The Journal of Psychology

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The Paradox of Love: A Historical Exploration of

Western Philosophical Perspectives on Love, Exclusion,
and Liberatory Potential

David Berman

To cite this article: David Berman (2024) The Paradox of Love: A Historical Exploration of
Western Philosophical Perspectives on Love, Exclusion, and Liberatory Potential, The Journal of
Psychology, 158:1, 5-46, DOI: 10.1080/00223980.2023.2253355

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Published online: 19 Oct 2023.

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The Journal of Psychology
2024, VOL. 158, NO. 1, 5–46
https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.2023.2253355

The Paradox of Love: A Historical Exploration of Western

Philosophical Perspectives on Love, Exclusion, and
Liberatory Potential
David Berman
York University

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The present work tracks some of the most well-known thinkers on Received 27 March 2023
love in the Western philosophical tradition, where various theories Accepted 23 August 2023
emerge, conflict, converge, and fade away. Given that many questions KEYWORDS
about its nature have persisted for centuries, love’s identity appears Love; passion; exclusion;
unsettled. Due to its unresolved identity, love might be best under- friendship; paradox
stood as a paradox existing between its resistance to definition and
yet commonly recognized and experienced. The other central thread
stemming from these philosophers of love is how the history of its
theorizing constructed a restrictive notion that commonly excluded
women from the experience. Offering a natural rebuttal to the history
of exclusion promoted by these prominent thinkers is bell hooks’
notion of an expansive and healing love that possessed the capacity
to realize more fulfilling relationships and a compassionate society.
This paper concludes with thoughts on love’s liberatory nature, its
capacity to create personal meaning, and its identity as a paradox
without attempting to define it.

Introduction
Prominently appearing in origin myths, founding religious texts, and ancient epic
poetry, the history of love is the history of humanity. This work does not attempt to
fully represent the history of inquiry into the nature of love. Instead, the philosophers
appearing in this work represent the types of voices that have dominated the Western
discourse for the last two millennia. Selected for their influence on the trajectory of
Western thought, these philosophic texts provide insight, breadth of thought, and
devotion to exploring the nature of love. It is, however, important to stress that these
philosophers in no way capture the totality of philosophical thought on love in Western
discourse. Other thinkers, including Hesiod, Thomas Aquinas, Baruch Spinoza, and
Friedrich Nietzsche, all investigated the nature of love, which to some extent, dovetail
with the male philosophers found in this paper. Additionally, there is also a tradition
of critical thought regarding love, captured by philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir,
Bertrand Russell, Alain Badiou, and Frantz Fanon, which is more closely aligned with
bell hooks. While this paper does not stand as a comprehensive exploration of love

CONTACT David Berman [email protected] York University, Toronto, Canada

© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
6 D. BERMAN

(see Irving Singer, 2009a, 2009b, 2009c) and the inclusion of the selected thinkers
suffers from arbitrariness, they still represent some of the major threads of thought
on the nature of love and loving. In this vane, they reveal how White male voices
primarily dictated the prevailing understanding of love. Moreover, for all their creativity
and disagreements, they still had a limited understanding of love’s capacity. In so
doing, love was restricted for the historically marginalized, which provides a poignant
example of the associated harms of having a single story (Adichie, 2009).
Most centrally, this paper aims to provide an overview of the history of philosophical
attempts to define love, highlighting both unhealthy and healthy practices and how
they relate to current psychological thinking. Beginning in antiquity, the accounts of
the ancient Greek Socratics set the tone for expansive thinking about love in the
Western discourse, with Plato famously focused on abstractions and the otherworldly,
while Aristotle looked to love’s earthly practice. The paper then shifts to the medieval
period and the sophistication of Christian doctrine, where St. Augustine helped estab-
lish love as the methodological and metaphysical unpinning of Christian customs.
These ideas would persist through the following centuries through the late renaissance,
where this paper highlights the work of William Shakespeare. While he did not fore-
ground Christian theology, he did use it as a backdrop for his dramatizations of the
expansive nature of love and its potential to inspire both the demonic and divine.
Moving to the modern period, Arthur Schopenhauer and Soren Kierkegaard represent
the vast differences of opinion about the nature of love at the time. With the pessimist
Schopenhauer framing the nature of love in a proto-evolutionary. In contrast,
Kierkegaard, as a Christian existentialist, expanded on Augustine’s notions by grounding
the individual’s capacity to direct agency in the expression of love. This project ends
with the contemporary writing of bell hooks, who offers a natural rebuttal to some
of the loudest voices in the Western tradition appearing in this paper (hooks, 2000).
These were some of the same people who argued that women suffered from a defective
nature, were overly emotional, illogical, and lacking virtue (Badhwar & Jones, 2017;
Ferreira, 2001; Grosse, 2017; Gupta, 2005; Sihvola, 2002; Singer, 2009a). While these
opinions have been aggressively confronted in recent years, they have not been expunged
from contemporary society, whether in reactionary dialogues or hidden assumptions
about women’s inferiority. Answering these regressive ideas, hooks offers a more
expansive, activist-based, and healing notion of love as she provides a path toward a
more inclusive and just society that can be established by first practicing healthier
personal relationships.
Together these thinkers furnish readers with a concept of love that resembles a
paradox, as it simultaneously participates in both the logical and illogical. Consistent
with this, love’s manifestation is commonly felt, immediately recognizable, intensely
personal, and yet meaningless in isolation, illusive, and resistant to definition. It also
appears in how it transcends the biological, social, and psychological. Moreover, while
people may struggle to articulate love, the desire for it is universal, suggesting it
appears intertwined with what it means to be human.
Throughout this history of love, there is an assumed positive relationship between
love and marriage. While marriage has historically been dominated by economic con-
cerns, with romantic love serving as a foundation only emerging as a modern industrial
Western practice (Singer, 2009b), there is still reason to associate marriage with love,
 The Journal of Psychology 7

however problematic (Beach & Tesser, 1988). In a 16-year study involving 4,245 college
students Sprecher and Hatfield (2017) found that love was a vital prerequisite for
marriage. Consistent with love playing an important role in marriage, Rubin (1970)
found love was a better predictor than liking of intent to marry. Love was also found
to be more closely related to the survival of a marriage than happiness or satisfaction
(Willi, 1997). Also, love was considered crucial to the survival of marriage (Estrada,
2009). A cross-cultural study of 11 nations found that while there were significant
differences in the endorsement of love as a prerequisite for marriage, there was still
some recognition of its importance (Levine et al., 1995). Moreover, there have been
historical instances in preindustrial China, Rome, India, Greek, and France where
love-based marriages were seen as a threat to the social order (Abbott, 2011; Coontz,
2006), which reveals a long existing desire of loved ones to become married, even if
risked endangering their wellbeing. Again, while the relationship between marriage
and love is not straightforward, it has existed across cultures and through time.
Before embarking, it is important to stress here that various translations from orig-
inal texts were relied upon by both the author of this paper as well as many of the
scholarly works referenced here. Recognizing that translation is a treacherous practice
which suffers from systematic equivalence problems of words, grammar, syntax, and
“most importantly”, experience (Sechrest et al., 1972, p. 41). Because of the problem
of equivalence, conclusions drawn from these works deserve extra scrutiny. Where
possible, there was an attempt to locate a consensus in the academic literature about
the concepts and theories put forward.

