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Defining Love
Encyclopedia entry by Thomas Jay Oord
The word “love” has many meanings. Psychologist Sigmund Freud observed that we use love in language in diverse ways. Theologian Mildred Bangs Wynkoop called love a multifarious weasel-word. Because of love’s diverse meanings, formulating a concise but unifying definition is difficult.
Some resist defining love altogether. Love cannot be captured in words, theyargue, because love utterly transcends language.
Others suggest that love is defined according to its use. Some regard love as a feeling; othersregard love as a decision. Some say love is blind; others say love requires expanded awareness of others. Love and sex are sometimes equated, while other times the two are considered in opposition. Some define love in terms of self-sacrifice; others regard love as self-fulfillment.
It is popular in the West to use three Greek words – agape, eros, and philia– to identify major forms of love. Religious words transliterated as love – such as bhakti, hesed, and caritas – are typically defined in relation to their religious contexts.
Although some abandon any hope of obtaining a unifying definition of love,in actual use many people assume that love possesses a unifying definition. Failure to provide a unifying definition often causesconfusion, incoherence, and ambiguity. The fifteenth-century French philosopher Francois de La Rochefoucould was correct when he said that although there are a thousand different versions of love, there is only one kind.
Perhaps love is best defined in this way: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others, to promote overall well-being. To say the same thing differently, loving actions are influenced by the previous actions of others, oneself, and (most theists believe) God, and these actions are carried out in the hope of encouraging flourishing. To explain better what this simple definition entails, we mustexamine its three main phrases.
The word “intentionally” in this definition of love refers to deliberateness, motive, and self-determination. With regard to deliberateness, love involves acting purposefully. This decisional aspect need not entail long and drawn out contemplation. But at least a bit ofthought accompanies action that we should regard as loving. While lovers occasionally reflect on a wide array of options, more often they consider the few options of which they are immediately aware.
With regard to the motive aspect of acting intentionally, we should not say that a person has acted lovingly when a positive outcome results from actions that the actor meant for harm. Motives matter. Love assesses prospectively what actions will likely promote well-being rather than retrospectively which actions yielded the greatest good.
Finally, the first phrase “to act intentionally” accounts for the self-determination inherent in love. To say it another way, love is meaningless if individuals are not free to choose one action rather than others. Freedom does not, however, involve unlimited or completely random choices. Rather, concrete circumstances limit what is genuinely possible as options for action.
The second phrase in the definition of love – “in sympathetic response to others” – suggests that love requires actual relations with others. Entirely isolated individuals – if such existed – could not love. And for most who affirm the existence of God, the relation one has with deity is most important. As Christian scripture puts it, “we love, because God first loved us.”
The word “sympathy” refersto the internal relationship that others have on the one who loves. In some contexts, this is called “empathy.” Whichever term one prefers, the point is that love involves being internally influenced by others such that one’s own experience is partially constituted by others.
The first two phrases in the definition of love provided reflect the two dominant ways philosophers, theologians, scientists, and poets throughout history have thought about the nature of love. Robert Hazorefers to these two ways as “tendency” and “judgment.”
Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as tendency identify love with feeling or emotion. They use words like “instinct” and “impulse” when referring to love. Lovers might say that they “fell in love,” that they feel “overwhelmed by love,” or that some object or person is “just so lovable.”
Those who understand love primarily or exclusively as judgment typically use the words “will,” “choice,” or “cognition” when talking about love. Love is a decision, they say, and we must choose to love no matter what emotions we feel.
A unifying definition of love requires that the tendential/sympathetic and the judgmental/intentional dimensions of love be equally affirmed. Love has both a relational and an active element and both are present in a single responsive act of love. Martha Nussbaum gets at this when she argues that emotions are essential elements of human intelligence and choice when humans love. Similarly, Stephen Post says that love requires an even balance or co-primacy between emotion and reason is the fitting alternative to those who would diminish the importance of either capacity.
The definition’s final phrase – “to promote overall well-being” – requires an explanation of what well-being entails. The phrase itself is related to health, happiness, wholeness, and flourishing. Aristotle called it eudaimonia. Theistic traditions have sometimes used the word “blessedness” or “shalom” when speaking of well-being.
Promoting well-being involves enhancing mental and physical aspects. It may involve acting to attain sufficient food, clean air and water, adequate clothing and living conditions, and personal security. Promoting well-being can involve intellectual development, the satisfaction of being cared for and sense of belonging, diversity of life-forms and cultural expressions, and an appropriate level of leisure and entertainment. Well-being promotion can entail securing economic stability, a feeling of worth, medical soundness and physical fitness, deep personal relationships, social and political harmony, and the opportunity to develop spiritual/religious sensibilities and practices. Acting responsively to increase well-being may involve acting in ways that develop the actor into a person with virtuous dispositions, habits, and character.
To promote overall well-being does not mean that only those who are thinking about the entire universe or considering all dimensions of well-being can express love. But responding intentionally for the good of the one, the few, or the “in-group” to the obvious detriment of the whole should not be considered an act of love. When wider needs clearly outweigh local ones, love requires acting for the common good.
To promote well-being is act to increase flourishing in at least one but often many of dimensions of existence. Love takes into account, to varying degrees, the life of the individual, local community, and global community. And so as far as they apply, acting to promote well-being includes considering the flourishing of nonhuman organisms and ecological systems. In all of this, an act of love maximizes overall well-being.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. 1994. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Random House.
Hazo, Robert, G. 1967. The Idea of Love. New York: Praeger.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions.
Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
Oord, Thomas Jay. 2004.Love and Science: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation.
______. 2007. The Many Facets of Love: Philosophical Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Post, Stephen G. 2003. Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion and Service. Philadelphia:
Templeton Foundation.
Singer, Irving. 1987. The Nature of Love, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Soble, Alan. 1989. Agape, Eros, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love. New York: Paragon.
Toner, Jules. 1968. The Experience of Love. Washington: Corpus Instrumentorum.
Vacek, Edward Collins. 1994. Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics.
Washington, D.C.: GeorgetownUniversity Press.
Williams, Daniel Day. 1968. The Spirit and Forms of Love. New York: Harper and Row.
Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. 1972. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Kansas
City: Beacon Hill.