LOVE. - An inclination to take delight in a good that has been chosen as suitable.
**OUTLINE:**
I. Concept
II. The problem of love and its difficulties
III. Subjectivism and pantheism
IV. Heresies: pseudo-naturalism and Pelagian naturalism
V. Doctrine of St. Bernard and Richard of Saint-Victor. - VI. Doctrine of St. Thomas.---
**I. CONCEPT.** - We distinguish between sensitive love and love of the will. The former, common to man and beast, arises from the sensitive appetite or sensibility, and tends toward sensible good. The latter arises from our spiritual will, illumined by the intelligence (rational appetite): it might be called spiritual love, were it not often disordered, as when it unreasonably seeks sensible goods, preferring them to spiritual ones.
Sensitive love is the movement of the sensitive appetite, the first among the passions; thus the beast is moved toward the food it needs; from this follow desire, joy, hope, boldness, or else hatred for what is contrary, aversion, sadness, despair, fear, and anger. Cf. St. Thomas, *Summa Theologiae*, 1a 2ae, qq. 22–28.
We must distinguish in our will between love of concupiscence, by which we desire a good, and love of benevolence, by which we wish well to another person. Love of concupiscence is not necessarily disordered; it is lawful to desire the bread necessary for our sustenance, subordinating it to ourselves; and we may likewise desire God, the supreme good, subordinating ourselves to Him: Christian hope, which makes us desire to possess God eternally, though it is inferior to charity, is in no way disordered. Love of benevolence deserves the name of friendship (v.) when it is reciprocated and manifested through shared thoughts, will, and activity.
In one of his most beautiful dialogues (*Symposium*, 211e), Plato says that we must rise from love of sensible beauty to that of supreme beauty through the following stages: from one beautiful body to two, from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful actions, to beautiful principles, thence to beautiful sciences, until, from science to science, we arrive at the science par excellence, which is the science of beauty itself, which we shall contemplate as it is in itself, subsisting eternally.
These concepts, expounded by Plato and Aristotle (*Nicomachean Ethics*, IX, 9), reveal a great problem: that of disinterested love and its relation to our primordial inclination. The study of the problem of love and the principal solutions proposed by philosophers and theologians will aid in understanding the Christian doctrine of charity (v.), that is, disinterested love of God and neighbor.
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**II. THE PROBLEM OF LOVE AND ITS DIFFICULTIES.** - This problem is formulated by St. Thomas (*Summa Theologiae*, 2a 2ae, q. 26, a. 3, 2nd objection) in the following difficulty regarding our love for God:
> “Everything that we love is loved as a good for ourselves; now that which is the reason for loving is loved more.”
Just as the principles by which we know conclusions are more known than the conclusions themselves, so man loves himself more than any other good he loves, and thus cannot love God more than himself. The same difficulty is posed in another form:
> “Nature always turns back upon itself” (*Summa Theologiae*, 1a, q. 60, a. 5, 3rd objection).
The problem of love thus arises: Is truly disinterested love possible, and if so, in what relation does it stand to self-love?
This problem is analogous to that of knowledge. After asking how the knower can attain, beyond his own impressions, realities distinct from himself (aliquid aliud a se), which are true in themselves and universally, independent of us, we seek to know how we can love what is good in itself, independent of us, and how we can love others with a love not subordinated to the desire for our own good. Is such love for others, and first of all for God, possible, and if so, in what relation does it stand to our desire for personal happiness? Thus the problem was well formulated by the Jesuit P. Rousselot, *Pour l'histoire du problème de l'amour*, p. 1.
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**III. SUBJECTIVISM AND PANTHEISM.** - Two diametrically opposed philosophical solutions have been given to the above-defined problem, both extreme: subjectivism and pantheistic realism. Subjectivism, which denies or casts doubt upon the objective value of our intelligence and thus also of its object, namely extra-mental being or the real, likewise disregards the rights of the object of the will, that is, the good, and in particular the right of the Supreme Good to be loved above all else. In antiquity, the Sophists and Skeptics represent this tendency, which is characteristic of modern subjectivists.
It naturally leads, as is obvious, to utilitarianism, such as that of Stuart Mill, or at least to a certain love of human dignity that claims to have no special obligation toward God, as though He were not the Creator of every good and the Supreme Good. Kant, while maintaining that morality presupposes absolute disinterestedness and has nothing to do with the desire for happiness—which he wrongly reduces, along with Rousseau, to what he calls “sensibility”—does not rise to the idea of loving God for God’s sake, because he does not admit that man has special duties toward God. This is the cult of the human person. While formulating the principle of the autonomy of the will, Kant holds that man must prescribe to himself the law he obeys. With subjectivism, man remains enclosed within himself and cannot transcend respect for his own personal dignity, which aspires to extend into future life.
The radically opposed and equally erroneous solution is that of absolute realism, which confuses the being of things or the universal with the being of God, the universal good with the divine good, and thus leads to pantheism: all things are absorbed into God and identified with Him; the proper existence of created things is denied.