Antiquity
Plato (423-348 BC)
Plato (Singer, 2009a) offers one of the first extensive examinations of love in the
Western canon. With various interrogations appearing in Plato’s Symposium, the
Phaedrus, the Republic, the Lysis, and other works, it is clear that defining love was
a project of considerable importance for this pioneer of Western thought. While many
details of Plato’s personal life and motivations have been lost to history, some infor-
mation regarding his academic career and writing has survived. As a student of Socrates,
the teacher of Aristotle, and the founder of the Academy, a public school for upper-class
students, and an early progenitor of the modern university, Plato is well-positioned in
the pantheon of early Western thinkers.
In the Symposium, where various definitions of love are debated, Plato introduces
the High Priestess Diotima, who Socrates regards as an expert on love, argues that it
possesses a hierarchical structure. Characterized as a ‘ladder of love’, people interested
in realizing love are required to ascend a series of rungs, each representing a love
more closely related to the love found in the realm of the forms, or afterlife (Kraut,
2008; Sheffield, 2012; Urstad, 2010). Starting at the bottom rung, the lover first desires
the beauty of a particular body, representing the experience of one-dimensional lust.
Considered the least favorable due to its complete focus on the material realm, it is
redeemable since it acts as a catalyst for the second rung, which includes a love for
all beautiful bodies. Taking a step further, the next rung involves a love for beautiful
8 D. BERMAN

souls. Eventually, as their knowledge grows with each rung in the ladder, a love for
institutions and laws develops, giving way to a love of knowledge, then finally true
love, which is an awareness of and love for beauty itself, or participation in the form
of beauty and goodness (Urstad, 2010). It is noted how the trajectory described here
begins with a particular physical object (the beloved), shifts to a more generalized
beauty of all beautiful bodies, and ends with a pure abstraction of the beauty of
the Forms.
Plato’s hierarchical theory of love also appears in his detailing of educational ped-
erastic relationships (Price, 1990). Here, an older knowledgeable lover finds happiness
in satisfying their desire for beauty through their proximity to the younger beloved,
while the beloved benefits from the knowledge of the older lover. While it was con-
sidered inappropriate for the beloved to return the romantic desires of the older lover
in ancient Greece, Plato allowed for the possibility that their feelings could grow
beyond the resignation that was expected (Halperin, 1986), but as the Phaedrus sug-
gests, it is best if it is a nonsexual relationship (Reid, 2019). We can see several stages
of the ladder of love at play here, from the desire for a physical body to where the
couple is motivated by the production of knowledge and the search for truth.
This assessment, which values abstraction over the material, has been criticized by
various scholars for being egoistic by promoting instrumental love. Similarly, this
system also promotes discarding people who are not as valued as individuals as the
lover ascends the ladder (Urstad, 2010; Vlastos, 1981). More specifically, critics noted
how Plato ignored the roles of “kindness, tenderness, compassion, concern for the
freedom, and respect for the integrity of the beloved” as fundamental components of
a loving relationship (Vlastos, 1971, p. 30). Further criticisms include his emphasis on
the perfection of beauty and idealization of the beloved, which is not representative
of how relationships are experienced as people are a mixture of positive and negative
qualities (Amir, 2001; Campos, 2019; Nussbaum, 2003). Due to this fixation on the
abstract, Plato’s work lacks applicability to the day-to-day issues associated with roman-
tic relationships.
Other scholars have come to Plato’s defence, arguing that these criticisms originate
in faulty translations and interpretations and in no way was Plato constructing selfish
or detached notions of love (Mooney, 2002; Schindler, 2007; Urstad, 2010). On the
contrary, according to Kraut (2008), at each stage, the practice of love was expanded
to include ideas and abstractions, but this did not require the discarding of individuals.
Similarly, others have highlighted how the egoistical interpretation of Plato’s theory
omits the reciprocal love found in the Symposium and Phaedrus (Price, 1990), how
it ignores the irreplaceability of the beloved (Mooney, 2002), and how love, as presented
in the Symposium, was never intended to be about interpersonal love but rather an
exploration of a broad concept encompassing the good and happiness (Sheffield, 2012).
These disagreements point to the interpretative challenges of reading Plato’s work,
which can leave the reader left guessing what the culmination of the various discourses
is meant to convey, leading some scholars to the conclusion that Plato’s theory of love
is incomplete or incoherent (Sheffield, 2012; Vlastos, 1981).
Plato, contrary to popular belief, never elevated or singled out sexless relationships
for particular praise. Instead of elevating friendship at the cost of sexuality, he believed
the healthiest heterosexual romantic relationships were those built on a foundation of
 The Journal of Psychology 9

friendship (Kraut, 2008). Speaking through Diotima, he argued that the ideal romantic
relationship possessed mutual caring, friendship, openness to the world’s beauty, and
responsiveness to sexual desires (Kraut, 2008). Plato further thought that sexual love
participates in the desire for eternal beauty by living on through descendants and the
societal good of raising and educating children. Associated with this was Plato’s belief
that pregnant women personified beauty (Price, 1990), and Socrates’s claim that he
was a midwife for knowledge. And while he was not promoting sexless relationships,
he did not see sexual desire as benign. When passion is strong enough to overwhelm
reasoned thought, even though it could stem from a desire to possess the good, it
could cause personal disorder with the potential to cause broader harm. To summarize,
Plato’s contribution to the scholarship of love was from the standpoint of someone
focused on the ideal forms of concepts found in the afterlife. His idealization of
everything from a polis to love was associated with generalizations, abstractions, and
otherworldliness, leaving scholars arguing about this approach’s everyday utility.
Criticisms aside, his dedication to an idealized love helped set the groundwork for
the future Christian Church and their similar belief that the identity of love and God
were one and the same.

