Is Love Happiness? Alfried Langle

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

(public lecture at Moscow State Pedagogical University, November 21, 2007)

Translated from German: Vladimir Zagvozdkin.

Transcript, edited by Evgeny Osin.

Let's talk about what we are so willing to do - about love. It's not easy to talk about love. A person has a lot of conflicting experiences about love, because it's a big, huge topic. On the one hand, it is associated with great happiness, but it also entails a lot of suffering and pain, sometimes it is even a reason for suicide.

It is difficult to talk about this great topic because there are so many different forms of love. For example, parental love, brother-sister love, children's love, homosexual, heterosexual love, love for oneself, love for one's neighbor, love for art, for nature, for plants and animals. And, among other things, love is the central theme of Christianity, namely, agape - love for one's neighbor. We can experience love in many different forms: remotely, platonically, in the form of sublimation, or in the form of bodily love. Love can be associated with various positions, with sadism, masochism, various perversions. And in each individual dimension of those that have been named, wherever you look - this is a huge, inexhaustible topic.

Before we start, I want to ask you a question: “ Do I have a question about love? Do I have a love problem? »

In 604 BC, Lao Tzu wrote: “Debt without love does not please (sad) Truth without love makes a person critical (dependent on criticism). Upbringing without love creates contradictions. Order without love makes a person petty”- this is important for students, professors; - “Subject knowledge without love makes a person always right. Possession without love makes a person stingy. Faith without love makes a person a fanatic. Woe to those who are stingy with love. Why live if not to love? This is the most ancient knowledge.

Brilliantly, masterfully Lao Tzu describes here the central moment of love: it makes us human. She makes us available. It makes us open and gives us the opportunity for many relationships, connections. But how can we become like this? How can we learn to love? What is love about? How can we experience love today? Today, in an era when love is called an unstable utopia and when some representatives of modern literature, modern philosophy say: the fulfillment of a person's longing, yearning for love does not give a person happiness. Today we often come across a pessimistic view of love. The huge divorce rate shows how difficult it is to fulfill love in life. However, this was not always the case. In the era of romanticism, a great belief in love prevailed. In Christianity, love is seen as something central to life.

In this talk, I would like to show the way in which love can lead to deep happiness, despite the pain that is associated with it.

As all of us students of psychology know, a huge body of research confirms that love is central to healthy mental development. Without love, our children grow up traumatized, they cannot reveal their abilities, find themselves; they develop personality disorders. An excess of love does the same: when there is too much love, it can no longer be love itself. And for every adult, love is the most important basis for the quality of life, necessary for his life to be fulfilled.

In numerous interviews with dying people, they were asked to answer the question: "If you look back at your life, what was most important about it?" And in the first place of all the answers was: my relationships, my connections with other people, filled with love.

But love is threatened, many elements of life are turned against it: as we ourselves - our inclinations, our limitations - and external conditions - social, economic, cultural. So let's try to take a closer look at what love is.

What is the cradle of love? Love is connected with the bed - you have to start from there. In any case, love is an attitude (connection). Relationships are some basis, the bed on which love rests. Relationships (connections) have a certain characteristic that we need to know about, so let's talk about relationships for a few minutes so that we can better understand what love means and where it is realized, what it is.

The relationship is between me and some object. For example, now I have an attitude towards you, you - towards me. Attitude means that in my behavior I take into account the other, I enter into his circumstances. In practice, this means that in your presence I behave a little differently than when I am alone in my room: for example, in my room I can sit and scratch my head or scratch my nose, and since you are here, I do not. I kind of correlate my behavior with your presence. Thus, relationships affect my behavior. But relationships are much more than that.

Attitude arises even when I do not want it (involuntarily). The attitude follows a certain automatism. Within the framework of this absolutely basic structure, when a relation only means taking into account the other, I cannot get away from this relation, I cannot avoid it. It arises at the moment when I am aware of the presence of an object or person, when I see it. For example, if I walk and see that there is a chair, I do not go further, as if there is no chair, but I go around it so as not to stumble. This is the ontological basis of the relationship. In my being, I correlate with the fact of the thing's being. This, of course, is not yet love, but this moment is always contained in love. If this moment is not contained in love, then it will be difficult. Therefore, we are now engaged in the grammar of love.

