Episode post here. Thanks to Caroline Wall for another excellent transcription!
Matt Teichman:
Hello and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I’m Matt Teichman.
Julia Liu:
I’m Julia Liu.
Matt Teichman:
With us today is Aaron Ben Ze’ev, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, and he’s here to discuss the arc of love. His book by the same title, The Arc of Love, is out now from The University of Chicago Press, so get it while it’s hot. Aaron Ben Ze’ev, welcome.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Thank you.
Matt Teichman:
So I feel like love is sometimes an underexplored topic in philosophy, which is one reason it was really exciting to come across your book. One question I always have about love—and I always feel like I kind of go back and forth on this–is love a rational response to a person? If you fall in love, are you using your reasoning abilities? Or is it irrational? Is it just almost a bodily compulsion, just an automatic response to the person? What do you think about this issue? Do you think that there’s a rational component to love? Or how does that all fit together?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
If we take ‘rationality’ to mean intellectual deliberation, then romantic love is not about intellectual deliberation. Romantic love, and falling in love, is about an immediate response to another person. It is an experience. It is an attitude toward another person. It can involve intellectual deliberation, but that is not what is basic. What is basic is a kind of intuition, a kind of immediate attitude toward the other person. Intellectual deliberation may change it, but it is not the essence.
However, romantic love is not irrational. It is very rational to follow your heart. And I even say: don’t think in love. When you begin to think in love, love may disappear. In romantic love, you should follow your heart, not follow your head. It doesn’t mean that you should disregard your head, your rational capacities. But the main direction should be taken by your heart, by your gut feeling, by your immediate intuition. Love is the product of our heart. If you say to your partner, “You see, I want to think about whether I love you,” it is no longer love. When your partner says to you, “Do you love me?” and the answer is, “Let me think about it and I’ll tell you tomorrow morning,” it is not love anymore. Love should be an immediate response. And if you don’t have an immediate response, it is not love.
Matt Teichman:
So that’s really interesting. To me, it immediately raises the question—if you’re in love with somebody, do you always know it? Or would it be possible to be deceived about whether you’re in love, like being in love without knowing it?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Yes. We are not always aware of our attitude. We are not always aware of how profound our love is. However, we are aware that we want to be with the other person that we love. We want to do activities with the other person. And therefore, we are aware of the characteristics of love. Love is activity with another person. It is not just feeling somewhere by yourself. It is the wish to be with the other person and to act with the other person.
Love may have many types. We have parental love, we have sibling love, we have love of God. What is characteristic of romantic love is that in addition to friendship, to caring for the other, you have this aspect of desire—intense desire, mainly sexual desire. I may characterize romantic love as having two major features. One is attraction, the desire to be with each other, mainly—at least at the beginning—having sexual desire. The other feature is praiseworthiness—praising the character, the traits of the other person. So the attraction is expressed by sexual desire. The praiseworthiness is expressed by friendship. Love consists of both sexual desire and friendship.
Julia Liu:
Going off of what you said earlier about sexual desires being very important in the role of love, I was just reading the book, and I saw that you mentioned passion. And I would be interested in finding out about the role of passion in love, and how this passion–is it connected with sexual desire, or is it something independent from it?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
By the term ‘passion’ I understand mainly sexual desire or, more generally, the desire to be with each other. Sexual desire is the most intense, but what is more basic in romantic love is the desire to be with each other. Which is different from friendship. In friendship, we appreciate the other person, we want to be with them—but not all the time. We want to be–once a month is good. Maybe a little bit more, but generally not all the time. In romantic love, we want to be together all the time. Maybe not 24⁄7—but still, we want to be together as much as possible. And we want to be as close as possible to the other person.