Assertions Corroborated by Psychological Research

Productivity appears as a repeating theme in his discourses on love, where one of the
purposes of erotic love in heterosexual relationships was the production of children.
Through this connection, Plato aligns himself with the subdiscipline of evolutionary
psychology, whose proponents argue that love is inextricably connected to reproduction
(Buss, 2006). Moreover, Plato’s thinking, where children are a way to connect to the
eternal, has apparent ties to how genes persist after the individual has died.
When Plato emphasizes the importance of friendship in romantic heterosexual
relationships, he foreshadows modern research examining friendship’s role in relation-
ships. For example, in a study by Gottman (2000), 2000 couples endorsed the impor-
tance of sharing experiences, having fun, and pursuing novel things together. Friendship
was further endorsed by the women in the study as the most crucial aspect of a
relationship, connecting it to satisfaction and intimacy.
The notion that there is more than one type of love or that it consists of several
constitutive elements is consistent with several theories of love. Rubin (1970, 1973)
thought love consisted of intimacy, needs/attachment, and caring, while Hendrick and
Hendrick (1986), as well as Lee (1973), have devised a typology of six different love
styles. Similarly, Sternberg (1986) authored a triangular theory of love (intimacy, pas-
sion, and commitment), while Hazan and Shaver (1987) found that adults’ attachment
styles mirror those expressed in infants.
Finally, Plato highlights the motivating role lacking plays for lovers. The lover was
thought to desire beauty due to their loss or lack thereof, which also applies to the
desire for knowledge. While a lack-based theory of love is not found in the psycho-
logical literature, it appears as a significant component if associated with loneliness
and deprivation of social connections. Research has connected negative psychological,
physiological, and spiritual well-being with being socially disconnected (Ornish, 1998;
Pond et al., 2011). This is in contrast with those in reciprocal caring relationships
10 D. BERMAN

who report higher satisfaction than those without (Baumeister et al., 1993), meaning
that those suffering from social isolation and lack of nurturing relationships are in a
state of lack or wanting.

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

While Plato explored romantic love and its physical expression at great length, Aristotle’s
surviving works reveal little of the same interest (Sihvola, 2002). Of the scant references
Aristotle makes about romantic love, they are primarily disconnected, or found among
references to friendship, where it is sometimes depicted as an action or behavior
(Cooper, 1980; Mooney, 2002). Complicating the efforts to grasp his theory of love,
it also appears in various relationships with siblings, spouses, friends, parents, and
children, where it is not immediately clear which kind of love he refers to Badhwar
and Jones (2017; Mooney, 2002). Even so, it is possible to glean insights into Aristotle’s
theory by its place among his extensive theorizing on friendship or philia, which was
sometimes treated as a particular case of friendship (Sihvola, 2002). Also providing
some insight was how he deployed his theory of the Golden mean to understand the
nature of emotions better. This theory argues that the middle ground between excess
and deficiency was not only healthy but made critical judgment possible (Kraut, 2008).

Friendship
Aristotle’s theory of friendship, appearing in the Nicomachean Ethics, consists of three
types of friendships: pleasure, utility, and virtue. Beginning with pleasure friendships,
these relationships are defined by the pursuit of gratifying activities, e.g., chess, shop-
ping, drinking, music, etc., where the foundation of mutual affection rests on the
pleasure they realize together. The second, utility friendships, are typical of business
and other exchange-based relationships characterized by exchanging goods and services
for capital, where a friendship will often emerge (e.g. patron and bartender, hairdresser
and client). These two types of relationships are widely considered egoist and suffer
from instability as they depend on the underlying conditions of pleasure or utility to
persist (Badhwar & Jones, 2017; Kim, 2021). Essentially, pleasure and utility friendships
only persist as long as they are pleasurable or useful (Brewer, 2005; Prus & Camara, 2010).
In contrast to these more superficial types of friendships is the complete, intense,
and stable virtuous friendship. While this third type incorporates utility and pleasure,
it is not dependent upon either. Instead, virtuous friendships are based on the char-
acter of each friend, which Aristotle believed was representative of a person’s core self.
Given that people do not tend to change their core selves radically, relationships
between friends with comparative levels of virtue were thought to be more enduring.
Facilitating this stability, and a defining feature of virtuous relationships, was how each
friend was expected to desire good for the other solely for their friend’s sake (Millgram,
1987; Prus & Camara, 2010). Or, in the words of Aristotle, from his Rhetoric, as
translated from the original Greek by Roberts (2004), “we may describe friendly feeling
towards anyone as wishing for him what you believe to be good things, not for your
own sake but for his” (p. 78). It was also assumed that more virtuous people would
work to improve themselves and work toward making their friend a better version of
 The Journal of Psychology 11

themselves (Badhwar & Jones, 2017). Speaking to the demands of friendships, Aristotle
thought personal station (age, status, and wealth) were all important practical aspects,
given that the dyad needed to spend considerable time together. Due to the consid-
erable obligations involved, Aristotle concluded that only a few of these relationships
could be maintained simultaneously (Kraut, 2008; Millgram, 1987). Unfortunately, given
the exclusionary practices common in ancient Greece, virtuous relationships were
thought to be the exclusive domain of men, where women lacked the intellectual or
virtuous capacity to be equal partners and were left to be ruled by men (Badhwar &
Jones, 2017).
Relevant to the broader discussion is the addition of Aristotle’s concept of the
other-self. This concept captures the process of a person expanding the self through
interactions and influence with others. Essentially, friendships are seen as collaborations
where each friend participates in reciprocal shaping, or, in a sense, colonizing the
other, culminating in an other-self for each (Badhwar & Jones, 2017; Carreras, 2012;
Millgram, 1987). By blurring the line between the self and other, Aristotle’s emphasis
on seeking self-happiness (eudaimonia) can survive charges of egoism (Carreras, 2012).
Since the other-self becomes an extension of the self, it can also help explain why
people are motivated to help a virtuous friend in need and why people do not tend
to discard friends for more virtuous ones. It is through this concept of the other-self
that a union becomes irreplaceable (Badhwar & Jones, 2017). Millgram (1987) believed
this self-expansion also explained why people loved their children and art works as
they reflected their creator. It is easy to see how these notions could relate to romantic
love and relationships, but as discussed below, Aristotle did not apply them in
this manner.

