Note: This is a modified version of an essay I wrote for ENGL0150E Love & Friendship.
Philosopher A:
An enamoration that innocently begins as a “delighted preoccupation” with a romantic interest, Eros is the ultimate appreciation and passionate desire for “the one”. Romantic love in the form of Eros is undeniably the most beautiful form of love for these reasons:
- Eros is the most natural love because it is the love in which all parties involved have no control over. This is evident to all who have been in romantic love before: despite our best efforts, we can not force ourselves to fall in love, and we similarly can’t force ourselves to not fall in love.
- Eros is the love with the most power over our actions and thoughts: once we are in romantic love, we are driven to persistently improve ourselves for our beloved and we place our beloved as a higher priority before ourselves. For an example of the power of Eros, consider Romeo and Juliet: Eros had such a strong hold over them that it ended up causing them to die for each other – is there a stronger proof of love than that? Once Eros takes a hold of us, we can’t help but always obsess over our beloved.
- Eros is the love that most influences societal expectations and has the largest impact on our worldly lives. Think of it: marriage is also the most important decision we will ever make in our lives as it pertains to our own happiness because we are committing to be with another for the rest of our lives, and throughout time, society has progressed towards a much more Eros-centric marriage format, which means that Eros has become the love most integral to the wellbeing of our lives.
Philosopher B:
You have presented a strong argument for Eros, but I believe that you lack evidence for your central point, which causes your perspective, and by extension, your conclusion, to be misled. Let’s presume for a moment that what you say is true and Eros is indeed the most natural love for humans and it has the most power over us as well: why should that mean that Eros is the best form of love?
Humans are all inherently selfish and sinful creatures, so maybe what comes naturally to us is what we should be most wary of. Just look at Ed from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. By all measures, Ed was in romantic love. He felt passion so extreme it led him to the point of obsession, and then some – the lengths of his love are clearly shown in the lack of reservation of his actions! But I would argue that any reasonable person would say that Ed and Terri’s relationship was extremely toxic, so simply having passion is not sufficient to justify why we should pursue Eros. Similarly, for the Romeo and Juliet example, while their willingness to die for each other does show the enormous power of Eros, that very same willingness also shows the dangers of the immaturity and poor judgment Eros can bring.
And there lies the fundamental issue with Eros: the benefits of its passion can just as easily turn into the most treacherous of experiences. You say that Eros leads us to prioritize our beloved, but is that really true? It certainly makes us obsess over our beloved, but when you abstract it down, that obsession is still rooted in our selfish desires pushing us to crave their love and attention all for ourselves, and anything based on selfishness will be very fickle and untrustworthy. If you and your partner love for passion, then there will never be security in your relationship. In fact, I would even argue that relationships founded solely on passion are doomed to end terribly because what sparks up in an instant can just as quickly be smothered into nothingness. This is why I believe that in all healthy relationships, the key ingredient is not Eros, but charity, an agape-type love that unconditionally loves others.
As humans, we all have so many fundamental faults, so the only good, secure love we could ever possibly have is a charitable love. With charity, we no longer need to be insecure in our own ability to maintain love, because the whole point of charity is that it isn’t because of what we can do, but because of who we are. With charity, no one deserves love, but everyone can be loved; there is no fear, no jealousy, and no envy because the love is always readily there, and we know that no matter the hard times we go through and the mistakes we make, it will always continue to be there for us as an unconditional hearth of comfort.
Charity is a much more forward-thinking love. If Eros is the love society is currently based on, then charity is the foundation of love that society should be working towards. Nowadays, society is often full of strife and hatred resulting from divisions in political, cultural, and spiritual beliefs, and I would argue that this is in part caused by Eros core values. I can not definitively prove it, but I can use intuition based on my understanding of the nature of Eros as a justification. When we begin glorifying “the one” and put Eros at the forefront of our lives, it tends to lead to a radicalization of our beliefs to be restructured around the object of our love, which causes us to be less accepting of differences with people who are not like our beloved. Eros pushes society to glamorize polarization and passionately taking a stance on an issue and fighting all who would disagree with that belief. However, charity, being a deeper love independent of the qualities and characteristics of the beloved and not specific to one person, would not only enable us to accept the differences of others, but love them all the more for it because when our love is built from a foundation of unconditional love, more knowledge of the beloved will only allow us to love them even more holistically. A society built on Eros is doomed to die fighting through conflicting passions, but a society built on charitable love will foster an environment of unconditional healing and acceptance.
Philosopher C:
Well, the issues with Eros that you raised are most definitely valid, but from personal experience, I have trouble believing that your preferred form of love in charity could ever truly exist. It is very beautiful in theory, but if humans are all as sinful and selfish as you stated, then I can not reasonably trust that humans would ever be capable of giving and receiving charitable love. The way I see it, if someone gave charity to others but never received anything in return, that person would rapidly become disillusioned with charitable love because unrequited effort sparks discontent and hatred. This is all a result of a western cultural belief set inspired by equity and inherent value: we are raised believing that what we receive correlates to how much effort we put in, so we apply it to our relationships in that if we feel like we are not being loved as much as we are loving, then the relationship is toxic and we are justified in leaving.
Furthermore, just as C.S. Lewis mentions in The Four Loves, because of our pride and desire to be loved for our characteristics such as intelligence, physical attractiveness, or humor, it is very likely that humans are simply not capable of receiving and accepting charity from another human as love and not a patronizing gift of pity. Being offered charity is like being told, “You are not good enough to deserve my love, so the fact that I am unconditionally offering my love to you anyways shows how good I am”. If all humans are sinners, then what right does any individual human have to ever offer charitable love to another human?
