Tuesday, August 16, 2011

the who and the what


"Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard" (Kundera, 49). 




French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, was asked to examine “love.” The following are Derrida's excerpts from the above video:

“… as for the reason Philosophy has often spoke of love, I either have nothing to say or I’d just be reciting clichés."

"The first question one could pose is the question of the difference between the who and the what. Is love the love of someone or the love of something? Ok, suppose I love someone: Do I love someone for the absolute singularity of who they are? – I love you because you are you. Or, do I love your qualities, your beauty, your intelligence? Does one love someone, or does one love something about someone?"

"The difference between the who and the what at the heart of love, separates the heart. It is often said that love is movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity or because I love the way that someone is?"

"Often, love starts with some type of seduction. One is attracted because the other is like this or like that. Inversely, love is disappointed and dies when one comes to realize the other person doesn’t merit our love. The other person isn’t like this or that."

"So at the death of love it appears that one stops loving another not because of who they are but because they are such and such. That is to say, the history of love, the heart of love, is divided between the who and the what."

"The question of Being, to return to philosophy … because the first question of philosophy is: what is it ‘to be’? What is Being? The question of Being is itself always divided between the who and the what. Is ‘Being’ someone or some thing?"

"I speak of it abstractly but I think that whoever starts to love, is in love, or stops loving is caught between the division of the who and the what. One wants to be true to someone – singularly, irreplaceably – and one perceives that this someone isn’t x or y. They didn’t have the qualities, properties, the images that I thought I loved."

"So, fidelity is threatened by the difference between the who and the what.”


Derrida says that “fidelity is threatened by the difference between the who and the what,” but isn’t it precisely the "what" that makes up the "who"?

Are we looking for someone that we love absolutely because of who they are, or the qualities they possess? Though, the question seems to be in itself misleading. Isn’t it always that you love someone for who they are based on the qualities they possess? Conversely, even though they might not have some important trait, you still love them despite their lack of a specific quality. Derrida posed the question most eloquently, “Does one love someone, or does one love something about someone?” 

Does love just boil down to poetic justice versus logical thought? Or perhaps that is the wrong question. The question is not one of love, rather one of happiness or contentment when in love. Or, is it the case that we cannot be logical when dealing with an emotional ideology?

Perhaps Slavoj Zizek said it best:
“What does love feel like,” asked an interviewer, to which he replied, “Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.” 


Greenstreet, Rosanna. Slavoj Zizek: Short Survey. The Guardian, 9 August 2008. 16 August 2011. < http://www.lacan.com/symptom2/?page_id=88>

Jaques Derrida on Love and Being. YouTube. 26 January 2007. 16 August 2011.
< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj1BuNmhjAY&feature=player_embedded> 


Kundera, Milan. Slowness, A Novel. Trans. Linda Asher. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. 





2 comments:

  1. I find it funny that you quote Kundera. He is an amazing Czech author, but not too well known in America.

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  2. Isn't he the one you mentioned earlier today? I think there were 2, but I only remembered him

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