Marital Relationships
If adopting Badhwar and Jones (2017) approach of suspending Aristotle’s unequal view
of women, then it is possible to see how his theorizing on love and friendship applies
to romantic relations involving women. Some of the justifications for this application
include the apparent care and esteem he held for his romantic partner in later life
(Natali, 2013), his belief that people are by nature motivated to pair (Sihvola, 2002),
how friendships were common among married couples (Prus & Camara, 2010), rec-
ognized women had free will, thought marriages should possess both utility and
pleasure, and had a hard-line stance against adultery (Sihvola, 2002). Moreover, con-
sidering Aristotle thought only a few virtuous friendships were possible, due to their
demands and intensity, perhaps Aristotle had something to say about marital intimacy
and healthy marriages (Badhwar & Jones, 2017). Other thoughts of relevance include
his expectation that virtuous friendships should promote self-improvement, happiness,
and the navigation of each other’s faults (Badhwar & Jones, 2017; Millgram, 1987;
Prus & Camara, 2010). Given that Aristotle’s work, on its face, possesses practical
value for married couples it is frustrating that he, in the end, said very little about
romantic marital intimacy (Badhwar & Jones, 2017; Price, 1990). Pulling back, it is
also curious for someone who believed that marriage was the foundation of Greek
civilization, and made note that childless couples do not tend to last, that he did not
consider marital intimacy a topic worthy of deeper consideration. The culmination of
12 D. BERMAN

these concepts is an unrealized legacy, where the exclusionary practices of ancient

Greece blinded Aristotle to the applicability of his thoughts to marriages and relation-
ships with women.

Eros and Intimacy

Setting aside aspirations for Aristotle’s work, there is little continuity of thought when
he directly speaks about romantic desires or passionate love. Used as an unfavorable
comparison to virtuous friendship, romantic love is a fleeting experience deserving of
disparagement (Burger, 2019). Aristotle went on to describe eros as having a
non-reciprocal structure, where the beloved is under no obligation to return the lover’s
desires, or even be aware of their existence (Burger, 2019). In contrast to the demands
of togetherness in virtuous relationships, eros typically begins with seeing the beloved’s
body, but the yearning is only cultivated by being apart (Sihvola, 2002). Eros was also
thought to corrupt communication, by encouraging false promises for the sake of
pleasure-seeking and held no requirement to desire what was good for the other
(Burger, 2019). This notion that passionate relationships were not reconcilable with
marriage outlasted Aristotle by over a millennium, with the first passionate marriages
occurring in the medieval period (Trachman & Bluestone, 2005). In the end, eros
holds a conflicted place in Aristotle’s corpus of work, seen as a drive as natural as
thirst and hunger, a flawed desire for fleeting beauty, and a metaphysical force respon-
sible for the movement of the cosmos (Burger, 2019).

Assertions Corroborated by Psychological Research

When considering the totality of Aristotle’s writing on friendship, love, and romantic
relationships, it is important to keep in mind his blurring of the lines between what
is commonly understood to be different concepts (e.g. friendship, love, romantic) and
how they can all be placed in the larger framework of social relations. Given that,
few psychologists would argue with Aristotle’s assertion that humans are fundamentally
social animals. Supporting this stance is the extensive evidence linking adverse mental
health outcomes to being socially disconnected (Ornish, 1998; Pond et al., 2011; Robb
et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2017). Relevant to these relationships, Aristotle identified
spending time together as a necessary component of a virtuous friendship, and again,
if suspending his limitations on women, there is ample evidence that spending time
together is associated with successful relationships (Hill, 1988; Johnson & Anderson,
2013; Kaslow et al., 1994). Hickman-Evans et al. (2018) also connected time spent and
marital satisfaction but added a layer of complexity by highlighting the importance of
the quality of leisure time, which is not inconsistent with Aristotle’s belief that virtuous
friendships contain elements of pleasure as well. Regarding the stability of marriages,
Aristotle believed that having children was a positive factor that encouraged couples
to stay together, which is also found in the psychological literature (Hill, 1988;
Kraut, 2008).
While the structure of Aristotle’s love is ambiguous, his move to distinguish love/
friendship from eros has been corroborated in research by Diamond (2004), where
love and sexual desire were considered two distinct concepts. This also reflects efforts
by Rubin (1973) to subcategorize intimacy, need/attachment, and caring as constitutive
 The Journal of Psychology 13

components of love. Other efforts to subsegment love include the efforts of Hendrick
and Hendrick (1986), Sternberg (1986), and Fehr (2006). While none of this research
perfectly corresponds to Aristotle’s classifications of pleasure, utility, and virtue rela-
tionships, it speaks to a mutual recognition that friendship and love are highly complex
concepts and are better understood in context. However, Aristotle does get some direct
support for his belief that friendship is common in marriages where Dion and Dion
(1993) found that students from China, Korea, Japan, India, and Pakistani, endorsed
that love was based on friendship.
As for love’s specific identity, Aristotle’s various formulations of love, in totality,
depict a complex and multifaceted concept which finds some similarities to the frac-
tured and varied models of love which circulate in the psychological literature. For
example, Aron et al. (2006) review of psychological love highlights the sheer multitude
of theories pertaining to love, including love as an emotion (Gonzaga et al., 2001;
Shaver et al., 1987; 1996), love as an attachment (Bowlby, 1969), love as sex (Berscheid,
1988), or love as a story (Sternberg, 1998). Furthermore, when love is described as a
motivation, Aristotle echoes the work of some evolutionary psychologists (Fisher 1998;
Buss, 2006) who understand love as an adaptation which evolved to motivate individ-
uals to select particular characteristics among prospective mating partners. Similarities
are also found between Aristotle’s concept of the golden mean, where the spectrum
between excess and deficiency map onto Saphire-Bernstein and Taylor (2013) work
on love as a dynamic, adaptive, context-dependent concept, as well as the emotional
extremes identified by Brehm (1992). Related to this, when Aristotle speaks of
eros-inspired confusion and lack of judgment, we see some commonalities with how
Knox and Schacht (2010) documented how love can be confused by lust and infatuation.

Medieval
Saint Augustine (353-430)
As a founder of the early Christian Church and a considerable influence on broader
Western discourses, St. Augustine of Hippo’s efforts to integrate Greek philosophy into
the early Christian Church resulted in a more sophisticated theology and the prolif-
eration of ancient ideas. As a Roman citizen in North Africa, he witnessed the Roman
empire’s collapse from its periphery, where its once powerful army could no longer
defend its borders from barbarian raids or resolve internal conflicts over succession.
St. Augustine was not only worried about the loss of the empire from the standpoint
of his ambitions but how its collapse could also bring about the end of the Christian
Church itself (Singer, 2009a). These concerns climaxed in the year 410 with the sacking
of Rome. Concerned that Christianity would become a scapegoat, he attempted to
absolve it of any spiritual responsibility by writing The City of God (Gilligan &
Richards, 2008).
Beyond The City of God, St. Augustine wrote over 400 treatises, books, sermons,
and letters, distinguishing him as a remarkably prolific writer who often utilized love
in his theorizing. The best-known of his works, the proto-autobiography, Confessions,
details his struggles with sin and sexual desire before his conversion to Christianity.
In considering the role of love in everyday life and its implications for salvation,
14 D. BERMAN

Augustine explored the tensions between the mind and body, evil and the good, and
love of self over the love of God (Otten, 1998; Prelipcean, 2014). Given his position
as bishop of Hippo and voluminous writing that was spared the many barbarian raids,
he, more than any other individual, is credited with establishing love as a foundational
principle within the religion of Christianity (Drever, 2017).
The theory of love that emerges from this work is expansive, otherworldly, and
ultimately theological. As with other theorists, Augustine was not always consistent in
his use of terminology, which led to some complications in interpreting his intentions,
but it is clear that his overriding notion of love and the Christian God were indivisible
concepts, where love was God, and God was love (Drever, 2017). It is also clear that
the notion of a romantic pairing, exclusive to all others, was not a topic of significant
interest for the Bishop of Hippo.

