We must bear in mind that, like many processes for finding the truth, the process of love isn’t always peaceful. It can bring violent argument, genuine anguish and separations we may or may not overcome. We should recognize that it is one of the most painful experiences in the subjective life of an individual!

Love then moves beyond seduction and, through the serious mediation of marriage, becomes a way to accede to the super-human.

In both cases, huge risks are involved that are dependent on language itself. It is about uttering a word the effects of which, in existence, can be almost infinite. That is also the desire driving a poem. The simplest words become charged with an intensity that is almost intolerable.

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Nothing enables one to prearrange the encounter – not even Meetic, and all those long, preparatory chats!: in the end, the moment you see each other in the flesh, you see each other, and that’s that, and it’s out of control! However, love cannot be reduced to the first encounter, because it is a construction.

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,

And often what starts there lasts so long, is so charged with novelty and experience of the world that in retrospect it doesn’t seem at all random and contingent, as it appeared initially, but almost a necessity.