If we make a logical conclusion, then we can say: I cannot but have a relationship. I always have a relationship, whether I want it or not - At the moment when I realize or see that someone has not met for thirty years, then the moment I see her, when she is present, suddenly the whole history of our relationship arises.

Thus, a relationship has history and duration. If we are aware of this, then we will have to treat the relationship very carefully. Because everything that happens inside a relationship is kept within that relationship forever. And what was once very painful - for example, treason - will always be there, will always be here. But so is the happiness that we experienced together. How I deal with, how I deal with this relationship is a special topic.

Let's sum it up: I can't help but be in a relationship. So I'm kind of forced to have a relationship. Everything that I experienced within this relationship is preserved in a relationship. The relationship never ends. We can, for example, break off relations, never talk to each other, but the relationship that exists between us is always preserved and forms part of my I. This is a stable bed, the basis of love. And this gives us the opportunity to realize that we must handle relationships very carefully and very responsibly.

We distinguish one more concept from relationships, which is also very important for understanding love - this is the concept of meeting. The meeting has a different characteristic. When a meeting takes place, then a certain “I” meets with “You”. I see you, my gaze meets yours, I hear you and understand you, I talk to you - the meeting takes place in dialogue. Dialogue is some means or environment in which the meeting takes place. A dialogue that takes place not only in words, but can also take place through one glance, through facial expressions, through an act. If I just touch another, there is already a great dialogue between us. The meeting takes place only when "I" meets "You". Otherwise it won't happen.

The meeting is point-to-point. The relationship is linear. We can represent a relationship as a line, and a meeting as a point. There are different meetings, big and small. Meetings are limited in time, but they affect relationships. After each meeting, the relationship changes. Relationships live by meetings. If meetings do not take place, then pure dynamics of relations, psychodynamics, take place. And it's not personal (impersonal). Relationships become personal only through a meeting.

I can’t experience encountering objects. Relationships - I can. And I can only experience meetings with a person, when I meet with his I in his being (essence). Then the relationship becomes essential, essential. And then they become personal.

How do I know if a personal relationship has been established? If I feel that I am perceived, seen, respected, understood. I feel that the other, when we are together, means me. I am important to him, and not only our common affairs, shared apartment, common travel, money, linen, cooking and so on, not only body and sexuality.

If a meeting takes place, each person feels: here it is about me. And you are important to me. Thus, the meeting is the life elixir of the relationship. Through the meeting, the relationship is raised to the human level. We need this kind of differentiation in order to consider the future against this background.

In what follows, I want to give a description of love, a description of the essential contents of love. I will talk about what, in fact, we experience in love.

My way of knowing is phenomenological, which does not deduce something from a general theory, but speaks from the experience of individual people. Naturally, the thoughts that I will now present are systematized and put in order; they are well developed in existential philosophy and phenomenology. I particularly rely on Max Scheler, Viktor Frankl and Heidegger.

The first point everyone knows about. When we talk about love, that we love something or someone, it means that he is very valuable to us … If we love music, we say: this is good music. If we read a book and love this author, then this author or this book has value for us. It is the same if we love a person. If I love a person, it means that this person is very important to me, very valuable, and I feel it. He is my treasure, my beloved. He has a very high value, and we say: my treasure.

We like a loved one, we experience this moment of acceptance in love, a feeling of attraction: I am attracted by this person. We feel that this attitude is good for us, and we hope that it is good for the other as well. We feel - we do not think, but we feel with our hearts - that we, as it were, belong to each other. If I feel, it means that this value touches me in my inner, in my inner vitality. Thanks to the person I love, I feel that life is awakening in me, that it becomes more alive, more intense in me. I feel that this person intensifies my thirst for life, makes my attitude to life more intense. When I love, I want to live more. Love is an antidepressant. It means to feel, it means to have another available in your attitude to life.