Faith and His Confessions

Recognizing his Confessions as an important historical document, it discusses various
formative events in the personal life of Augustine before his conversion. Chronicling
his tension-filled relationship with his Christian mother, Augustine detailed how half
his life was punctuated with her repeated pleas for him to convert. Additionally,
Augustine speaks of his pseudo-marriage at 17 to a woman who bore his only child
even as he struggled with a self-acknowledged sexual addiction. The marriage was to
last for 15 years until the year 385, when he converted and took a much younger
Christian wife, to whom he was immediately unfaithful (Clark, 1996). The narrative
Augustine weaves speaks of a person whose life was marked by intense sexual impulses
that led him to resist the Christian faith and its restrictive views on sex (Clark, 1996).
Given these formative experiences, it is unsurprising that Augustine became preoc-
cupied with the nature of love but eventually came to see it as a pathway to a closer
relationship with God rather than a curse (Drever, 2017). Finding textual inspiration
in the commandment to love thy neighbor, Augustine understood this as part of a
methodological approach to salvation. Where it included loving others from a disin-
terested standpoint that assured the intrinsic value of each person as a creation of
God (Riga, 1968). He would also argue that if initiated in love, each action led to
works founded in love and, by extension, part of God’s will (Prelipcean, 2014).
Unfortunately, his devotion to the eternal and the otherworldly would lead him to
disparage everyday concerns as he called on others to despise the mortal world, with
its ever-changing nature and jealousies. To that end, Augustine believed fulfillment
and salvation were reserved for those who unwaveringly looked to the immortal God
and his commandments (Prelipcean, 2014; Singer, 2009a).

Greek Historical Influences

As mentioned, one of Augustine’s major projects was synthesizing ancient Greek phi-
losophy with Christian thought. This included the Christianization of Plato and Plotinus,
who explored love’s meaning and practice (Singer, 2009a). With a keen interest in the
otherworldly, he repurposed the abstractions of Plato’s good and Neoplatonist love as
representations of the Christian God. The transcendental nature of these concepts
prevented the anthropomorphizing of God and kept Christianity otherworldly, a lifelong
 The Journal of Psychology 15

objective of Augustine. Moreover, he adopted Plato’s cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice,

temperance, and courage into his more extensive concept of love, which would come
to be inseparable from the identity of God (Singer, 2009a). Regarding passion or sexual
impulse, the Manichean stance that reproduction was evil since it bound heavenly
light to the flesh could have contributed to Augustine’s negative opinions of sex, or
at least sexual impulses (Clark, 1996).

Theory of Love - Agape, Eros, and Caritas

For all his work in establishing a Christian love, the concept of love was not straight-
forward, and various terms were needed to capture its complexity, including, but not
exclusive to, amor, dilectio, Caritas, eros, and agape. Unfortunately, there is some
inconsistency with how the terms are deployed throughout his work, leaving subsequent
scholars attempting to understand his intent. Those concerns aside, Augustine primarily
used eros, agape, and Caritas to explain his holistic vision of love (Singer, 2009a).
While Christian love was seen as a unity, Augustine sometimes maintained the
division between earthly love (eros) and eternal love (agape). Agape was venerated
and primarily out of the reach of humans and went beyond Greek virtues to include
faith, kindness, altruism, sincerity, understanding, modesty, goodwill, tolerance, charity,
patience, mercy, and parsimony (Riga, 1968). Agape was an inspired concept established
in the commandment to love thy neighbor and was understood to be expressed in
the self-denying sacrifice of Christ (Drever, 2017). The centralizing of the sacrifice of
Christ also speaks to the importance of action, which was supposed to reveal a person’s
true essence. Ultimately, Augustine believed all humans would be judged by their
actions and, therefore, by their capacity to love (Prelipcean, 2014)
Juxtaposed to agape was the mortal and turbulent Eros. Understood as passion or
sexual impulse, it was perceived as a danger that encouraged sin, including adultery
and the objectification of others. Moreover, in its capacity to undermine virtue, it
manifested an insatiable appetite while ignoring the intrinsic worth of others, which
by its nature is prideful (Grosse, 2017; Otten, 1998). Worse, it constitutes a movement
away from the eternal by fixating on the mortal world (Nawar, 2015). Confoundingly,
it was also recognized as a drive that brings people closer to God.
Augustine argued that the corrupting force of sexual impulse stems from original
sin, where the passions became disordered and would no longer obey reason. In so
doing, he placed the origins of lust beyond personal responsibility while also acknowl-
edging that sexual impulses are something that could never be fully domesticated as
all humans wrestle with the consequence and shame of a mistake from the origins of
the species (Clark, 1996; Prelipcean, 2014)—here noting that it was the sexual impulse
and not sexual pleasure itself that was treated with such concern. He also believed
the moral dangers of the sex drive could be mitigated if it was directed toward the
intrinsic good of procreation and never for its own sake. This narrow stance effectively
outlawed other forms of sex or birth control, which would have profound implications
for future generations (Cahall, 2004; Hunter, 1994).
Acknowledging the problems associated with the practice of translation highlighted
in the introduction, the following quotations from Augustine and many of the related
scholarly works utilized the translation from the original Latin into English by Henry
16 D. BERMAN

Chadwick (Augustine & Chadwick, 2009). Again, this has implications for the validity
of any resulting analysis and subsequent conclusions drawn about Augustine’s use of
particular words and phrases.
As mentioned, perhaps confusingly, Augustine deploys the embodied and passionate
language of eros when discussing God as the most satisfying and absorbing of lovers
(Gilligan & Richards, 2008). This erotically charged language (Grosse, 2017), can be
found in his Confessions when speaking of his relationship with God, “where my soul
is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is a sound that time
cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a
taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union
that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I loved my God” (Augustine &
Chadwick, 2009, p. 183). His depiction of a sexual relationship or drive toward God
could help explain his stance that eros, among other things, is also a drive toward
God. Interestingly, a possible origin for his use of erotic language toward God was a
myth specific to North Africa that the God Eros had become cupid, which in turn
had become Christ (Grosse, 2017). This is certainly consistent with some of the imagery
he deployed, “you pierced my heart with the arrow of your love (caritate)” (Augustine
& Chadwick, 2009, p. 183).
At times he depicted the two loves of eros and agape as two loves moving toward
one another, agape from above and eros from below, coming together in a synergy of
Caritas, where eros is purified or reconciled in God (Drever, 2017; Prelipcean, 2014;
Singer, 2009a). Here, rather than banishing eros, it should be incorporated into the
eternal love of agape. However, true love was the exclusive property of Christians, as
Caritas was only available to those who loved the Christian God (Singer, 2009a). This
dim view of humanity led him to conclude humans, in general, were too violent and
sinful ever to be able to build a society based on neighborly love (Jaeger, 2011). This
disparagement of the earthly world leaves his theology open to criticism of elitism
and lacking practical application to people’s lives.