Julia Liu:
I was just going to say that’s very interesting that there’s this notion of intimacy in love. So I guess what I want to say is: how is passion connected to intimacy? Will intimacy wear out this passion, or will it just build up this passion?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
The passion—or, let me say, the desire—I use the word ‘desire’, not ‘passion’, but they are very similar. The desire is the beginning. The attraction to each other comes at the beginning, and with time, sexual desire declines. There is a statistic that a year after marriage, sexual interaction is about half the amount after marriage. And as all married people know, it continues to decline after the first year. So the direction of the desire is to decline. The other aspect of love—the praiseworthiness, the friendship—time does good for this aspect. While time decreases intensity, time makes for enhanced profundity. Profound love needs time. You cannot meet someone and after half an hour say to her, ‘I am profoundly in love with you’. It is not true. Profundity takes time. It takes time—sometimes months, sometimes years. And profundity increases with time. And in this sense, somewhat compensates for the decrease in intensity.
We may also say that when the profundity is very deep—great—then the intensity increases. When, for example, you admire a person, your sexual desire for this person increases. There was a survey among Italian women, and they say that they are more sexually satisfied when having sex with their boss. And you may ask why they are so sexually satisfied with their boss, if we assume that the bosses are similar to other men in their…organ. Yes? So the answer is that the aspect of praiseworthiness, the aspect of admiration—this aspect is strong, and it increases the intensity of the desire. So there can be interaction between these two aspects—between the desire and the profundity.
Julia Liu:
That’s very interesting.
Matt Teichman:
Okay. Right. So as it were, they kind of exchange importance over time. We start off with a high desire quotient, and that goes down over time. And then, what goes up over time is the need to be with the person all the time, which is connected to maybe admiring them as a person, or something like that.
One question I have about these two components of love is: how separable are they? So we were talking about them as going up and down independently of each other. But is there a deep causal connection between them, or are they just two totally independent variables?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
They are not totally independent. There is a connection between them, but the connection is complex. Usually, or often, the increase of one component has a positive effect on the other component. Greater intensity makes you love more, sometimes even a little bit deeper, even though the intensity can blow your mind. But for sure, when it is deeper, when the profundity is greater, then the intensity at least does not decrease, and often increases.
Matt Teichman:
Some of what you’ve been saying about love brings certain comparisons to mind. I think of playing tennis, which is something—at least, playing a game of tennis isn’t something a person can do by themselves. Having a conversation isn’t really something you can do by yourself. You can play at it in the mirror, but it’s not really a conversation. And I guess for me, that raises the question: is it helpful to think of love as an activity between two people, in the way that these two things are?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Love, like other emotions, is first of all an attitude—an attitude you have towards another person. But this attitude is not a passive attitude. It involves, as you say, activity. It involves dialogue between the two people. Actually, I believe that the main characterization of romantic love is this dialogue between the two people, the interaction between them. And if I were to say, “What is your advice—one sentence—for making romantic love endure,” I would say, ‘bringing out the best from each other’. This kind of interaction is very important.
I would like to say: there is, in psychology, what we call the Michelangelo phenomenon. What is the Michelangelo phenomenon? Michelangelo said that when he sees the marble, all the figures that are captured later on are within the marble. So what he has to do is just to remove the dust—just to clean it. We can say the same about our partners. Everyone has some good capacities, good virtues, and what we have to do in marriage or romantic relationships is just to activate the positive capacities, the good virtues, in such a way that the other person will say, ‘With you, I am a better person’. Just to bring the other person to his or her ideal self, and help each other to flourish and become closer to their ideal self. In this case, there is no reason for separation. If you feel that both of you are flourishing during the relationship, you want to remain in the relationship. But if you feel that only one is flourishing, or you are not flourishing, there is no reason to stay in the relationship.
So look at marriage. We say that marriage should include love. Okay, fine. It should include love. But it should also include self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment is important because by self-fulfillment, each of us feels good. And if you feel good, you want to stay. And if you feel good, you want to help others to feel good. It is easier for you to help the other person when you feel good. So it is not contradictory to say that in marriage, or in romantic love, you should only care about the other person. ‘Only about the beloved should you care’, some philosophers say. No. If you care only about the beloved, it will not be romantic love. You will have no reason to stay. Of course, in parental love, this is the case. You care about the children, no matter their reaction to you. Even here, it’s not completely no matter how they react—but it is, to a large extent.
