Criticism of the confusion of love with desire !!

                


Love is distinguished for us from desire on an essential point: it attributes a value to the loved object (we say well: it attributes it, not: it creates it) while in desire there is nothing this genre. In other words: desire assigns no real value (possibly a relative value) to what is desired; While love is basically affirmation of the value of the loved one.

Some concrete examples will make us understand this: I can look with glistening eyes of covetous apple pie: I desire it, but I do not like it. It would be absurd to pretend that I have a love relationship with this pie. Why ? Because I do not value it. I do not attribute to him a high place in the hierarchy of beings. On the other hand, I have the greatest desire for it.

In the same way a man can desire a woman without having any love for her (and vice versa); He is attracted to her (or she is attracted to him) but does not attribute any value to her. Conversely, one can imagine a man loving a woman, without having for her the slightest desire (is not this what is called "platonic love"?).

We see then empirically that desire and love are two irreducible concepts, and the reason for this difference lies in the attribution or not of a value to the object of these two feelings.

Desire does not need to attribute a value to its object, for it seems to be a dynamic force that sustains itself, nourishes itself and strengthens itself through its own activity. He does not need the object, and rather the object attained suppresses desire: I do not need an entrecôte to be hungry, but it is precisely when I am given a piece of Meat that my hunger subsides.

Love, on the contrary, only awakens when an object appears to it and arouses its interest. It is not extinguished in the possession of the object, but on the contrary finds its authentic deployment. I delight in the presence and the thought of the loved one, I want to prolong this moment or even to eternalize it, whereas when I am filled, culinary or sexually, the idea of ​​starting my activity again (that is, To find the being or the thing in question) is not seductive, and may even be unbearable.

If this is true, then it is by their relation to value that love and desire distinguish themselves. We would willingly say, if we were forgiven of such metaphors, that love is objectivist, and subjectivist desire.

The fact that subjectivism, as we have seen, reduces love to desire, and gives such importance to desire, is therefore a sign that does not deceive. It is not that subjectivism necessarily refuses to attribute a value to the desired object; But if he affirms this, it is to clarify at once that this value was not in the object, but that it was the subject who created it. This could have been understood by the fact that the dynamism of desire can give it such power, but our analysis of subjectivism seemed to show us the impossibility of such a creation.

Thus it seems frequent that the assimilation of "having a value" and "being desirable" produces the subjectivation of value. The value of things being their ability to provoke desires and the value being proportional to the strength desire, Admit that the value is essentially subjective 1.

It is therefore understandable how, like Misrahi, one can articulate an assimilation of value to the "desirable" ...: Value: [...] value thus marks the desirability of an object or an act, that is, The level of intensity of desire that makes an object or act worthy of being desired and offered to the action of others 2

... and a subjectivism (creator): Evaluation: [...] this act seems to assume the objectivity of the criteria, that is to say, values ​​that make it possible to measure and judge the value of a man or an action . In reality, [...] evaluation is also and above all the act by which consciousness sets up values, that is to say, invents and defines goals considered worthy of being pursued and proposed to the public. The action of others 3.

To sum up our reflection: we think we have shown that desire and love are irreducible to one another, in that the notion of desire is linked to the subjectivation of value, whereas love, for its sake Implies the affirmation of a real value of its object. It is this last idea that we must now examine, in order to draw the consequences.