I love you

I love you 

Samuel Bird

When you read this title, you wondered who the pronouns respectively attached to. “I” is of course me, the writer of this article. And the “you?” That is attributed to you. By you, I mean the you who is seeing these words, assigning meaning to them, and conceptualizing that meaning. These pronouns are fair to make a case for. It is clear that there had to be an entity that wrote this paper. A noun predicates the verb. There must also clearly be a reader if reading is going on. This Cartesian reasoning seems to have secured the two parties at hand, but we still have the verb that bridges these two parties. Even if we knew exactly what love was, how could I then make a case that I was indeed doing, having, or experiencing this in terms of you?

I consider love to be one of the largest frontiers in philosophy that is left to work in. One may dismiss it as transcendental or non-concrete enough to not have a place in philosophy, but we let politics in, so why not? If I were to define it, it is a primary value phenomenon between conscious minds that give an affinity toward each other, I think we have something to work with here. In a philosophy where I find meaning, morality, and a host of other things mind-dependent, and I saw that there is no reason that those ideas only existing in our minds makes it lesser, it makes sense to wonder if this phenomenon of love that only happens in the mind, also could be substantive. I am cheating a little in this, as I am attempting to write a book that builds out a conceptual framework for love. I do so in one of the most tried and true ways of identifying something; finding its necessary and sufficient conditions. That is to say, all the things that we would need for love, that cumulatively will give us love. I posit they are as follows:  Aesthetic, emotional, factual, proximity and historical, trust and commitment, intrinsic value, and choice. Now, if I can make a case that my relationship with you is such that it meets these requirements, then we can say that I do love you.

The facts that love is based on come from two general areas. The first is from facts about the loved and the second is facts about the lover. Some of what will then be detailed is because of properties you possess or ones I do. The first to look at is an aesthetic affinity toward the beloved. The facts that are found beautiful are from you, but the fact they are found beautiful is from me. This is not to say it is because I find you physically attractive, although I’m not ruling that out. What I am saying is that your entire being is something of beauty. Perhaps this is your story, character, or actions. I do not know you as a specific instance, however. I am then left to find the general properties of a conscious being as aesthetic and then ascribe those qualities to you, finding you as well. Outside of knowing you personally, I cannot say this one applies to you. 

The next reason is an emotional connection with you. Emotions may be seen as a baser or less substantiated phenomenon to a lesser philosopher, but I see great merit in emotions. They are our organism’s compilation of many instances into implicit memories. We build up large bases of experiences into a sense of how something is, and from this, we are able to infer its properties and how to respond to it. Emotion is then a great way to respond to the ineffable as it gains an understanding of it from exposure. Emotions are not great at explicitly telling us what is, but they can give us a powerful sense of how we relate to them. Again, this reason for love would come from properties from you but would be found in me. Perhaps I connect in my experiences and relate to you. Maybe I can put myself in your shoes and feel what I can’t relate to. Possibly, I am moved by something else about you. Still, I can say I love the being you are in form as I know it in instance, but I still fail to ground love for you.

Your character is then what I look to next, but this one falls apart before I dig much further. I would need to know the unique instantiation of you to know your properties. How you, I, and time relate won’t help. You and I relate up as far as you read this. We then can’t also pull on multiple events across time. I here fail again to ground my love. Trust and commitment could be better reasons. I could say because you trust me to listen, or even if you are critiquing my work, you are committing to read it. I could also prove my love by the commitment I took to write and think about what I do and the trust I have in strangers, which you are, that they will one day read it. I can look at your intrinsic value based on the type of being I am. I am by no means sold on humanism, but I am a fan of humans. I find them in their plights and efforts absolutely adorable. You are that thing I presume and from that, I can say I love you for your own sake. Finally, there is one grounding for love you cannot dispute. I love you because I choose it. You could still point out I don’t know where that is directed, but I can tell you it is displaced in great magnitude no matter the direction. 