Friendship, Neighborly Love, and Agape

In the tradition of Aristotle, Augustine believed in the importance of friendships for
the well-being of individuals. He also endorsed Aristotle’s notion of the ‘otherself ’, but
understood it within a Christian framework, where shared values and love of God can
promote self-love in the role of friendship (Jaeger, 2011). Understanding that not all
friendships correspond to the idealized notion of the ‘otherself ’, he argued that different
but complementary qualities could act as the foundation for a fulfilling friendship that
promotes the reciprocal cultivation of virtue and love of the good (Jaeger, 2011; Nawar,
2015). Accordingly, he expressed the importance of faith and friendships as comforts
in an otherwise life of hardships (Fitzgerald, 1999). Consistent with his thoughts of
Christian exclusivity of agape, Augustine depicted his friendships before baptism as a
type of adultery since they could not properly participate in a love of God (Jaeger,
2011; Prelipcean, 2014).
While friendship was elevated to considerable status for Augustine, he also warned
of associated dangers. Due to our affections, friends could undermine our reason,
foster our vises, and misdirect our love toward earthy things (Grosse, 2017; Nawar,
 The Journal of Psychology 17

2015). With his concerns reaching the level of alarm, “friendship can be a dangerous
enemy, a seduction of the mind lying beyond the reach of investigation” (Augustine
& Chadwick, 2009, p. 34).

Marriage
Having a personal history that included two marriages, it comes with relief that
Augustine considered the institution an instrumental good (Fullam, 2012). It is also
noteworthy that he recognized the importance of friendship within marriages, which
can promote marital harmony, stability, and companionship (Hunter, 1994). However,
Augustine was most interested in how marriages related to God and the scriptures,
where he saw them as mirrors to the primordial example of the holy union between
Adam and Eve, which, by extension, provided a foundation for all other earthly rela-
tionships (Clark, 1996; Hunter, 1994). Exploring the benefits of marriage further,
Augustine identified three particular goods, procreation, fidelity, and the sacrament
(Cahall, 2004; Hunter, 1994). While this is associated with the theological metaphysics
of the holy trinity, marriage was seen as the foundation of the Christian life in pro-
ducing new Christians, maintaining the bond between the family structure and the
relationship with God. The connective tissue for all these goods was the love between
the married couple, meaning that God was an ever-present entity and the ‘middle
term’ between a couple’s agape and eros. This is consistent with notions of Christianity
as the religion of love, not so much for its tenets but for God’s role in its expression
and the importance of love in society. Furthermore, due to the ever-present nature of
God within marriages, they were regarded as unbreakable, where spouses were required
to forgive each other for sins and, problematically, never seek divorce (Clark, 1996;
Fullam, 2012).
While sexual impulses and behaviors were typically understood as threats to an
individual’s salvation, they could be tolerated between a married couple if the act was
for procreation or if it effectively minimized its destructive force as the couple worked
toward celibacy in unison (Cahall, 2004). Augustine used the example of an older
couple whose passion had diminished, of how friendship could eclipse desire, where
mutual charity and caring become paramount (Fullam, 2012). Sex’s capacity to
strengthen the bond between husband and wife was never discussed in his work as
he seems to have focused on its role in procreation, a nuisance to be managed, or a
destructive evil. The practice of sex and its implications in intimacy and unequal
gender roles was never explored by Augustine, which is a reflection of a culture which
never understood women as equal partners.

Attitudes toward Women

Gender bias was hardly rare in this period, but his views are of considerable interest
given Augustine’s position and influence on the later church. As highlighted by Gilligan
and Richards (2008), while he might have presented some progressive notions of
marriage and the role of friendship within marriage, it is impossible to conclude he
thought women were equal partners, “I fail to see what use woman can be to man,
if one excludes the function of bearing children” or how a woman’s intelligence is
undermined by “the sex of her body … which is submissive to the masculine sex”
18 D. BERMAN

(Augustine & Chadwick, 2009, p. 302). Given these views, equal relationships between
men and women were made impossible. In these disparaging comments, Augustine
appears to have forgotten his mother’s influence on his career path and his friendship
with his first wife, whom he once adored.

Assertions Corroborated by Psychological Research

Given that Augustine argued that love encompassed a seemingly endless number of
qualities, including faith, kindness, altruism, sincerity, understanding, modesty, goodwill,
tolerance, charity, patience, mercy, wisdom, justice, temperance, and courage, his over-
arching theory suffers from some incoherency. However, as distended his concept of
love might be, he is not alone in thinking of love as a multifaceted experience of
many different elements. These include Fehr’s (2006) constellation theory, and Sternberg’s
(1986) Triangular theory of love, while others promote the complex systems perspective
(Byrne & Callaghan, 2013).
While Augustine did not argue that the purpose of love was to facilitate children,
he did think that sinful sexuality could be forgiven, or even sanctified, if the purpose
of sex was procreation. This sanctioning of sex through reproduction is at least related
to the arguments of evolutionary psychologists (Buss, 2006), who primarily interpret
sexual impulses as natural drives toward procreation. Furthermore, Augustine’s depiction
of women being primarily submissive and childbearing, could be explained as cultural
manifestations of evolutionary pressures where men compete for access to choosier
women (Buss, 2015). These practices and behaviors are not only likely to be influenced
by evolutionary pressures, but are themselves socially reinforcing which can, and have,
been passed down to subsequent generations, where women’s identity of being sec-
ondary becomes culturally entrenched.
Having identified love as an essentially private experience, Augustine argued that
the evidence for love could only be found in its ‘goods’, including children, generosity,
charity, compassion, etc. These ideas find some theoretical overlap with some modern
psychological theories where love is seen as primarily a practice or behavior
(Ferreira, 2013).
Augustine devoted much energy framing sexual impulses as evil and holding them
in tension with reason, with many psychological studies and theories finding this
juxtaposition between the mind and body. These include cognitive psychologists linking
compulsive sexual behavior with impulse control disorder (Walton & Bhullar, 2018).
At the same time, others note the association between executive control deficits and
the risky behavior of young adults (Reynolds et al., 2019). Nevertheless, psychologists
have deployed cognitive behavioral therapy rather than attempting to correct maladap-
tive behaviors with threats of eternal damnation.
Shame also appeared as a theme in Augustine’s theorizing on sex and love, where
there was a ‘natural’ desire to cover reproductive organs or for privacy during sexual
behaviors. For Augustine, this was proof of sex’s association with original sin, but
shame was not so otherworldly for generations of mental health experts. For Pulverman
and Meston (2020), shame was associated with sexual abuse and disorder, while Henry
and Powell (2015) researched its ties to sexual victimization. Shame also, at times,
played an outsized role in Sigmund Freud’s notions of intrapsychic conflict and early
 The Journal of Psychology 19