So, we experience a loved one as some value in our life. He is not indifferent to me. If I see him, my heart starts to beat faster. And this is not only in love for a partner, but also if I see my child, my mother, my friend, then I feel that something touches me, something excites me; this person means something to me. And this means that it is valuable. We only love what is valuable. We cannot love negative values. For example, if another begins to hurt us, causes us suffering, it becomes difficult for us to continue to love him. Love is in danger. As soon as the other loses its value, love disappears.

Point two. In love, we experience a deep appeal to us. This means that the other is talking to me: his face, his gestures, his look, his eyes, his laughter - all this starts to tell me something and causes a resonance in me. Love is a resonant phenomenon. Love is not the pressure of need. Naturally, there is this moment in love. But love is not at the level where needs sit. They refer to some of the framework conditions of love, but not to its essence. The central phenomenon in love is that we seem to enter into some kind of resonance with another person.

What is resonance? You all know this. When you see someone, and if love appears, then there is a feeling that we have always known each other. We are not alien to each other. We somehow relate to each other, we belong to each other like two gloves that complement each other. This is a resonant phenomenon. Do you know what resonance is in acoustics, in physics? This phenomenon is surprising when you see it once. This is most clearly seen when two guitars sound in the same space: if both guitars are in tune and I touch the E string on one guitar, then on the other guitar, which is against the wall, this string also begins to vibrate, as if it was touching it magical, invisible hand. You might think that this is an esoteric phenomenon, because no one touches it. I touch this string, and that string also plays. This phenomenon can be easily explained through the vibration of the air. And, by analogy with this process, something similar also happens in love. Something is happening that we cannot simply explain by the pressure of some libidinal impulses. If we looked at love this way, it would be reductionism. What resonates here?

From the standpoint of phenomenology, love is an ability that makes us clairvoyant, which enables us to see deeper.

Max Scheler says that in love we see the other not just in his value, but in his highest possible value. We see the value of the other to the maximum extent. We see not only the value that he is at the moment, but we see him in his potential, which means, not in what he is, but in what he can become. We see him in his being. Love is phenomenological in the highest sense. We see the other not only in his being, but in the possibilities of his becoming. And we feel a resonance in ourselves, we feel that we are similar to each other.

Goethe speaks of essential kinship: the value that we see in the other, if we love him, is his essence, what makes him up, which makes him the one and only (irreplaceable). What characterizes him, what constitutes his core. Therefore, a loved one cannot be replaced by anyone. Because this creature is there only once. Just like me, there is only one time. Each of us is one and only one of a kind. And in this essential core we are irreplaceable. If we ask someone who loves us: what do you love about me?

One can only say: I love you because you are that way, because that is your being, that which I see. And, in fact, we can say nothing more if we really love.

Of course, you can say: I love you because sex with you is wonderful. But this is love, as it were, on a different level.

If we are talking about the essence of love, about its core, then only then does a meeting with You really take place, when You are important to me. When I have a feeling of who you are and what you can become, and that it can be good that I am with you. My presence, my attitude towards you can be beneficial for you in what you can become. My love can support you in this developmental process in which you can become more of what you already are. My love can set you free to who you are. My love can help you become even more essential, so that there will be more essential in your life.

Dostoevsky once said: "to love is to see a person as God intended him to be." It is impossible to say better. I am very grateful to Dostoevsky for his deep insight in other aspects as well. This is the same thing that Max Scheler expressed in philosophical language: "to see the other in what he can become - to become even better, to a greater extent himself." And I discover, I find it in another, when this resonance arises in me. In my being, I feel that something is touching me, something is addressing me.

When I love, something essential is revealed in me. It’s not like I’m sitting on Saturday night wondering what I would do, but I’m going to call my friend. This is not essential. If something is essential, it is always present in me. A lover always carries a loved one within himself, with him. And love makes clairvoyant.