However, in romantic love, where the relation is out of choice—not out of biological reasons, out of choice—you keep having this choice. And if you don’t feel good, you always have the choice to separate. And this choice, nowadays, is very easy. In our society, it’s very easy to get into a relationship and to get out of a relationship. What is difficult is to maintain love, to maintain the relationship. Therefore, we should make sure that both of us are happy about our personal striving. It is not rude to say that I am in love, and I want to be in the relationship, because I feel good—I am fulfilling my desires or my capacities. It is not wrong to say that. Some philosophers think so. Emmanuel Levinas said, in love, you should care only about the beloved. Your needs are of no importance. If my needs are of no importance and I have a choice, I’ll leave the relationship.
I will move to a relationship in which my needs are important, in which I am fulfilling my capacities, in which I feel I am striving. So the interaction between the two people is crucial for love. Therefore, activities are important. And if you want to predict whether love will endure, you should look at the interaction between them at the beginning and say: okay. If the interaction is equal, if it is joyful, they have good chances. But if you detect contempt in the interaction, it is highly probable that they will not stay together. Interaction which is respectful, which is on equal footing, is crucial for the duration of love. And if, in addition to this, you also bring out the best from each other, you are in heaven. And no one wants to leave heaven. Everyone wants to stay in paradise, yeah? And therefore, try to be paradise by bringing the best out of each other.
Matt Teichman:
So in a way, it’s like romantic love is something like reciprocal parenting, or something in which I’m trying to detect value in another person and bring it out, like a sculptor of the other person. But they’re doing the same thing to me.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Yeah.
Matt Teichman:
And it’s essential to the nature of the relationship that at the same time as I’m doing this to them, they’re doing the same thing to me.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Yeah. Reciprocity is crucial in romantic love. And also, equal status. Equal status is very important. Autonomy is very important. There was a study. They asked men and women: how far do you want your partner to be above you? And the answer usually was, I am ready for my partner to be above me, but only about 25 percent more. Why 25 percent? These men may answer: at 25 percent, she earns more money. So we shall have more money. But above 25 percent is already inferior. Within 25 percent, he can say: we are equal. She is at 25 percent more than me in general, I am 25 percent more in looks, or in external appearance—whatever. But greater differences are destructive to the relationship.
By the way, another study found that those who have equal standing (equal status) are the least likely to have affairs. Affairs are more common among those who are superior, and think themselves to be superior, than those who are inferior. Why? Because the superior thinks to himself: okay, I am superior. I deserve to have something more. I give more. So my something more is an affair. And the inferior may say, I am inferior. I’m not like this. I need to compensate by having an affair to return to me my self-esteem. So equality in status is very important in romantic love.
Julia Liu:
So I very much agree with what you said about how love is about the flourishing of both parties, and I think flourishing of both parties is very important to love. But what I’m curious about is, how important is love to the flourishing of a person? How important is love to a good life? Will my life be missing something if I don’t happen to come across this profound love?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Love is not all we need. We need more than love in life. However, love is very important to a flourishing life and a happy life. People can flourish and can be happy without love, and people in love can be miserable. Because love is not some separate excluded entity. Love is an attitude within life, within the framework in which we live. And if we’re not happy with our lives, we may not be able to be happy with our love. As one woman said to me, ‘With my first husband, I loved him, and he loved me very much. However, I didn’t feel that I was flourishing. So I said to him, I love you, but I’m leaving you. However, with my second husband, I fight all the time, but I feel that I am flourishing’.
Love and life should go together. Sometimes, they are in conflict. And in many of these conflicts, life wins. Other times, love wins. But they are not the same. And the best love will be in a flourishing, living framework. So the two are very important to each other. Also, people who are in love are happier with their lives. So love contributes to life, but love is not all we need in life.
Julia Liu:
That’s somewhat good to hear.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah. I feel like this is very much in keeping with a lot of ancient philosophy, where the idea seems to be: there isn’t any one magical ingredient such that if you have that in your life, then your life will be good. It seems like it’s in a similar spirit.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Yes. Love and life is more complex. And therefore, I said, there is no one ingredient to love. Love is complex, with various ingredients and various components. And the good life is not constituted merely by love. Of course not. There are other things in life—mainly personal flourishing and other kinds of flourishing. Friendship is important in life. But love is, indeed, crucial to life, and the correlation between them is quite high.