development (Freud, 1958; Lansky & Morrison, 2014). As a general concept of interest,
shame’s presence in psychological research does not appear to be diminishing, as seen
in the construction of sexual shame inventories: Kyle Inventory of sexual Shame (Kyle,
2013), the Male Sexual Shame Scale (Gordon, 2018), and the Sexual Shame Inventory
(Seebeck, 2021).
Augustine’s observation that as a couple ages, love shifts from passion to compan-
ionship finds agreement in Christopher and Sprecher (2000) work establishing how
sexual frequency and satisfaction decrease over time. Dovetailing their findings with
other studies, marriage can be a protective agent against loneliness in older adults
(Fokkema et al., 2012; Perissinotto et al., 2012; Sundstrom et al., 2009).
To summarize, St. Augustine was not only one of the founders of the modern
Christian Church but a theologian who spent considerable time examining the role
of love in human life. This included extensive considerations of marriage and sexuality
where "No Christian writer has exerted greater influence on the development of the
Western theology of marriage than Augustine. " (Hunter, 2003, p. 64).
As a proponent of otherworldly love, Augustine’s theorizing maintained a lack of
applicability to human relationships in the mortal world. That said, he did identify
marriage as an essential institution and a general good for society. Moreover, he
believed friendship was an important element of that unity. Some of that clarity, how-
ever, is sacrificed when looking deeper into his notions of love and his promotion of
despising the mortal world. Tied to this, his vilification of sexuality and denigration
of vast swaths of humanity leaves one to wonder if his ideas are best ignored.
While many argue that he has had a profoundly negative influence on the later
church and the practice of love (Cahall, 2004), others defend his position as a pioneer
of a major religion (Cahall, 2004). Whatever the interpretive disagreements, his dis-
paraging view of women likely reinforced discriminatory perspectives leading to further
discrimination. While he can be celebrated for his accomplishments, it must be remem-
bered that he was the one that combined the patriarchy of Roman culture with a
theology of restrictive sexuality (Gilligan & Richards, 2008), which cemented women’s
social position as the ‘second sex’ (de Beauvoir, 1953).

Late Renaissance
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Like many before, this paper includes William Shakespeare among the authorities on
the nature of love (Belliotti, 2012; Kambaskovic, 2015; Quincy, 2009; Singer, 2009b;
Vyvyan, 2020). It also participates in the long history of academics connecting the
Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon with the practice of psychology (Bucknill, 1867; Semple,
1881; Price, 1928; Clark, 1977; Armstrong, 2005; Waugaman, 2009; Jacobs, 2018).
Furthermore, this paper joins in the tradition of including Shakespeare among phi-
losophers, “he is a genuine thinker in the sense that he understood and brought to
life the timeless conflicts of political thought as only Plato had done before or since”
(Kaytor, 2018, p. 105). With some academics pointing to the influence of philosophy
on his work, “few scholars of the Early Modern period deny the importance of phi-
losophy in the work of major authors such as Marlowe and Shakespeare” (Stewart,
20 D. BERMAN

2010, p. 4), or how it is was possible to “read[ing] Shakespeare as philosophy” (Saval,

2014, p. 1). Additionally, some philosophers drew parallels between the works of
Shakespeare and philosophy, where Friedrich Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, thought Hamlet
was authored by the philosopher Francis Bacon (Nietzsche, 2005). While Kierkegaard
personally connected to the character of Hamlet (Ruoff, 1968), and as translated by
Alexander Dru (Kierkegaard, 1938), believed Shakespeare had surpassed Hegel in his
construction of the existential plight of Hamlet, “immortal dilemma through all eter-
nity: to be or not to be, that is the question (Hamlet)” (Kierkegaard, 1938). None of
which acknowledges Shakespeare’s explicit and dramatized philosophical explorations,
including King Lear’s groping for truth, Romeo’s dismissal of philosophy due to its
limits, and Hamlet’s struggles with the meaning of his existence. Whatever Shakespeare’s
vocational categorization, his works participate in a philosophical discourse of the
highest magnitude.
While various scholars of love have utilized different strategies when researching
the ample source material, ranging from studies of singular plays, comparisons of
sonnets vs. plays, tragedies vs. comedies, and sonnets to corpus-wide investigations
(Astington, 2008; Ma, 2014; Nordlund, 2007; Singer, 2009c), it is argued that Shakespeare
faithfully represented the experience of love in rarely matched fidelity (Sass, 2022).
Shakespeare’s corpus was frequented with mentions of love, becoming the central
theme of his sonnets and the motivational force for characters in over half of his plays
(Schalkwyk, 2018). Allowing his character’s experiences to speak for themselves, he
never defined the concept in isolation but instead illustrated it in context as an expe-
rience that included a wide range of behaviors, attitudes, and effects (Ma, 2014;
Nordlund, 2007; Schalkwyk, 2018). Some of its range is seen in its juxtaposition
between embodying the sacred and the debased (Ma, 2014), a destabilizer that upsets
the social order, and both a facilitator and destroyer of marriages, careers and families
(Wiebracht, 2016). Moreover, while he did not provide for a theory of love, his dis-
courses participate in the traditional notions of love and their tensions, including
passion, sexual desire, and friendship, with the most developed contrast emerging
between eros (problematic) and agape (otherworldly) (Ma, 2014).
An additional consideration for any analysis of Shakespeare’s treatment of love is
how he did not explore the plodding nature of the day-to-day negotiations of a typical
relationship. Instead, as a playwright writing for a popular audience, he focused on
conflict, action, and emotional tensions. In its totality, this provides a distorted notion
of love, but this would have been less of a concern, as Shakespeare understood that
emotions move people, on the stage, in the audience, and on the broader world
(Quincy, 2009).

