Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

Who is the book dedicated to by Singer?
◦ Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love

Who wrote the Forward and how does
he value the book?
◦ Alan Soble
◦ this is first book one should read
◦ it’s a “very personal…intellectual
autobiography as well as it is an exploration of
love and sex” (xi-xii)
Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love
What other major texts are referred to in the Foreward?
◦ Thomas Nagel, “Sexual Perversion,” 1969
◦ Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, 1966
◦ Ander Nygren, Agape and Eros, 1930-36
◦ Eric Fromm, The Art of Loving, 1956
 How would you classify this book?
◦ History of ideas (informal)
◦ Apologia pro mente sua
 “a defense of one’s life”
 What is Singer’s philosophy?
 See p. 14

Irving Singer, Philosophy of Love

What does Singer mean by this being a
“partial summing-up”?
◦ Selective look at his previous work
◦ Philosophy has no final outcome or solution

What do you learn about Singer’s
background and the motivation behind his
study?
◦ Trained in analytic philosophy
◦ He wanted to study the ordinary use of love
 Digression on Wittgenstein and view that the meaning of a
word is found in how it’s used in a particular language-game
A Broad Historical Overview
Ancient conceptions
 Christian conception
 Courtly love: Middle Ages
 Shakespeare: pivotal transitional figure
 Romantic love

◦ Benign romanticism
◦ Romantic pessimism
Is Romantic Love a Recent Idea?

What is this kind of love and how does
Singer answer this question?
◦ Romantic love: sexual, interpersonal
phenomenon
◦ Although the concept belongs to the
development of Romanticism at the end of
the 18th century, it is part of a longer
historical continuum.
◦ “The claim that Romantic Love is an invention
of the latter period is therefore of limited
value, and on the face of it, mistaken” (2).
Characteristics of Romantic Love
“…frequently presupposes a basic
hostility between male and female” (4)
 …but also a dream that this fundamental
difficulty could be overcome
 The importance of passion is central to
Romantic love; passion “alone makes life
worth living” (42).
 Romanticism has also provided the
foundation for the democratization of
love (81ff).

Varieties of Romantic Love

What are they?
◦ Benign romanticism
 Romantic puritanism (Rousseau): one can be a true
lover without sex and this is enough for a
meaningful life.
◦ Romantic pessimism: “Romantic love is always
doomed” (40).
 Schopenhauer, Freud, Tolstoy
Plato (429–347 B.C.E.)

What is Singer’s view about the
significance of Plato’s writing on love?
◦ Plato is where we must begin our study (see
p. 7).
◦ Plato’s doctrine is “the most fertile and
powerful single body of thought about love
that anyone has ever created throughout
Western civilization” (12).
Plato (429–347 B.C.E.)
But Plato’s views are curious and Singer
ultimately opposes them.
 What do we learn about Plato’s views?

◦ Several works: Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic,
Laws
◦ Aristophanes’ speech
◦ Homosexuality: for or against?
◦ A Continuum:
◦ Sex (physical)
Love Go(o)d
(Transcendent)
Beyond Idealism

Why does Singer reject the Platonic view?
◦ Pluralism, against one theory, or one definition
(14-15)

A central question for our course is thus,
is there one central conception of love,
one common essence?
◦ Compare Marion’s view (4-5)
◦ Singer is not a visionary, while the other
authors we shall be reading are.

What are the main Platonic concepts
Singer opposes?
Concepts of Transcendence and
Merging

Transcendence: the idea that to explain
love one must refer to a higher,
metaphysical reality
◦ For Singer love is a product of “the manifold
forces that operate on this planet” (18).

Merging: the idea that love involves a
certain oneness with the other
◦ For Singer this is “a very dangerous idea” that
“is not true to what it is to be a person” (18).
◦ What kind of “oneness”?
The Concept of Merging
Singer wishes to replace “merging” with
“wedding” i.e., the idea of being joined
together in a “kind of oneness” without
losing one’s individuality (22).
 In the Middle Ages this was the way the
religious love of God was conceived, but
later in Romanticism there’s a “quasireligious love” of the other person (23).