Julia Liu:
So there was this part of the book where you talked about how imagination is very intrinsic to human life. And it plays a very significant role in love, as well, where we imagine the future with our loved ones, or imagine the possibilities of leaving them, and then finding another, better option, I guess you could say. So I’d be interested to hear more about what role imagination plays in love.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Imagination plays a crucial role in love. We don’t live merely in the present. We live in the past. The past influences who we are. And we live in the future. Actually, most of the discussion and concerns of people who are in love concern the future. So we live and love in both the past and the future. Therefore, imagination is important. However, we should also regard reality. We cannot just imagine in the sense of illusion. Illusion is a kind of imagination, and illusion is also good for romantic love. It is good that you have some illusion concerning your beloved, that you think that he is a bit smarter than he really is, and that is he maybe a kinder person than he really is. Illusion is good because it gives us a positive perspective about the beloved.
However, it should not be too much. Remember the 25 percent. if it is too much, we have a conflict with reality. And if you married, let’s say, a stupid partner, you cannot say that your partner is very wise, because reality will immediately indicate that it is not the case. However, you can say that he’s not that stupid.
[ LAUGHTER ]
Matt Teichman:
So romantic.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
He’s average. It’s not about beauty. I asked someone, ‘Is your wife beautiful’? So he answered me, ‘She’s not ugly’. ‘Is she wise’? ‘She’s not stupid’. These kinds of illusions are okay, because they enable us to interact with our partners. But they should not go too far. Actually, we can have illusions concerning more positive evaluations than in reality concerning general characteristics, but not specific ones. So a woman can say, ‘My husband is wonderful. However, he’s so disorganized’. Now, what do we see here? She cannot deny it—I mean, all the time, every hour, she sees how he is disorganized. However, she gives little weight to this property, and thinks that his other properties—let’s say wisdom, or kindness—are more important. Therefore, she can still speak about him as a wonderful person.
Julia Liu:
That’s really cool. Just as a follow-up: are we all under some sort of illusion when we’re in love? Does love make us blind?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
No. Love doesn’t make us blind, but love may make our sight blurred, a little bit. We don’t see precisely—when your heart is on fire, smoke gets in your eyes, and you don’t see so clearly. But it is not blindness. And it is good that we see our partner in a more positive way. But not too positive. Balance—moderation—is what Aristotle said is in life. Also, in love: moderation. You can exaggerate a little bit, but not too much. We should have ideals, which we don’t always fulfill. Ideals, also in love, are beacons that let us see what direction we’re taking. Even if we are not there yet, we are going in the right direction. So the positive attitude toward the other person is important in love.
Julia Liu:
That’s really interesting. So these questions are more about your book, I guess, than about love. So I was just reading your book, and I saw that there were a lot of quotes before each chapter. And some of these quotes were by authors, and singers, and some of these other quotes were just by random internet users, and I thought they were really funny. So I was just curious about how you selected those quotes, and what role you thought they would play in the book.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Okay. I really appreciate a sense of humor. Also in love—when you ask women or men about the positive characteristics that they like, sense of humor is at the top of the list. So a sense of humor is important. Another thing is that this humor gives us the right proportion of life. We should not be that serious. As someone said, you know why angels fly? Because they take themselves lightly.
[ LAUGHTER ]
And this is the case. We should regard ourselves in a humble manner, and humor enables us to regard ourselves in a humble manner. And these citations also express real truths in our lives. In humor, we always exaggerate, but there is some core which is true, and the humoristic quotation expresses it. For example, when Zsa Zsa Gabor said that ‘I know nothing about sex because I was married all my life. So there is the exaggeration that married people don’t have sex enough, or don’t know about sex, and you know about sex more when you have other partners—this is the core. But it is, of course, an exaggeration. And it is nice to read this wisdom. And so, I think she was very wise, Zsa Zsa Gabor—also very beautiful. But it gives some taste to the reading for us, as well. So I like it. And therefore, I put it in the book.
