Midweek pick-me-up: Iris Murdoch on love
What Love Really Means: Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
Viktor E Frankl • Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust
“ For love is not about merging. I t’s a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to another.”
On Being • Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’ve got inside you.’ | The On Being Project
But there is another, more workable and mature philosophy of love available, one that’s traceable back to the ancient Greeks. This states that love is an admiration for the good sides, the perfections, of a person. The Greeks took the view that love is not an obscure emotion. Loving someone is not an odd chemical phenomenon indescribable in words.
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