What Love Really Means: Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities

“I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”

― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Murdoch believed that one of the core projects that each of us needs to undertake is to “unself”. “The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.”

For Murdoch, there is no backstage self. As long as we

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“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Explaining further, he continues: “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” Since the choice must be made to nurture growth, this def

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When pure love goes through the prism that is a human being, it manifests a variety of life-enhancing feelings, such as compassion, humility, affinity and closeness. These feelings are the foundation of sustainable human relationships. You are only required to look beyond the appearance of personality and behavior, to the true essence of your partn

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As Iris Murdoch puts it, “reality” is “that which is revealed to the patient eye of love.” Or, elsewhere, “Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality.”

I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word “love,” and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s classic self-help book The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’

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