Julia Liu:
Definitely. I like them a lot, as well.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Thank you.
Julia Liu:
Yeah. And then, the other question I had was about your positivity regarding love. Because it’s very unusual that you have such a positive idea of love, especially in the modern world that we’re in, where most of the ideas about love are that it’s not long-lasting, it’s not an intrinsic part of our life—stuff like that.
Matt Teichman:
It’s like everybody wants to be cynical smart-asses all the time.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
I’m an optimistic person. I say about myself that I was born with a brain defect, being too much of an optimist. And optimism is good in life. There are many studies that say optimistic people live longer. And they not only live longer—their lives are more pleasant than those of the pessimists. So it is good to be optimistic. Now, about love—when I say I am an optimist about love, I don’t mean that I think that all kinds of love—romantic love—will endure forever. In one song, it is even written, ‘I will love you forever and a day’. Just to be on the safe side, she said ‘forever, and a day’. Another day. It is not the case. But I believe that when you find your partner, it can endure for a long time. A long time can be many years. And if it ends, it is not the end of a life. It’s just the end of a certain relationship, and the opening up of another relationship that may come.
So we don’t have to be so sad about love. We should enjoy the love we are in. We should develop it. We should enhance it. But when it ends, it doesn’t mean that it was not true love. True love can end, because there are circumstances that end love. And therefore, we should invest effort while we are in love, and take it calmly that it will end, nevertheless. And therefore, we should be optimistic in life, and also in love. Love is possible, also, at a later age. Some people at a later age may find the love of their life. There is no contradiction in this. You can find love at any age, and you can enjoy and enhance it at any age.
Julia Liu:
Definitely.
Matt Teichman:
What do you think is the biggest misconception out there about love? And what’s the right way to think about it?
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
The biggest misconception is to see love as an absolute, uncompromising attitude. My previous book was In the Name of Love: Romantic Ideology and Its Victims. We are all victims of romantic ideology—that love will conquer all, all we need in life is love, there is no mountain high enough to stop our love. All these claims are embedded in our culture. These claims are fine when they are the beacons for where we should go. But when you take them literally, it is a misconception which can bring a destructive result. All of us, in light of this romantic ideology, look for the prince or princess on a white horse. How many of us meet them? Very few. So actually, in life, we should compromise, and we should be happy with a good enough partner—not with the ideal partner.
But you cannot say it. You cannot say to your partner, ‘Darling, I love you, but you know that you are a compromise for me’.
[ LAUGHTER ]
It’s because of this romantic ideology. When people take this claim literally, they are disappointed all the time, because they don’t reach this ideal which is very hard to reach. Some of these men kill their wife, or partner, because their pathological notion of love, which is so extreme, cannot be fulfilled, and she wants to separate from him. So in the name of love, we’ve done horrible crimes. We—I mean human nature, and humans all throughout history—we’ve done horrible crimes in the name of love, as we’ve done in the name of religion. Both are very powerful and valuable ideologies. When we take them to the extreme, we just destroy our lives and our relationships.
Matt Teichman:
It seems like part of what you’re resisting here is the idea that we just sit here passively, and love just happens to us, and that’s that—as opposed to love being something that we actively work on, as it were.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Yes. Love is not passive. Love—we should work on it. However, if you work too hard on it, it is a sign that you are in the wrong workplace. We should not think of ourselves as having a second shift of work. We are at work in our job, and then we come back home to a second shift of work—it doesn’t work this way. You don’t want to have two shifts of work. Love is not like work in that we suffer in it, that it is toward some goals that we want to achieve, some money that we want to get. Love should be enjoyable, fulfilling, meaningful all the way. And you have to work on this; I don’t say no. But it is a different type of work. It is work in which you enjoy every step of it, and you feel that both of you are developing and getting more and more meaningful feelings, meaningful experiences, from this relationship.
Matt Teichman:
Aaron Ben Ze’ev, thank you so much for joining us. That was a great conversation.
Aaron Ben Ze’ev:
Thank you.
Julia Liu:
Thank you.
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