I have failed to prove via these concepts that I do in fact love you, as it is defined. Fortunately, I am somewhat of a phenomenologist and think that concepts, let alone language, can’t capture unique instances, broader concepts, and the ineffability of human emotion. Since language has failed to do it, it is clear that I can’t do it now. I have found that an aesthetic and poetic expression of a pre-linguistic concept can often do much better to paint a picture than words can to build a structure. Maybe I should write a song or paint a picture, but this message doesn’t lend itself well to song, and I am no visual artist. Perhaps I could write a soliloquy telling you my love was as far-reaching as the East and West on a globe, or as deep as a hole that went through to the other side of the earth. I could tell you it was as permanent as change and as resilient as a diamond. I could tell you this love is my compass, rudder, and sails. I could even tell you that your existence, as someone I hope to meet one day, is something I find bordering on the sacred, but I still don’t feel these damned words could carry this richness I feel within me. So, I am going to ask you to hear the words I cannot say. I implore you to feel the notes I can’t play. I beg you to see the vision I cannot paint. In short, is this love I have for you something that comes down to your qualities and my relationship with them? I think in part it could be aided by them, but rather, as you being conscious are the only type of being who can have value, I think you ought to know that at least to some crazed thinker, you have value. Oh and I think it goes without saying, I love you. 

This is not just an entity that influences me to say so, but it is such that it changes my behavior. I stay up late in the night worrying. I fight to make sure the ideas come through. I put pen to paper as a grade-school dropout all because of you. My love for you is why I share what I do. It is not why I think what I do. I could have just thought up these ideas to make my life better and left it at that. However, there is this natural response that I have to the facts, that I have something I think to be of merit and me thinking you are of merit. The next step is to bridge each by sharing what it is I value. I would call it a concern for you, but I feel no pressure. Nothing obliges me to do what I do. I owe you and the world nothing. Words are not pulled from me but pushed out from a heart brim. I say not what I say because I want you to like it, but because I think you need it. I keep writing now when no one listens, and if one day they listen, I’ll still be doing the same. I don’t need you to validate it for me to know its merit. In this way, my love is without desperation for return, though that is not to say I wouldn’t like to see the fruits of my love by you living a full life. This is a love that doesn’t put on a mask and a show to give you what you want, but a love that prompts me to tear your mask from your face. I do not that which you want, but that which I thoroughly think is in your favor. I try not to do anything difficult for you, more than I think it is necessary, but much is. No doubt you wonder if this great love I feel for you is because of my selflessness. All the opposite. I am a greedy and selfish person. I want all I can have. To sacrifice myself on the altar of Esse Maxim, to sell my few short years before death, to save such a deep part of who and what I am for you, it is all calculated to my end. And what is my end? You. I have other people, God, and facts of the world that fall in there too, but you have become my selfish desire. The maximization of my value is found in you. My life seeks to persist from a rich purpose, and this purpose is you and your needs, thoughts, and will. 

I may not know you, but if humans have to wait until they know what something is before they can say anything about it, nothing will get done. I may not know your facts, properties, and qualities, but I build a vision of you in my mind. When I feel like wasting my life away in misery, I rally my faculties and remember a name on my lips that I don’t know. I remind myself that this hole I feel from deep inside myself is in many ways without its remedy. The dark edges of reason I go to in the night weigh on me, but what is this that is heavy? It is thoughts and experiences. I have at times found that my life would never be the same again. I found in those moments when tears couldn’t keep up, that I had died. I sought to live, to be immortal, and perhaps I could. In my immortality as a man already dead, I offered something to you. In my vicarous living on through you, I didn’t wish to haunt, but be a voice to you. Great thinkers of ages past are to me as a characters in my mind to represent ideas. Plato of structure, Socrates of curiosity, and Aristotle of grounding. I seek to do you this great service that was done to me. And what great ideal shall I morph into until we are one and the mention of either is the affirmation of the other? Would it be to live deliberately, engage with existence, or even my dear child of Esse Maxim? I don’t think I can tell you what you take and see from my ideas. I hope what is abundantly clear is that these ideas as they flowed from a troubled mind, went past a heart that held you within its cracks.