Such was, in antiquity, the doctrine of Parmenides, and in modern times, the pantheistic ontologism of Spinoza, which implies the denial of personal beatitude and is content with an impersonal immortality, entirely different from that spoken of by Christian faith. For Spinoza, intellectual love of self and love of God are one and the same; indeed, this love would be identified with the immanent love that God has for Himself; God is to be loved in us with a necessary love that excludes free will, and thus also sin and merit (cf. *Ethics*, V, prop. 36). In this pantheism, reasonable self-love is a lower form of the love of God, while the love of God is a higher form of self-love.
In Hegelian pantheism, which does not absorb things into God but rather absorbs God into universal evolution, and holds that God is becoming in the world and in us, self-love, when fruitful, is likewise identified with God who is becoming; the accomplished fact is thus identified with right, success with morality, which is always in evolution.
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**IV. HERESIES: PSEUDO-NATURALISM AND PELAGIAN NATURALISM.** - Catholic theologians have not strayed so far as to accept the two solutions mentioned above, though the nominalists of the 14th century came very close to subjectivist principles (cf. Denz.-U., no. 553 sq.), and Meister Eckhart (v.) seems to have approached the limits of pantheism (ibid., no. 526 sq.). But from the theological point of view, there are two opposite errors to be avoided.
If we admit that the primordial tendency of every created nature is the love of its own good, this tendency will always tinge our love of God with selfishness; this love will not be pure enough, nor can it become so, except by the destruction, in some way, of our nature through grace, and the demand for the sacrifice of our personal happiness. This theory appears in a certain affective subjectivism, affirmed by Fénelon (Denz-U., nn. 1328-36). In this case, grace, which would in a manner destroy nature, would be a harsh remedy for its deficiencies, as Baianism and Jansenism affirmed (Denz-U., n. 1038). Thus one arrives at the so-called "pseudosupernaturalism."
If, on the other hand, we admit that our nature impels us to love God in Himself more than ourselves, grace does not appear absolutely indispensable for attaining this, and thus one inclines toward Pelagian naturalism, which recalls the pantheistic confusion of our nature with that of God. Grace would then be necessary only to facilitate the observance of the precepts imposed by the love of God above all things and more than ourselves, an assertion which is precisely that of the Pelagians (Denz-U., nn. 1038, 178 sq.).
What, then, is the primordial inclination essential to our natural will? Is it the love of our personal beatitude, or the natural love of God, or at least that of truth and justice, loved in themselves more than ourselves and more than the particular perfection they confer? The true solution to this problem, examined by the great medieval theologians, later by Bossuet and Fénelon, would, if we were able to formulate it adequately, contain the entire theology and metaphysics of love.
Here we present the solution given, in mystical form and often metaphorical language, by St. Bernard and Richard of St. Victor, and then we examine that of St. Thomas. In truth, they do not differ substantially, the first being rather a sketch, the second a definitive treatment with the precise terms by which the Angelic Doctor replaces the metaphors.
V. DOCTRINE OF ST. BERNARD AND RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR. — These two great mystics, in their commentaries on the Song of Songs, the Psalms, and the Epistles of St. Paul, have described ardent love, its disinterestedness, its violence, and its holy follies, affirming that it suffices by itself, even without the personal joy of possessing the beloved object. Both insist especially on the point that the only perfect love, truly worthy of the name, is the love of friendship, by which one loves another person not for oneself but for the sake of the other. Hence, the love of oneself becomes perfect only when one loves oneself for God, as it were going out of oneself to go toward God.
The love of neighbor and above all the love of God is such as to draw us out of ourselves; as it intensifies, it becomes violent and demands, with holy madness, the elimination of all self-love, while it satisfies us more than all other things in the world because it unites us to God. This love "wounds" the one who loves and "causes him to die to himself," making him live at the same time for others, and impelling him to "go out of himself" and give himself generously. It requires interior immolation, the martyrdom of the heart, which all the saints have known, as well as mystical death, of which the Gospel speaks in the parable of the grain about to germinate. Love is so strong as to bring about this blessed death by destroying all that is contrary to it: "Fortis est ut mors dilectio" (St. Bernard, *De diligendo Deo*, ch. 15; PL 182, 998; *In Cantica Canticorum*, Sermo LXXXIII, 4-5; PL 183, 1183; VIII, 8: ibid. 814; LXXXIX: ibid. 1163).
Richard of St. Victor develops this thought in his famous opuscule *De quattuor gradibus violentiae caritatis* (PL 196, 1196 ff., 1213-15): "In the first degree of love, the soul cannot resist its own desire; in the second degree, it thinks of it without cease; in the third, it takes no pleasure in anything else; in the fourth and supreme degree, its desire can no longer be satisfied. In other words, in the first degree love is invincible, in the second it is tormenting, in the third exclusive, in the fourth insatiable... These four degrees of love differ from one another according as it is love for God or human affections... As regards spiritual desires, the stronger the love, the better it is. In carnal desires, it becomes worse as it increases... love then turns into hatred, because nothing can satisfy mutual passion. Hence hatred becomes implacable to the extent that the love seemed ardent... On the contrary, as regards our feelings toward God, the fourth degree is the most praiseworthy."