Karl Jaspers once wrote: "Every year I see a woman even more beautiful …" - do you believe it? And he wrote further in the sequel: "… but only the loving one sees it." Thus, love is the experience of resonance arising from a deep look into the essence of another, which manifests itself in my being.

Point three. We considered love as an experience of value, then we described this value more closely, looked at it: it is the being of another that touches me in my being. Now the third. There is a certain attitude or attitude in love. A loving person not only worries that he could do something good to another, but he wants to do something good to another. Love can be described as a certain attitude or attitude of a person. It's very simple: I want you well. If I do not feel this from another person, then it is unlikely that he loves me.

We want good for our children, for our partner - for him to feel good, for our friends - for them to feel good. This means that we want to support their being, their life; to provide them with help, assistance, because we have a very deep feeling, a strong feeling in relation to a loved one: it is good that you are. Love is creative: it nourishes, strengthens, gives, wants to share. Augustine once said: "I love and therefore want you to be." Love keeps the other person growing. There is no other better soil for a child to grow well than the soil of love. We kind of inform the child: it’s good that you are, and I want you to feel good in life, so that you can be good in life, that you grow well, that you become yourself well. Karl Jaspers believed that this is the central definition of love, in which love manifests itself as something generative.

Fourth point. Love is the solution. Among other things, this is a solution too. When I experience a resonance, I cannot make a decision and appear on this resonance, because this is some event that happens by itself. We cannot instruct someone to make this event happen, we can neither generate nor stop it. I cannot do anything: I see someone, and I am in love, it appears in me. I am not responsible for this, I cannot be directly responsible - perhaps indirectly, but not directly.

From time to time, this happens in human life: for someone - to a greater extent, for someone - to a lesser extent, for someone - very rarely or never that a person, already in some kind of relationship, suddenly feels love to someone else. And this is quite logical: after all, it is unlikely, it is very difficult to imagine that the best person for us is the one we already have as a partner, a life companion. Because if a man wanted to find himself the best partner, for example, the best woman, then he would grow old until he got to know all the women in the world in order to find the one that suits him best. And so we live in life with a partner who more or less suits us well. Maybe we once loved our partner, but he didn't love us. Perhaps this person who does not love us could be the best partner for us - and we are unhappy because our love remained unanswered, but maybe this partner will be better for me than the one with whom I live?

And perhaps one day we meet such a person whose being is better suited to my being than the being of the one with whom I live. And this can give rise to very difficult situations, because with another I have some kind of history, perhaps I have a child. How to solve this? Until this point, I have no responsibility: what happens happens by itself. Not only do I discover other people who are worthy of my love, but they also discover me, the heart of some person also reveals me in the potential that lives in me. And this experience, if I remain in the old relationship, can be very painful, because something essential in me remains unrevealed, unrealized. On the other hand, we have some kind of common history, and this common history means that we have created common value. These are the years of my life that are contained here. I can't just take it and push it aside. I worked a lot with couples in the break-up phase as a psychotherapist, and I met this again and again - when the break took place, then one or the other partner says: only now I understand what I have lost. Before that, there was some kind of new love or some kind of conflict, and it seemed to occupy the whole consciousness. But when this passes, some deeper, calmer layer appears again, and the person suddenly realizes: after all, there was something good between us. I feel like I have lost something. Perhaps I bought something else.

Studies in Switzerland showed that about half of the couples who divorced lived together again after 10 years. Therefore, I want to emphasize here: it is important that we know this potential of love, which allows us to make discoveries, but it is also important that we know about the value of a common story, so that we do not break off relations with our partner too frivolously, because it was once I loved too, and this relationship contained something important from me. There is a certain rule, a principle that follows from experience: if someone wants to break off relations, he must first live separately for as many months as he has lived with this partner for years. If someone has lived with someone for ten years, then at least ten months you can advise him to live alone, if, of course, this is possible, before he starts any new relationship. There are so many limitations in life.