For me, the best balance of virtuous love that can feasibly be reproduced in humanity is friendship. Friendship generally starts as a bond over a commonality between two humans, whether it be a shared passion and belief, or even just coincidentally being in the same place at the same time. Through conversation and spending time together, the friendship is formed, and although initially superficial, deepens over time in understanding and gratitude until it forms unbreakable bonds of comradeship and affection. In this state, friendship shares many of its best characteristics with Eros like trust, support, affection, and pleasurable company, but unlike Eros, friendship does not obsess over only one friend because while friends definitely do still want each other’s time and attention, exclusivity is not a fundamental expectation for friendship, so the emotional burden and responsibility of love is not solely placed on one person.
Friendship is a love that is predicated on people making constant active choices to maintain relationships because of symbiotic benefits and shared passions. A true friendship does not care about the past, only the future, because it has no requirements beyond an expected benefit that can be as simple as enjoyment of each other’s company. This is why it’s very common to see some friends that have known each other for a long time grow distant as they mature and discover different passions, but see other friendships easily last for a lifetime because the friends matured at the same rate, constantly sharing some commonality along the way. Ultimately, if friends are no longer walking down the same path in life, then there is no more benefit in maintaining the friendship, but as long as friends have a reason to continue to want to spend time with each other, the friendship will continue.
Although it is clear that friendship is not as unconditional as charity, it is much more reasonable to expect friendship from humans because it is beneficial for both sides, so the selfish nature of humans actually helps in maintaining the relationship instead of fighting against the potentially one sided giving in charitable love. Us humans, we toe the line, teetering on a tightrope between our physical desires and the spiritual good, and reaching too far for an extreme on either end will just make us plummet to death. Friendship may be that balance – the form of love closest to a perfect love that humans can tangibly obtain on Earth without losing ourselves.
Philosopher B:
Charity isn’t as impossible as you think! Like you said, due to the selfishness of our nature, humans are incapable of charitable love, but charity is not derived from humans, but from God. If a love is unconditional, then no matter what the object of the love does, that love will not change. As such, this must mean that unconditional love depends more on the character of the one giving the love than the one receiving it, so if God is always the one giving the love, and God’s nature never changes, then unconditional love will always be possible. Furthermore, because God is perfect, He has the sole right to give charity to others. If someone still feels patronized when given charitable love from God, then that is an issue with their own insecurities, not charity itself. Therefore, only by relying on God’s love and not our own can we effectively show charitable love to others.
Friendship can definitely be a very virtuous form of love, and I believe that friendship is necessary to a happy life as well, but I would also say that any friendship without charity is pointless. If there is always an underlying requirement for mutual benefit and reciprocated effort, then there will always be the metaphorical asterisk next to the relationship reminding you that the moment others feel like you aren’t contributing enough to them, they will leave. Without the “unconditional” characteristic of charity that continues to love simply by nature, why would friends ever stay around to support us when we go through inevitable tough times and struggles?
I would say that in essence, because charity is sourced from God, and God is eternal, charitable love is eternal, whereas Eros and friendship are both more focused on the temporary because the source is from humanity. This is why for Eros, if lovers lose passion for each other, they become discontent and the relationship dies out – just look at the increasing rates of divorce correlating to the rise of Eros-based marriages. Similarly, if friends no longer have a common bond tying them together, the friendship will gradually dissipate. For instance, when students transfer school districts or move to a different location, they always promise to keep in touch with their former friends, but what usually happens is that over time, the contact becomes less and less frequent as the old friendships get replaced with new ones, until communication completely stops. At some point, there was no longer benefit in maintaining the connection, so there was no point in maintaining the friendship. Surely then, only charity enables us to look at relationships in the big picture and push through the difficult times at hand for a desirable future.
Philosopher A:
You are both right that passion has its pitfalls and that Eros can have perilous effects – I know that better than anyone else. But that doesn’t make Eros wrong; if anything, it makes the case for Eros even stronger. If we know that loving someone romantically can hurt us, but we decide to pursue that relationship anyways, isn’t that a much stronger proof of love? I know that I am selfish through and through, and I know that my love is selfish too, but I also know that with the right person, through Eros their desires will be my desires and their dreams will be my dreams – all I will selfishly want is to make them happy. I believe that a true Eros should result in something like a union of souls, and just like mixing paints together, once we have reached that point of union, it would be impossible to separate ourselves ever again. In a joined state like this, fear and insecurity do not exist – there is only love. If working to obtain this true Eros means getting hurt along the way, then that’s a sacrifice I am willing to endure.
I know not if God exists, nor will I ever completely know as long as I live in this world – I don’t have that kind of wisdom and knowledge. All I have are my experiences and desires – nothing more, nothing less. And what I feel is this: if charity is more about the lover than the beloved, then why should I, as an object of that love, care for it at all? If friendship is not exclusive, then why should it hold any meaning that I have that friendship? I need to be more than that! I crave to be known. To be wanted. To have someone desire me so deeply that they are willing to sacrifice everything for me. To be special!
Eros can be shortsighted, but that’s how love should be. The fragility and temporariness of love is what makes it so valuable. There is no inherent value in eternity: the risk of losing something is what motivates us to appreciate and pay attention to it. That’s why with Eros, there is no bigger commitment than to promise to spend the rest of your life with someone, starting with now. That’s the type of special I want.
You both write off passion for its lack of sustainability, and maybe that's just because you haven’t met the right person yet, but all I know is that at the end of the day, even if I would never be able to live happily with my “one” for the rest of my days, I would rather have spent my life loving passionately in Eros and losing everything than to have never experienced that love at all. Perhaps we should waste less time debating what love should be, and just love.