In Praise of Love

In fact, at its own level, love is not necessarily any more peaceful than revolutionary politics. A truth is not something that is constructed in a garden of roses. Never!

Dramas in love are the sharpest experience of the conflict between identity and difference.

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People will say, why talk about great truth in respect of the quite banal fact that So and So met his or her colleague at work? That’s exactly what we must emphasise: an apparently insignificant act, but one that is a really radical event in life at a micro-level, bears universal meaning in the way it persists and endures.

It is a brilliant first manipulation of the power of love and one we must now bring back to earth. I mean we must demonstrate that love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of difference.

My own philosophical view is attempting to say that love cannot be reduced to any of these approximations and is a quest for truth.

In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure, through the birth of a world.

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That we can encounter and experience the world other than through a solitary consciousness: any love whatsoever gives us new evidence of this. And that is why we like to love; as St Augustine says, we like to love, but we also like others to love us: quite simply because we love truths. That is what gives philosophy its meaning: people like truths,

We know how people get carried away by love stories! A philosopher must ask why that happens. Why are there so many films, novels, and songs that are entirely given over to love stories? There must be something universal about love for these stories to interest such an enormous audience.