Broadening Our View of Love
What I watched: “Kierkegaard on Love” by The School of Life. Posted October 19, 2022.
Love. We toss that word around a lot. Movies, series, and novels frequently use love as a main storyline narrative. Culturally we’re obsessed with love. Families, friends, churches, and our own social circles nudge us aggressively toward a one-on-one lifetime love match mate.
Additionally, the word love ends up being an all-purpose emotion we use throughout our daily conversation. I love that book. I love playing tennis. I love that actor.
But it’s a certain flavor of romantic love that’s elevated to worship status. Why?
Now, I’m not naïve. I know the allure of that feeling of head-over-heels limerence when we feel a deep attraction to someone. It’s awesome. By no means would I want that not to be an option to express love, but I believe we restrict our perspective on love to our detriment.
Danish existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard had an interesting perspective on love. At age 34, he published a book in Copenhagen in 1847 in which he proposed a theory that upended the leading idea about love that his own age, much like our own contemporary era, liked to entertain about love.
First, and most importantly, Kierkegaard insisted that most of us have no idea what love is, even though we refer to the term incessantly.
In Europe during the first half of the 1800s, when Kierkegaard was writing, the concept of romantic love was elevated to worship status. Romantic love is the veneration of one special person in our lives with those bonded in such love assumed to live out their days loving only each other. That conception of love was held up as an ideal.
Kierkegaard wasn’t such a fan of romantic love. He felt love seen as just that idealized model was a narrow view of what love should actually be. Rather, he proposed that we return to a more exacting version of “Christian love.” The Christian love he believed in commands us to love everyone, including those we too often consider unworthy of love.
Some of my readers might be perplexed because I’m an atheist and here I am writing about Christian love. While I have no use whatsoever for Christianity or religion of any kind, I’m ready to applaud any philosophy of life that proliferates a more inclusive interpretation of love. Kierkegaard looked to Christian love as a fully embracing kind of love and I’m all for that. Sadly, too much of the modern Christianity movement in the United States seems to wallow in hate and judgment.
Kierkegaard made a distinction between what he considered true love, embodied by how he viewed the Christian perspective on love, and erotic love.
I write often about sexuality and relationships. I’m a fan of erotic love. But that said, we sure could use more of the type of love for all of humankind that Kierkegaard champions.
Of course, I’m imperfect. I’ve not yet attained the ability to love all people the way Kierkegaard suggests would be best.
It is true love when we can look at someone who appears misguided, lazy, angry, or proud and instead of labeling them revolting can wonder with imagination and sympathy how they might have come to be this way; when we can perceive the lost, vulnerable, or hurt child that must lie somewhere within the perplexing or dispiriting adult.
Love means making the effort to extend our compassion beyond the bounds of attraction so that we may look generously on all those we might at first glance have deemed beyond the pale or undeserving.
Kierkegaard suggests that if we understood love properly our expression of love for a person wouldn’t be dependent on superficial attraction or admiration, but rather those expressions of love would signal that we accept the ways in which that person might be difficult, troubled, or otherwise objectionable.
Phew. That’s a lot to ask of anyone. Intellectually I know he’s correct but carrying that out throughout our day-to-day interactions with people is a tough order. I wish I was that evolved. I don’t think I am. There are people for whom I’m not sure I could muster an ounce of love even if I accept that Kierkegaard’s directive is the most ethical thing to do.
One of the other concerns Kierkegaard had was that his contemporaries had replaced Christian forgiveness with justice. Justice sounds good on its face. We certainly do not want a society that does not pursue adequate justice for all. But justice is flawed in that its purpose is typically to give everyone what they deserve.
Sounds good, huh? Everyone gets what they actually deserve. However, if all of us ended up with what we actually deserved, the world in which we live would become a rough road.
The attempt to pursue justice at all costs, and the belief that doing so is theoretically possible, gives rise to appalling intolerance, for if one really believes that one can be a flawless instrument of righteousness, then there is logically no limit to the degree of rage or the sternness of punishments that can be brought to bear upon wrongdoers.