We are now at this fourth point, which is that love is also a solution. Love is "yes" to "You" … In love, I not only say: it is good that you are, but I also say: it is good that you are what you are; I have an interest in you, an interest in how you think, feel, what is important to you, what decisions you make, what is your character - in all this I appreciate you. And I am pleased to show you myself in my originality (character). But this happens only after the decision is made: I want to live with this love, to realize it in life - "yes" to you. This is also the definition of love. I want to enter into a relationship that, strictly speaking, already exists, so I want to have time for you, I want to be with you, to be close to you, and if we are together, I am more myself than without you. You are more yourself than you are without me.

Love, we say, is a value, a resonance of two beings, a position (the desire for the other to be good), a decision (I want to be with you).

And fifth. Love wants reality. Love wants to be realized in life.

She wants to happen. She wants to be realized, to materialize. A person gives flowers, makes gifts, invites another, does something with him, travels somewhere, wants to do something with him. In a partner situation, love wants to materialize through sexuality. Love does not want to remain in fantasy, it wants reality, to be reality.

Love cannot stand lies. Lies are deadly poison for love. When we love, it is easier for us to believe in another. In all aspects of reality, we trust the other person. If we can no longer trust the other person, then love is in danger. In a theological sense, this goes back to the love of God.

The last point.

Love not only wants to be realized in this world, to materialize in it, it also wants to have a perspective, a future. Love wants duration. This is completely natural: if we experience something as a kind of good, we want this good to be preserved, so that it has duration. We want to be with another person in the future as well.

Love wants to be fruitful, wants to grow beyond itself, so love is generous. Love wants to create, wants others to have some kind of participation in it. Love is the basis for art: we write poetry, we draw. Love is the most wonderful basis for conceiving children. Love has this aspect of wanting to give birth to something. It is a desire to go beyond oneself; after a person has found himself - to open up.

We have described love phenomenologically as the ability to see more deeply. Love thus makes us see. It is often said: love makes you blind. Does this happen? Falling in love is blinding. Falling in love is the last remnant of Paradise on Earth. When a person is in love, he has no problems. He is in heaven, he is overwhelmed with strength, he sees the future in pink: how beautiful is love!

What do we see when we are in love? In love, we see a person the way we dream of him, so that he is. When a person is in love, he is in love with his idea of another. He does not yet know the other properly, and those areas that he does not know, he fills with fantasies and projections. And this is very charming. Another shows me his best side, and I fill everything around with other good projections. When a person is in love, he does not see the dark sides of the other, and therefore falling in love is as enchanting as a fairy tale.

In falling in love, it is more about me, because most of what I see is my own projections, fantasies, desires

And what I see from another also gives me an incentive to my own fantasies. Falling in love bewitches even objects that relate to the person with whom I am in love. His car is the finest on the street; his pen (ballpoint) - I keep it at my heart, it becomes a symbol of this charm, and it can develop up to fetishism. We can discuss it after the end.

But in conclusion, I would like to say a few more words about sexuality in love. There is homosexual love. It can be as personal as heterosexual love. Sexuality is the language of love, as we understand it. Sexuality not only serves to procreate; human sexuality is a form of dialogue. And in this context, we can understand that homosexual love can also be a form of dialogue, a form of expression of what a person personally experiences in relation to another. And if we say that love wants to have a future and in its generative aspect is open to something third, then it may not necessarily be a child: it can be projects or tasks, or just a celebration of the joy of life.

There are, of course, differences between homosexual and heterosexual love. Perhaps one difference can be mentioned: in heterosexual love, empathy, the ability to empathize, to understand the other does not extend as far as in homosexual love. Because the other sex has something in it that I don't have, something foreign.

