Abstract
This article begins by tracing two issues to be kept in mind in discussing the theme of love as far back as Aristotle: on the one hand the polysemy of the term philia in Aristotle, and on the other hand the fact that there is a focal or core meaning of philia that provides order to that polysemy. Secondly, it is briefly suggested that the same issues are, mutatis mutandis, central for understanding the discussion of love or Liebe by Hegel, the central classic reference in debates on recognition. Thirdly, by pointing out a certain ambiguity in Harry Frankfurt’s recent work on love, the article focuses more closely on the thought that love in the simple sense which Aristotle had pinpointed as the focal meaning of philia, which is arguably at the core of Hegel’s discussion of Liebe, and which still forms at least one of the core senses of the term, is a ‘personifying’ attitude of recognition. Finally, drawing on the above points the article addresses the question whether love as a form of recognition is restricted to intimate relations such as those between family-members, ‘lovers’, close friends and so on, or whether it has applications in interhuman relations more broadly. The answer to this question, it is suggested, is essential for the viability of ethically substantial notions of solidarity beyond circles of close acquaintances, whether within the civil society, across nations, or towards future generations.
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Notes
References to Aristotle are given by Bekker number.
See Vlastos (1973, pp. 4–5). ‘Focal meaning’ is Vlastos’s translation (owed to G. E. L. Owen) of Aristotle’s phrase pros hen legomenon that Aristotle uses in defining philia (Aristotle 1984, 1236a16–1236b27). Aristotle does not use this phrase in talking about the philia-relationship between the good.
What I want to signal with the word ‘concrete’ is that concrete relationships are not reducible to psychological or ‘subjective’ factors, but always also involve various kinds of ‘objective’ factors or elements, such as interconnected social and institutional roles and various kinds of physical factors.
See lines 1156a9–1156a10: ‘wish well to each other in that respect to which they love one another’); 1156b9: ‘wish well to their friends for their sake’; and 1168a32: ‘the good man acts […] for his friend’s sake’.
I use these terms interchangeably. ‘Happiness’ is however here the key term since of the three only it makes explicit that the objects in question are beings with perspectives, and moreover with perspectives of possible happiness or misery—which is to say persons.
‘Intrinsically’ is a term often used in this context and I have used it as well in previous work. It has however unfortunate associations with the notion of ‘intrinsic value’ that I want to avoid here to emphasize the difference between personifying care or concern on the one hand and valuing on the other.
See note 4.
Other accompanying psychological phenomena—attitudes, emotions and sensations—are of course involved as well, but they will vary more from case to case.
I use these terms interchangeably in this paper.
According to Vlastos, Aristotle did not have even an ‘inkling’ of the notion of unconditional concern for the other (Vlastos 1973, p. 33). This is a startling claim, considering that Vlastos is otherwise clear enough on the focal meaning of philia in Aristotle, but it is understandable as a consequence of the confusion to which I am drawing attention.
Rationally independent means that the qualities do not provide reasons to love or not to love. This does not rule out that they could play some causal role in the coming about or fading of love.
One might of course complain also about Aristotle’s choice to accept the word-usage of his day in using the term philia ‘by analogy’ even for relationships based on pleasure or utility, which—on his own description—do not involve philia in the focal sense at all. Whereas the connection between philia on the focal sense and the philia-relationship between the good that I have pointed out provides justification for the practice of calling these by the same term, the nature of the ‘analogy’ remains thereby still unclarified.
Williams (2010) is useful in pointing out analogies between Aristotle’s treatment of philia and Hegel’s treatment of Liebe, yet it suffers from lack of clarity exactly on this distinction.
The best monograph length treatment of Liebe in Hegel that I know of is Werner (2007).
For more on Hegel’s normative essentialism and the basic principles of his Philosophy of Spirit, see Ikäheimo (2011).
See for example Hegel: ‘love […] finds itself in other people’ (1984, p. 46).
For the view that the notion of recognition has an important presence in Hegel’s work not only in but also after Jena, see Williams (1997).
Here and there Hegel mentions friendship (Freundschaft) as an instantiation of ‘finding oneself in the other’. See for example Hegel (1971, p. 176 [§436]).
See Ikäheimo (2011) where I argue that one needs to have this concept of love in mind if one is to make sense of how exactly love as a form of recognition can fulfil all the functions that it has in Hegel, or in other words to see how exactly it instantiates the structure of ‘finding oneself in one’s other’.
What interests me here is more the internal logic of Hegel’s thinking about love, and less whether every detail of what he wrote is actually consistent with this logic. Yet, one can test the thesis that this attitude is the ‘core’ in the sense of a necessary element of everything that Hegel himself calls Liebe by finding passages where he talks about Liebe in a systematic sense where this is not the case on a plausible reconstruction. Things are somewhat complicated though by Hegel’s commitment to normative essentialism which allows that phenomena can instantiate their essences to different degrees. This means that in principle relationships or attitude-complexes can count as Liebe to different degrees, depending on the relative significance of the attitude in question in them.