Reflect for a moment on the hate and intolerance of many Evangelical and other right-wing Christians these days. Their overt hate for LGBTQ people, the rights of women, and generally judging all those who believe or are different than them is horrific. They cling to their misguided interpretations of the Bible to justify their doling out of harsh justice upon anyone who disagrees with their self-righteous and myopic view of the world.
Kierkegaard did not envision a world in which everyone gets exactly what they deserve. Instead, he believed everyone should be gifted the kindness that we all need. More kindness would certainly make for a better world today as we are pummeled with rather terrible things said and done by many. Modern day right-wing MAGA Republicans certainly come to mind as examples of such lack of kindness. They and others like them follow the “I’ve got mine and I don’t care if you get yours” mindset that is tearing our country apart.
The pursuit of justice may spring from the noblest of motives, but it is in fact a quick route to an unloving hell. Instead, Kierkegaard proposed that there is a ladder of love from the most undemanding to the true and that we must learn to climb this ladder. On the first rung of the ladder, we love those who love us. Then we love those who do not love us. Then we love those who persecute us. Finally, and triumphantly, we should love everyone without exception.
I’m not sure about you, but the second, third, and fourth rungs of that ladder are a tough climb. Again, I know this is the right thing to do ethically and morally. At least I believe that to be true. But enacting such broad sweeping love in our lives takes the opening of a heart for which I admit to falling short. Goals.
Kierkegaard found it frustrating, as do I, when someone says they can’t find someone to love. What? Really? As pointed out, there are millions of people around to love. He contends that if we say those people aren’t worthy of love, then we don’t understand love at all.
I don’t for a moment believe we can all abandon our notions of love as they stand currently. But we can do better. We can try to look past the superficial and cultural metrics by which we often judge the target of our love and affections and attempt to see past those things to bring about a deeper kind of love. Kierkegaard felt the selfishness of preferential love was a shortcoming of humanity and that loving thy neighbor, to use the often touted Christian verbiage, was the better goal.
In Kierkegaard’s view, there’s a type of snobbishness demonstrated by romantic love. One might take great pride in one’s lack of prejudice but apply highly specific and exacting criteria to their choice of partner. Income, sense of humor, attractive face, buffed body, social status, and so on, are often factored into the choice of a partner. Kierkegaard felt we should eschew this “caste system” and open our minds and hearts to love people without enacting such a rigid selection process.
Some modern hateful Christians notwithstanding, Kierkegaard felt true Christian love was love for not only the poor, but for everyone - the rich, the corrupt, the powerful, even one’s enemies.
Okay, I’m not there. I can cite a dozen people on the planet off the top of my head that I can’t imagine in a million years loving. Dictators. Tyrants. Racists. Homophobes. Misogynists. I could go on. Truly loving those types of people would be a challenge for me. Maybe the world would be a better place if we could live up to Kierkegaard’s high bar for love, but wow, it’s tough.
Kierkegaard felt that even hateful people should be loved. In his view, hateful people are all the more deserving of love. Same with highly imperfect people. They deserve love too. Everyone does in his view.
Ultimately, Kierkegaard wants us to do something that sounds both utterly odd and yet entirely kind. To be a Christian means to be the imitator of Christ, he writes. And to be an imitator means that your life has to have as much similarity to his as it is possible for a human life to have.
My bias against religion generally, and my former faith of Christianity, is strong. I stand by that. But at the core of Kierkegaard’s message is a universal concept I believe is correct – love for all.
Most of us do not operate this way in our lives. I certainly don’t even if intellectually I know it might be the better way to proceed. We’re so ingrained with a narrow view of love, mostly of the romantic kind, that to broaden this perspective is a challenge of monumental proportions. But, perhaps we can all get a little closer to loving more imperfect people and those who don’t fit the confines of our rigid standards, and maybe that will inch us a bit more toward a better life for everyone.
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