Authored by: Mitchell LeBlanc.

Love is a most elusive topic. It seems to be experienced by most people, if only for a brief moment during their lives, yet we seem at a loss to provide any sort of explanation. In response to being questioned about the nature of time, Augustine once said, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” One might be tempted to respond in the same way when asked about love.

What follows are some thoughts on the subject. I am not well read on this topic and so I do not presume to raise points that have not been raised prior. I only wish to outline some of my ideas on this very elusive topic. While I use the term love in the paper, it may identify love in different circumstances, romantic, friendly or common (societal). I do not seek to resolve these differences here, but I think the definition I introduce can form the basis of all types.

The Definition

I think that we can capture a piece of what love is by defining it with relation to human interaction. The definition of love I have arrived at is as follows: love is the desire of some being x that some other being y fare better, or at least as good, in some area, or at some task than x for no benefit of x coupled with, where possible, the assistance of x in y‘s attainment of betterment.

Let’s consider a couple of examples where we have four people, Bob, Jim, Mary, and Suzie. In our first example, let us assume that Mary has a philosophy exam coming up and she happens to be in the same class as Bob and Jim who are both doing very well. Bob and Jim both offer to help Mary prepare for the exam. Bob is offering his help because he thinks that Mary is very beautiful and thinks that helping her study will be an easy way to get her alone. Jim is offering his help because he wants to see Mary do well on the exam, at least as good as he performs. We might be tempted, thus far, to remark that of the two if we had to choose, we’d identify Jim as being the one who loves Mary. That may be true thus far, but imagine that Jim is being paid by Mary’s parents to help her achieve a certain grade on the exam that is at least as high as Jim’s – that is, he will receive a payment for helping her study but more money the better she does. It would seem odd in this situation to say that either Bob or Jim actually love Mary. Now consider Suzie, another classmate of Mary’s who desires that Mary does at least as good as she will on the upcoming examination, and who has nothing to gain from Mary’s success, and vows to help Mary achieve that goal. It seems to me that under normal circumstances there is no better explanation of this fact, than that Suzie loves Mary.

In another, unrelated circumstance, let us assume that Suzie is crossing the street and a car is barreling down, not paying attention and will hit Suzie if she is not moved. Bob, Jim and Mary are outside and see the situation about to unfold. Of the three, only Bob dives to push Suzie out of the way of the vehicle. We might say, then, that out of the three he is the only real candidate to be properly labeled as loving Suzie. Bob desired that Suzie fare better in the circumstance than being hit by a car, and out of no benefit to himself, assisted in bringing this about. Might we identify Bob as loving Suzie in this instant? Generally, I don’t see a problem in doing so. Though one might respond that Bob acted out of instinct and that this nullifies his claim to love. The reason why I reject this line of thinking is because it seems to me if we rule out all instinctual aspects of love, we are reduced to the matter of love being a voluntary choice. But it seems to me that often times we don’t choose the people we love, and sometimes we may be helpless to stop loving the people we do!

Conclusion

Unfortunately, I do not yet have any objections to address but I imagine that they will arrive in due time. I, of course, hope that my analysis of love here is unique so that I haven’t just muttered some variation of an idea from some great thinker, but if it such an idea from such a thinker I am personally unaware. I also think there are a lot more relevant issues to approach here, since we should speak of when one is justified in loving another, how we might judge whether one loves another and so on. At the very least, I hope that I’ve successfully shown what I think the elusive phenomena of love to be.