A common objection to defining love as caring about the good, well-being or happiness of someone for her own sake is that this is an abstract and bloodless notion of love foreign to the real life complexity—and according to the romantic objector, passion—of love. But here one should ask whether the objector has in mind concrete relations, complexes of attitudes etc., or single attitudes. Concrete relationships can be very complex indeed and the same is true of attitude-complexes. And often, but not always, these involve passionate emotions and sensations. Yet, if one asks for one single criterion on which to decide whether there is or was real or genuine love in a relationship, or whether a complex of attitudes etc. between partners in a relationship really also includes or included love, then the attitude at stake is a very strong candidate.
See Honneth on the ‘uniqueness’ of the loved one for the loving person that is a function of ‘the unique way’ in which her ‘qualities come together’ (2007, p. 167). For sure, something like this is quite often very important for the attitude-complexes involved in love-relationships. Yet, it is a different matter to claim that it is essential to them. I abstract here from Honneth's treatment of relations of love in Honneth 2011, pp. 252–276.
This is not to deny that a person can also care about his happiness because of its importance for others. If you love me, my happiness is part of your happiness, and if I also love you, I do not want to make you unhappy by making myself unhappy.
This does not rule out that I have separate interests that are in conflict with my beloved’s interests that are also my interests because I love her. It only rules out that her interests are my interests merely because of my separate interests. In other words, as Hegel always emphasized, the unity brought about by love does not annul difference.
The recognitive attitude of respect is another fundamental way. What I am suggesting is that ‘person-making’ significances in light of which an object of recognitive attitudes is revealed to their subject are significances the applying of which to x is having particular kinds of motivations towards x. Call this motivational internalism about taking someone as a person. I am trying to elaborate here on a theme that Honneth mentions with regard to Dewey’s idea of the significance ‘man’ as having ‘a qualitative effect’ (2008, p. 40). In my view, Arto Laitinen’s critical reconstruction of ‘taking x as a person’ (Laitinen 2011) misses this internalist point.
See also Vernon L. Provencal’s deeply Hegelian—even if Hegel is nowhere mentioned in the article—discussion of the theme, developing the thesis that the idea of self-relation (through others) is fundamental to Aristotle’s ethics (Provencal 2001). In light of Provencal’s reading Hegel and Aristotle are very close to each other indeed.
Aristotle himself at one point says that one can only have eunoia (‘goodwill’), but not philia, with regard to (a) people whom one does not know, as well as towards (b) people who do not know about one (2001a, 1166b30–1166b32). But Aristotle does not explain why (a) is the case, and he contradicts himself with (b), since he elsewhere talks about the philia of mothers towards their children whom they have given away to be brought up elsewhere and who therefore do not know their mothers (2001a, 1159a28–1159a33).
There has recently been much interest in applying the Honnethian recognition-theoretical paradigm in global issues. For articles prompting theorists to think about love as a form of recognition beyond the intimate sphere of the family or other close relationships, see Heins (2008) and Thompson (forthcoming). Thomas Lindemann (forthcoming) argues powerfully for the significance of ‘empathy’ between nations in pacifying international relations and of ‘lack of empathy’ in encouraging armed conflicts. Honneth (2010) has recently suggested that it is not feasible to distinguish between different types of recognition in the explanation of the dynamics of international relations. I am more optimistic that the differentiated conception of recognition, pioneered by Honneth himself, can be very illuminating also in global applications of the paradigm.
I have replaced ‘men’ with ‘humans’ to translate the original ‘Menschen’. What Marx means by a ‘human relation’ is on my reconstruction a concrete relationship in which recognitive, and thus personifying attitudes have an adequate role.
Think of, for example, aestheticizing versions along the lines of ‘they are such strange and beautiful people … strange and beautiful things are intrinsically valuable … therefore they should be conserved’. There is a familiar form of cultural fetishism that has undertones of this sort of aesthetist reification of people of other cultures.
Esteem, or as I prefer to call it ‘contributional valuing’, is a more complicated matter. See Ikäheimo and Laitinen (2010).
This should go to show that ignoring this distinction, as Frankfurt seems to do, is not a trivial matter.
It should not require further arguments that all people living on the finite earth are connected with each other in innumerable concrete ways, such as through actions that affect the earth’s biosphere, through the global economy, and so on.
Another direction perhaps worth further investigation is the idea of attitudes towards personally unknown others to which one is inferentially committed. On this, see Ikäheimo 2004.
Think of the ways one can be moved, or unmoved, by the fates or fortunes of literary figures. Now think of your own imagination as the ‘author’. What I am suggesting is that a dimension of imagining something as a person involves viewing things from his or her irreducible perspective of happiness and misery. The other dimension to do with respect and authority cannot be discussed here. See also Richard Rorty on ‘human solidarity’ requiring the capacity to see ‘strange people as fellow sufferers’ or ‘as one of us’ (Rorty 1989, p. xvi). If introducing the phenomenon of imagination here seems somehow weak or irrelevant, just consider the idea articulated by Benedict Anderson and others that political communities are essentially ‘imagined communities’. How individuals and collectives imagine each other and their relations is essential to how these relations are and how they will develop.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Daniel Brudney for a fruitful exchange on the topics of this paper. If I understand him right, his fully articulated position may in fact be compatible with what I am proposing here. My thanks are also due to Simon Thompson for helpful comments.
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Ikäheimo, H. Globalising Love: On the Nature and Scope of Love as a Form of Recognition. Res Publica 18, 11–24 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9182-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-012-9182-6