Why Love? #071

Aristotle and the purpose of love

Hey, welcome back! Here is Andy, your philosophy lecturer, and we were talking about love and passion in the past few sessions. So if you're interested, perhaps you want to go back and have a look at that.

Aristotle's Contribution to Love

One interesting contribution of philosophy to this topic that I always found to be Aristotle. Aristotle says that love is sincerely being concerned with the other person's well-being, with the other person's flourishing. So the goal of every single human being is to achieve a kind of flourishing for themselves—you know, have the best possible life. And this does not mean the best financially or the best materially; it means to develop their virtues, to become a good person, to become the best possible person. And this will benefit both themselves and others who engage with them.

Choosing Your Friends and Lovers

Now, when you have a friend or a lover, the point of this friend or lover is to help you develop your personality in the best possible way. And so when you're choosing a friend, Aristotle says you should be very careful whom you choose because you have to choose your friends so that they can contribute to your development, to your mental and psychological development towards being a better, more valuable person. And at the same time, of course, you cannot choose only people who will help you—you know, in a one-way relationship. It must be somebody whom you can also help to develop as a person.

Love as Mutual Development

The same, even more, is true of love relationships. When you choose somebody for a love relationship, you should not choose only someone who has a good exchange value for your value. So your value yourself, you know: "I'm 50% value, and let's say Harrison Ford or something, somebody who is rich and looking good and famous and has all these properties. So you have this 100% value male, and then you have somebody who is, you know, a lecturer, and he's not really very famous, and these are older, and he cannot walk without a stick. And there you know, this is perhaps the 30% made." And so you use your exchange value to calculate which kind of love interest you could have and which you cannot have. But from, of course, this is totally idiotic to do because this is not love; this is exchanging, this is buying, this is capitalistic exchange of value.

The Essential Property of Love

But also, you miss what Aristotle now has is this essential property of love, which is to make each other better. So when you choose a partner, for Aristotle, you should look at which partner is the one who is going to make you better. And this means, you know, it must be someone who at least has some common sides with you. So if I were to have a girlfriend or a wife who is only interested in sports and not interested in books, it will never work out because it does not matter how great the physical attraction is. In the end, we have very little to give to each other because I'm not interested in sports, and she's not interested in my books. So what's the point of being together?

The Point of Being Together

For Aristotle, the point is that we enhance each other, we better each other, we exchange our virtues, and we teach each other to be better people. And so there must be some more commonality. On the other hand, you don't want to have a complete copy of yourself as a partner because this would mean that again, you don't improve each other because you are essentially the same person. Some relationships like that, perhaps you also have such people in your environment—couples that are too similar to each other. And this can be easy for them; it can be a great relationship, but they never develop into doing anything more interesting because they are both the same. And so they never have a reason to advance or develop or better themselves.

The Right Balance in a Relationship

So the right thing is somewhere in the middle, right? Where you have enough commonalities to have an exchange that is fruitful and interesting to both, but at the same time, you have enough differences so that every person can learn from the other. And that's another reason why even in a love relationship, we need to keep learning and also through our lives. We need to keep learning to just keep this interest up. If I was finished with my development at 30, and then I marry someone who has also finished their development at 30, then we have perhaps another few years in which we can exchange what we know. But then we are done again; we are 40, and now we don't have anything else to do with each other. And then perhaps we will divorce, right, as it often happens unfortunately.

Keeping the Interest Alive

But if I keep developing myself, if I keep learning new things, pursuing new interests, developing new hobbies, learning to play music or learning to paint or you know, do a thousand other things, travel, then I will keep being interesting to my partner. I will keep having new experiences that I can exchange. And if my partner does the same, then they are also interesting for me, right, in the long term. And if we keep developing into our old age, which today is thankfully possible with the internet and with all electronic communication and media and books and whatever there is, you don't even need to be, you know, sporty in order to do many things that are interesting.

A Fulfilled Life in Many Situations

You can from your home or even from a wheelchair or from your bed, from your sofa, you can participate in lots of cultural events. You can listen to lectures; you can give lectures; you can learn things; you can have a great, fulfilled life in many situations, even while you are aging. And so then you keep being interesting to yourself and to your partner. And you have the basis for a long relationship in which you can have this what Aristotle says, you know, improving each other.

Being Interesting to Yourself and Others

So I think that this is an interesting take on what it means to have a long-term relationship. And so perhaps when you think about your own life, you could have a look at the question: "You know, am I keeping up with being interesting? Am I interesting to myself?" Very often, we are bored with ourselves because we say, "I'm doing nothing interesting; my life is so boring; I don't have anything that I'm that excites me." But this is not a problem of the world; the world is there, and the world is very interesting. If you feel that your life is boring, then it's a problem with you.

So perhaps you can start finding something interesting to do. You can try to, you know, find a new hobby, learn something new, go on a trip, travel, see new people, you know, whatever it is that excites you. Learn cooking; you know, it doesn't always need to be, you know, something that requires you to travel a lot or that is very intellectual. It can be, it's like picking up a new hobby, you know, cooking, photographing, whatever you like. But whatever it is, it will keep you interested in the world, and it will keep you interested in yourself. And it will keep other people, your partners, your friends, interested in you. And so it will keep this exchange happening that keeps the relationship alive.

Thank you, and see you next time.