of a thing, idea or person being an end in itself. In this section, I want to address each of these notions in greater depth before explaining how they together help provide a framework for understanding, and further analysing, the concept of love.
Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of “absolute value“, as opposed to relative value. What Russell means by this is that love is the highest of all moral values. In being a value it follows that a person need to first choose to honor and respect love as one of his/her values, before he/she can “consciously” act in accordance with the value. When we are conscious of acting in accordance with a value, we say that the motive of our action is consistent with our value, that is to say, that our action has moral worth. Hence, I have defined the meaning of motive to be conditioned on their being a conscious reason behind the action that is said to have moral worth. This is the essential meaning of motive, and with that I move on to the second notion of ends.
Immanuel Kant argued that each individual is an end in himself, what he meant by that is that it was morally wrong to treat a person as means to other ends. For something to be an end in itself, we mean to say that it, whatever “it” is, justify the actions. If an artist paints a picture, he experiences love if, and only if, the creative act of creating the painting is the end in itself. If, however, the painter was creating an artwork for the reason of remuneration—i.e. the end would here be to sell the painting for money in return—then the creative process would not be an act/experience of love. This example showcases the very essence of treating an object, in this case the art of painting, as an end in itself, and in doing so it highlights the notion of love that underpins the theory at hand. To make the example of love general, we say that love is expressed whenever a thing, idea or person is treated as an end in itself. This concludes the second notion of love, and with that we turn to finish this critique with a synthesis of these two notions.
In combining the notion of motive with the notion of ends we arrive at the following corollary—If the subject is conscious of love as a value worth honouring, and if the subject act out of duty to honour the object of its focus as an end in itself, we say that the act is one of love.
APPENDIX
THE THEORY DERIVED
Definition 1: Love is the Set (E) of all actions, which motives are to honour the object as an end in itself. I.e. Love = {E: E is an element of the subset of all actions that honour the object as an end in itself}.
Corollary 1: An element is in E if, and only if, it is also in the subset of all actions that are both True and Pure.
Lemma 1: An act (A) is said to have moral worth (W) if, and only if, the motive (M) of (A) is consistent with the value (v). i.e. Act = {A: M = V à W}.
Lemma 2: Object (O) is the end (E) of act (A) if, and only if, (A) is (W). i.e. Object = {O : O = E; if and only if A = W}
Theorem 1: If A has M such that M is consistent with V then A is W. If A is W, it follows that O is E. Form this it is evident that A is E.
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