The metaphysics of love

Those that answer Valentine dread the month of February like
a plague. Besides, close friends who always demand that you
celebrate your name in grand style, most confront you with all
manner of questions bordering on the concept that your name
is supposed to embody. Thus, you are asked whether you
were born on the 14th of February or whether you were a by-
product of love affair that took place in the month of February.
One fact I have come to discover over the years is that people
take those that bear the name of Valentine as experts in all
known techniques of love, starting with its fundaments to its
metaphysics.
Despite much research, we cannot tell unarguably the exact
date the feast started, nor the route by which it entered into
history. Perhaps it is connected to the life of a certain St.
Valentine who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome
as the Church hagiography would want us to believe. Perhaps,
as the legend of the saint’s heroic faith says, it grew out of
the love shown to prisoners by the saintly Valentine. Perhaps
it has to do with the period in the year when birds of the earth
look for mates. Perhaps it is another case of substitution of a
pagan feast by Christian feast as a subtle way of blighting
paganism at the bud. We do not know. Valentine’s Day is part
of history whose beginning has been forgotten, and whose end
we shall never reach.
The popularity of Valentine’s Day could be linked to the nature
of the theme it celebrates – love. Writing about love,
Archbishop Fulton Sheen called it “the most used, and the
most misunderstood word.” The misunderstanding inherent in
the nature of love often provokes people to ask questions
such as: How much of what we claim as love is love indeed?
Does love have different levels and spheres? Is it possible to
love our neighbour as ourselves, as the Holy writ prescribes?
What is love? These are the questions with which the most
comprehensive theories, treatises, and analyses of love find it
necessary to begin.
To the Greeks, love could be Eros, Philia, and agape. Plato’s
ladder of love in the Symposium has different loves for its
rungs, up to what we commonly call “Platonic Love”. St
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between love in the sphere of
the passion and love as an act of will. The former he assigns
to what he calls the “concupiscible faculty” of the sensitive
appetite; the latter, to the rational or “intellectual appetite”.
Sometimes, people talk about metaphysical, contemplative,
material and acquisitive love, etc.
Whatever form love takes, it implies a complex psychical
experience of strong attraction to, intense desire for, vivid ap­
preciation of, a profound interest in, ones object of love. The
object of love could be a fellow being, institution, cause or
even nature. It involves tender affection, sympathetic
understanding, admiration and loyalty, with reference to its
object.
But apart from a few people who recognize the fact of
plurality of love in their analyses, most of us, especially the
youth, talk abundantly of love, commonly in the sense of
amorous appetite. These are people who confess their loving
the object of their love more than their own mothers. Recall
the “sugar in my tea” and similar stuff. Our elders consider
this form of love to be a form of “possession” or “madness”,
and would frown at anyone who would propose it as a fit
guide in the choice of marriage mate. They do this, knowing
that once the erotic side of love diminishes or fades away
altogether, the disinterested element fades too; interest in the
other’s happiness evaporates, all tender feeling is eroded, and
the one desire is to get away. This is what Lucretius called
“erotic befuddlement”. What Dedriot deridedly described as
“the voluptuous loss of a few drops of liquid.” It is a spark
thrown off by the contact or nearness of two opposite bodies.
In pursuit of this type of love there is nothing that human
beings have not done, or are not capable of doing. The love
portion that some ladies brew for men they suspect of
unrequited love has no platonic aim. It is not out of
generosity, rather to get the object of their longing, that men
spend lots of money in wooing women. Women themselves do
as much. To attract men, they dress in manners to arouse
precipitate passion. Eyelashes are darkened with gum
ammonia. Checks and lips are painted with sticks of minium
or alkanet roots. Adjustable eyebrows are used and often
pencilled with lampblack or pulverized or sulphuret of
antimony, sometimes it is thinned to diverse shapes or shaved
off entirely and painted “crescent moons” or other forms.
Eyelids are shaded with kohl. All sort of things are rubbed on
the face, in the hope that it will make them look beautiful.
Some in the villages still wrap their fingernails over night with
henna leaves to make them purple. Padded brassieres are
used to make the breast look poised and … Breast en­
hancement has since become part of beauty regimen. There is
no part of the woman’s body, in pursuit of men, that has not
been perfected, decorated, refined, stretched and squeezed,
bleached, reformed, compacted and shortened.
Higher than the afore-described love is what is often called
genuine friendship. In this type of love, there is often the
predominance of altruistic motives. It springs from mutual
admiration. Here, love is thought to precede desire and to
determine its wishes. Marriages built upon this type of love
are often successful. Mature lovers discover that marriage
transcends the act of multiplication of the species or the
fantasy of sexual acts. There are some men who think that all
a woman appreciates in a man is when he brandishes the
erectile organ to her satisfaction. No. Marriage is more than
that. It demands deep understanding and maturity from both
partners.
All the foregoing classifications and distinctions, inexhaustible
though, belong to the theory of human love. But the fact of
love’s diversity extends to the Christian theory of love.
Christianity brought about a basic shift in man’s thinking
about love. Christianity sees love not in the emotion or
passion, but from the infinite perfection and creativity of God.
Writing to the Corinthians (2 Cor 13: 6) St Paul said that
“love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in
the truth…”God Himself is love (I John 4: 4). “Love ye one
another”. In this profound sentence, God summarized all the
commandments. Love rules the world and was, perhaps, as
Parmenides thought, “the very first thing created by the gods
to rule the world”.
The key to peace in the world is for men to embrace the
ethics of Christ – love. Confucius taught a version of it in his
rule of reciprocity (golden rule). Immanuel Kant espoused it in
his book, The Metaphysics of Morals in what he called the
“Maxims of Categorical Imperative”. All great religions teach
it. Until we start to imbibe this golden rule (love), the battle to
re-make the world can as well be labelled a utopia.
The sooner we use the day of Valentine to promote this type
of love, the better the world will become. Here we are again
celebrating another Valentine. How do we make it serve the
purpose of making the world a better place? Is it for us just a
day to buy expensive Valentine’s gifts and flowers and caress
one another in the happy ignorance of the true meaning of
love? These are the central questions.