According to St. Bernard and Richard, ardent love draws us out of ourselves, not without violence, commits holy follies, and satisfies us more than all things in the world because it unites us to God. Neither of them asks us to sacrifice future beatitude; on the contrary, both affirm that the love that unites us to God aspires to ever more intimate union with Him.
This concept of love, however, presents a difficulty. It emphasizes the generosity and purity of the love of the great servants of God, but it does not sufficiently clarify the relation of this disinterested love to the love of ourselves, which seems to be an indestructible inclination of our nature. The second part of the problem of love, intimately connected with the first, is therefore not resolved; a more penetrating study of the problem and of the first notions it implies is necessary.
VI. DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS. — St. Thomas, who was perfectly acquainted with the theory of St. Bernard and Richard, admits that the love of God, when intense, draws us out of ourselves, not without violence, that it commits holy follies, and that it unites us to God in this life more than any other act. He asks, however, how this union, so restful, can be reconciled with the violence of love, if this violence is substantial in love for others and never merely accidental or transitory. In other words: how can charity procure peace and even joy, if there is not a conformity, that is, a harmony, between it and our deepest natural inclinations and aspirations? Especially since we must love ourselves in a supernatural manner and will eternal life for ourselves through charity. Finally, is not the legitimate natural love of ourselves already, in the primordial inclination of our nature, subordinated to the natural love of God, the Creator and Preserver of our being? This most important part of the problem, not examined by St. Bernard or Richard, was thoroughly explored by St. Thomas (*Summa Theologiae*, 1a, q. 60, a. 5, and 2a-2ae, q. 26, a. 3; q. 19, a. 6).
The Angelic Doctor establishes, without any affinity with pantheism, that any created nature, especially when endowed with intelligence and will, is naturally inclined to love God, its author, more than itself, just as in any organism each part naturally loves the whole more than itself, so that, for example, the hand spontaneously sacrifices itself to protect the head. If it were otherwise, our primordial natural inclination would be perverse, which is impossible, since it comes from God. St. Thomas likewise illustrates the immense distance between this natural love of God, as author of nature, and the supernatural love of God, considered in His intimate life as author of grace (*Summa Theologiae*, 1a, q. 12, a. 4, 5; q. 62, a. 2; 1a-2ae, q. 5, a. 5; q. 62, a. 1; q. 109). Thus he rises above Pelagian or semi-Pelagian naturalism, as well as above "pseudosupernaturalism."
This is the principle of a doctrine of love, founded not only on the distinction between persons who love one another and on the necessity of overcoming selfishness, but also on our very nature, which has God as its author. For this reason, St Thomas does not disregard our natural inclinations in the problem of the order of charity, but rather demonstrates that this supernatural virtue perfects them by elevating them to a higher order. It is therefore unnecessary to ask whether pure love (v.) must sacrifice the desire for our personal beatitude, because this desire, as it exists in the essence of the primordial inclination of our nature, is not disordered, but rather initially subordinated to the love of God. This natural desire must be purified of all that contaminates it, beginning with original sin, and then sublimated, but never destroyed. The sacrifice of our beatitude would moreover be contrary even to the nature of charity, which unites us with God and desires to persevere in this union for God’s sake.
The principle, then, on which the solution to the problem of love is based is the following: by our nature we are inclined to love God more than ourselves, as the creator and sustainer of our being. This inclination is weakened by original sin and by personal sins, yet it remains as part of our nature.
It follows that while man rightly loves the higher part of himself, he loves his Creator even more; thus, if he were to cease desiring his own perfection, he would in fact turn away from God. Whereas material goods, which cannot belong simultaneously to more than one person, divide people, spiritual goods, which can belong simultaneously to all, are a source of union; hence men must unite in the love of truth, of justice, and in the love of God.
St Thomas’s solution is therefore as follows: disinterested love is possible, indeed profoundly natural, since our nature leads us to love God more than ourselves. Yet we must admit the impossibility of a love that would draw us completely outside ourselves and that would be incompatible with the primordial inclination of our nature toward the good—that is, toward our own good, subordinated to the Supreme Good, loved more than all other goods.
Our nature leads us to love God not by subordinating Him to ourselves, but by subordinating ourselves to Him. One cannot rightly love oneself without loving God still more, with a more and disinterested love. On the other hand, one cannot love God without loving oneself in Him (2a-2ae, q. 19, a. 6). Grace and infused charity perfect and elevate this natural inclination of the will, but they do not destroy it, any more than grafting destroys the vitality of the tree onto which it is done (v. CHARITY).