The satisfaction of my own desire, the joy of life, the experience of pleasure, as it were, develops my attitude to the body, corporeality. Thanks to the other person, I get a more intense attitude towards my enjoyment of life. A person also needs it, it is beneficial for him. If sexuality contains the aspect of meeting, then we experience integrity, then we are with another person, as it were, fully together. Then we communicate at the sensory, bodily level, and experience our being at all levels of human existence. This is the highest form in which we can live, experience partner love. Because in this form of love, all its qualities are realized, occur, in it love is realized and acquires an actual state.

But in the world, of course, sexuality exists in various forms and without any meeting, when it comes only about pleasure, only about me, and I just need another for this. Many questions arise here; some take it for granted, others suffer from it. In my practice, women primarily suffer from this sexuality. Because if a woman has sexual desire, and a man does not, then a man does not have an erection, and he is calm. This is some kind of injustice of nature.

Experiencing sexuality without the aspect of the encounter being fully represented, however, can bring some experience of happiness. Naturally, provided that the other is not injured, for example, by violence or seduction. If the object character is in the foreground in sexuality, we can experience our vitality, vitality, joy of life in it.

This is not the highest form, because the dimension of the personal is not developed in it. But you cannot reject such sexuality from the very beginning - provided that the partner agrees to this form of relationship. However, a person with a subtle feeling feels that something of this kind of sexuality is lacking.

I want to close with the thought of happiness in love. Happiness in love is being able to experience that someone shares me with me and that I can share the being of another person, that I am invited to someone to experience him in order to be able to share his being with him … If I experience this invitation as something wonderful, then I love it. If I want to be, be present at this, then I love. If I want him well, then I love.

Love makes a person ready for suffering. Love is the deepest passion (suffering). There is a Hasidic wisdom that says: the lover feels that the other is being hurt. Suffering in connection with love not only means being prepared for suffering, but it also means that love itself can be the cause of suffering. Love generates longing that burns in us. In love, we often experience unfulfillment, irresponsibility and limitation. When people live together, they can hurt each other without wanting to, because of their limitations. A partner, for example, wants to talk or wants sexual intimacy, but today I'm tired, I can't - and this hurts the other and hurts me too: here we run into our own limitations. And the forms in which people, being in love, can hurt each other, are very diverse. It is very important to know, because it is essential to love, that we are ready to carry this willingness to suffering together. Only in love is the remnant of Paradise contained. There is this shadow side to the real love that comes true in life. And this shadow side gives us the opportunity to feel how strong our love is. How much this bridge of love can withstand the load. The joint experience of suffering binds people more than the joint experience of joy.

In love, a person suffers, carries the suffering that the other is experiencing. If my partner feels bad, I feel bad too. If my child feels bad, then I suffer. The lover is ready for empathy, he wants to be close to the other also when that is bad. The lover does not want to leave his beloved alone, and in such a situation, love clearly manifests itself. When we are in love, we suffer from longing, longing, or burning in the desire for unity. And we suffer from the fact that what we strive for is unity - we cannot realize it as fully as we want it. And we suffer from the fact that complete harmony in love, complete conformity to which we strive, does not work. The other does not fully correspond to me, he is not me. He's different. We have some common intersections, but there are also differences. This may be the reason that we cannot fully enter into the position of the other, because he is still not an ideal partner: there is something about him that I do not completely like.

When these problems arise, a person has a tendency to step back, and he waits: maybe meeting a better partner? But if he does not appear, then the person returns: after all, they have lived together for two or three years, then we will stay together, maybe even get married. But in such a relationship, there remains some restraint, not-to-the-end-resolution: a person cannot fully say his “Yes” in relation to another, and a person may not even be fully aware of this. I have had many cases where people in the course of therapy discovered that they had never really married: they said “Yes” with their mouths, but did not say with their hearts. Offhand, I believe that about a third of couples live like this.

But happiness in love is if I can tell you something, be in communication with you, if I can be with you and you like that I am with you, just as I like that you are with me. This phenomenon is based on resonance: we can influence it, but we cannot create it. We can strengthen it through a solution and through our attention. And where this resonance arises, but we do not want to realize it in life, we can let it resound, and at the level of life refrain from its realization.