The Concept of Merging

Singer raises the question why would one
want to merge with God? In other words,
where does this concept of merging
originate?
◦ One answer: God is a perfect being, and we
want to be perfect ourselves.
◦ Another: Life beings with a merging, and thus
we wish to return to this primordial state.
Courtly Love and Its Successors
An important observation about Ancient
Greece and the claim that “their thinking
about love …was alien to the views we
have nowadays” (28)
 What is Singer’s view of agape?

◦ “Christian idea of God’s bestowal of love”
◦ “a momentous concept in world history”
◦ but contra Nygren, misguided in thinking that
love only originates from God (29)
Courtly Love and Its Successors
Courtly love “was an effort to humanize
Christian thought in the Middle Ages” (29).
 Based on Christian ideology, but now the point
is to relate “to another person with the same
kind of attachment that the church ordained in
the love of God” (30).
 Courtly love led to “the democratization of
love…the idea that almost anyone could love,
and do it well” (31).
 But varieties of courtly love, no single notion

How to define love
Is love a concept?
 The etymology of love

◦ Love [ME, fr. OE lufu; akin to OHG luba love,
OE leof dear, L lubere, libere to please] bef. 12c
◦ Indo-European root lubhyati “desires”
◦ Related to Latin libet “it is pleasing,” and libido
“desires”
Greek Words for Love




Eros: sexual love based on physical
attraction, erotic or romantic love
Philia: “brotherly love,” love based on a
common interest, not sexual attraction, also
“love” of wisdom, related to virtue,
friendship
Agape: term used for love in New
Testament, unconditional love of God for
humans and humans for “neighbors,” charity
Storge: familial love, affection
Appraisal and Bestowal
This distinction lies at the basis of Singer’s, love
trilogy, which begins “love is a way of valuing
something. It is a positive response toward the
‘object of love’…love affirms the goodness of
this object.” (The Nature of Love 3).
 Here Singer also distinguishes love from “liking”
and “lusting” (desiring obsessively), which he
says don’t necessarily affirm goodness

Appraisal and Bestowal

Appraisal: “the ability to discover value, in
oneself or in other people”; this is objective and
in principle verifiable
◦ (e.g., consider the appraisal of a house and a business
relationship)

Bestowal: “a way of creating…a new kind of
value,” “an engendering of value by means of [an
affirmative] relationship,” an “affective value”
(Philosophy of Love 52)
◦ this value isn’t reducible to objective value, as the
valuing alone makes it valuable; something or
someone has an importance beyond the objective
value; the other has value for its/her own sake
On Freud


What is Freud’s place in the philosophy of love?
◦ Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
◦ Beyond the Pleasure Principle
◦ “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in
Erotic Life”
What is Singer’s estimation?
◦ Freud didn’t understand bestowal, only appraisal
◦ For Freud love is an illusory overvaluation, but
Freud is deluded according to Singer.
◦ But Freud is interesting because he raises the
question about the role of science in the
philosophy of love. (53-59)
On Schopenhauer (and Nietzsche)





The great pessimist and the teacher of the
overman—what are they doing here?
For Schopenhauer one must repudiate the “Will”
(the cruel and valueless force of nature)
Love is to be understood as the Will’s manipulating
us to have sex to bring about the next generation
(The World as Will and Representation, “The
Metaphysics of Sexual Love”)
Thus, “passionate, marital love” is a delusion.
But “companionate love” may offer a viable
possibility of happiness. (70)
A Note on Hume
Hume, like Schopenhauer, distinguishes
two kinds of love—sexual and
companionate—and both are viewed
more positively, although he leaves it for
readers to decide which is preferable.
 Link to Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature

◦ Of the Amorous Passion, Or Love Betwixt the
Sexes

And “Of Love and Marriage”
On Nietzsche
For Nietzsche, contra Schopenhauer, one
must affirm the Will.
 Still, he too generally has a negative,
cynical view of love.
 “Love is a state in which a man sees
things most decidedly as they are not.”
(The Antichrist, Sec. 23)

More Nietzsche Quotations


“What else is love but understanding and rejoicing that
another lives, works, and feels in a different and
opposite way to ourselves? That love may be able to
bridge over the contrasts by joys, we must not remove
or deny those contrasts. Even self-love presupposes an
irreconcilable duality (or plurality) in one person.
(Human, All Too Human, Sec. 75, “Love and Duality”)
“It is true we love life; not because we are used to living,
but because we are used to loving. There is always
some madness in love. But there is always, also, some
method in madness. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “On
Reading and Writing”)
More Nietzsche



But a more positive view can be found in what he
intends by amor fati (literally “the love of fate”).
Singer interprets this as a wrong-headed cosmic
love of everything (see 62 & 96), but it can be
interpreted more positively as a way of affirming all
aspects of one’s existence. (Is this a kind of
bestowal?)
“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful
what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of
those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that
be my love henceforth! . . . And all in all and on the
whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.” (The
Gay Science, §276)
What is Singer’s Philosophy of Love?







“No simple answer” (110)
Appraisal and Bestowal (51ff)
Interdependence rather than dependence
Acceptance: Contra Sartre, the “look of
love” involves an “accepting” of another
person. (91)
Sharing: love is a “sharing of selves” (91)
The love of love (96)
Different kinds of love, but no hierarchy
(110) (i.e., the plurality of love)
The Plurality of Love
Not all love can be reduced to sexual
motivation as Freud thought.
 Singer’s view is that “love is something
that can happen in any number of
different, pluralistic, ways.”
 There are “different kinds of love that
have to be understood in terms of their
own variability and their own individual
dimensions.” (75)

Group Discussion/Timed Writing
Form groups of 3-5 students
 Discuss and write an answer to the
following questions (hand in one sheet
per group)
 Questions: What are the strengths and
weaknesses of Singer’s Philosophy of Love?
Identify two of each.

Strengths
An accessible, broad historical introductory
overview of the philosophy of love which include a
number of useful distinctions
◦ (e.g., courtly and romantic love, passionate and
companionate love, appraisal and bestowal)
 An occasionally provocative consideration of
certain philosophers
 (e.g., Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre)
 A case for a pluralistic philosophy of love
 Open to interdisciplinary work on love
 An interesting, personal apologia pro mente sua

Weaknesses (Concern #1)

Shouldn’t a philosophy of love be one that
values love? In which case the pessimistic
philosophies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche,
Freud, and Sartre should not be as
prominent as the philosophies of Spinoza,
Kierkegaard, and Scheler, which are
centered on love.
◦ Problem with considerations of Sartre (cf. 86
& 97)
◦ Interpretive problem with Nietzsche’s amor
fati
Weaknesses (Concern #2)

In what sense is this a “phenomenological
blueprint” of love? (58)
◦ Doesn’t the concept of bestowal involve
transcendence? (see 53)
◦ Singer also writes that “love is pervasively bound
up with the relationship between the abstract and
the concrete” (102).
◦ Yet he shrugs his shoulders when confronted
with notions of transcendental spirit, and he
thinks that “love is an emanation grounded in
matter, and comparable to its parental origin”
(105).
Weaknesses (Concern #3)

Which perspective shall we take in
exploring the philosophy of love, a
pluralistic one or a unitary one. Which is
preferable? Which is more edifying?
◦ A perspective like Singer’s that expresses the
plurality of love and opposes the search for a
univocal concept, or one like Jean-Luc
Marion’s in The Erotic Phenomenon that
opposes the desire to make numerous
distinctions and instead argues for a concept
of love that is distinguished by its unity (5).