Influences
Growing up in the late Renaissance in England, it is assumed that Shakespeare received
an education from a standard grammar school, where he would have been exposed
to biblical texts and the Greek and Latin languages (Driver, 2022). Furthermore, it
is thought his curriculum also included the works of Galen’s (129-216 AD), Plato
and Lucretius, eleventh century troubadours, and Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love
(1180) (Schalkwyk, 2018). These influences led him to adopt an understanding of
 The Journal of Psychology 21

love that was at least consistent with the common understandings of his time
(Singer, 2009b).
Moreover, Shakespeare was immersed in a culture where the dominant relational
practice was that of the master-slave social bond. This unequal relationship understood
love as “shaped by hierarchies, abuses, longing, and deprivations of desire as servitude”
(Schalkwyk, 2018, p. 168). The most common representation of this in Shakespeare
was the husband (master) and wife (enslaved person) relationship, where women who
were not faithful servants or overstepped their social position were frequently punished
by nature or circumstance. There are, however, instances where the master-slave
dynamic plays out in reverse, where the idealization of the beloved places them beyond
reach. Romeo provides an example of this shift when he transforms from a confident,
masculine character to a ‘slave’ to Juliet’s imagined perfection (Schalkwyk, 2018).
Unequal relationships aside, Shakespeare’s work was mainly leveling in how love and
its entanglements impact the lives of everyone, from the highest king to the lowest of
servants. Moreover, while the hierarchical social structure of his time was maintained,
he did provide a window into the lives of the less fortunate.

Fragments of Love
In light of Shakespeare’s omission of a comprehensive theory of love, some scholars
have attempted to identify patterns and repeating themes within the corpus to under-
stand his position. Perhaps the most common of which is love’s conflicted nature, as
it incorporates joy, happiness, elation, wanting, compassion, anger, resentment, embar-
rassment, chagrin, frustration, aggression, despair, exasperation, shame, regret, sorrow,
and helplessness, many of which appear to be in direct conflict with one another
(Schalkwyk, 2018). The culmination of these different elements furnishes readers with
a concept that is both incomprehensible yet immediately recognizable. Moreover, in
that framing of love, Shakespeare perhaps does more to establish love as the quintes-
sential human experience than any other Western thinker, as he confirms its reflection
of the paradoxical nature of our subjectivity, as both unknowable and immediately
accessible (Sass, 2022).
Resolving some of these tensions, Shakespeare, as mentioned, adopted the distinction
between sexual desire and true or divine love (Schalkwyk, 2018). Shakespeare repeat-
edly used desire as a disruptive force by tying it to idealization, depression, anger,
madness, and violence. This unstable experience is embodied by many characters where
its blindness overwhelms reason and leads to evaluations that can overlook status,
resources, and rationality (Ma, 2014; Singer, 2009b). Moreover, while this drive is
all-encompassing at the moment, it is also depicted as fleeting as people easily fall in
and out of love without apparent reason (Schalkwyk, 2018).
Taking a closer look at the adverse outcomes associated with idealization, Shakespeare’s
courtships are plagued with acts of impulsivity and attempts to possess an irreplaceable
beloved (Schalkwyk, 2018). As unmanaged passion overcomes characters with blindness
and obsession, desire dictates what is observed, as seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
“love looks not with the eyes but with the mind” (Shakespeare, 2014, p. 281). The
blindness here is not a recognition of preexisting value but a bestowal of value upon
the beloved without conscious direction from the lover (Schalkwyk, 2018). Since no
22 D. BERMAN

objective standard exists for love and beauty, it is impossible to separate true love
from the unmoored. Complicating this are the cultural standards of beauty that influ-
ence the individual, further pushing the entire experience into the
incomprehensible.
Exploring the negative implications of love’s blindness, the rage and jealous anger expe-
rienced by Caliban in The Tempest exemplifies how desire and beauty can inspire violence.
Caliban, not so subtly described as less than human, embodies an obsessive desire that
can threaten ordered society, the institution of marriage, and the host of the desire
(Wiebracht, 2016). Perhaps the most jarring example of the harm associated with idealized
desire is the attempted rape of Florida in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Here the actual
consequences of the attempt to realize a fantasy are laid bare, as self-defeating idealization
destroys the lover, the beloved, the fantasy, and the prompting desire (Schalkwyk, 2018).
Shakespeare also focuses on beauty’s role in the manifestation of destructive desires.
While it is seen as a problematic appraisal rather than a purely one-sided evil, beauty’s
potential as a danger is repeatedly utilized to create tension and motivation within
his plays. For example, in Othello, Iago, who is struck by Desdemona’s beauty, is driven
to destroy his unattainable desire by manipulating Othello into murdering his wife
(Singer, 2009b). However, for all its power of influence, beauty, much like desire, is
unstable and subjective. Poking fun at the extent to which people overestimate a
beloved’s beauty, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 describes his mistress whose “eyes are
nothing like the sun” (Singer, 2009b). Moreover, while he is aware of the overvaluing
of a beloved, he admits he is powerless to overcome his carnal desires for his mistress.
Speaking about the power love has over people, Shakespeare noted how it was, in
its extreme manifestations, indistinguishable from madness. Finding a voice in As You
Like It, Orlando declares, “love is merely a madness, and I tell you, deserves as well
a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished
and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too”
(Shakespeare, 2014, p. 627). The theme of madness also appears in Romeo and Juliet,
““Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!” (Shakespeare, 2014, p. 253), and is
seen in how their deaths are ultimately caused by accident, mirroring the chaotic
nature of madness (Schalkwyk, 2018). This relationship between love and madness
receives considerable attention in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Shakespeare, 2014, p. 297)

Speaking about the manipulative power of idealization and desire, Shakespeare warns
about how desire appears to infect reason itself with a kind of madness (Schalkwyk, 2018).

Temporality
As evidenced by his writing, Shakespeare was acutely aware of time’s role in the per-
ception and manifestation of love. In Troilus and Cressida, an example of time’s
 The Journal of Psychology 23

influence on love is discussed through playing ‘hard to get’, where extending the
duration of courtship can increase the perceived value of the beloved. As Schalkwyk
(2018) points out, this notion also appears between Ferdinand and Miranda in The
Tempest, “this swift business, I must uneasy make, lest too light winning, make the
prize light” (Shakespeare, 2014. 1141). The act of extending the period of courtship
does raise questions if either party does, in fact, properly love the other and is perhaps
best understood as an effective way to differentiate desire from love (Schalkwyk, 2018).
That said, the tactic runs counter to the notion of giving oneself unconditionally,
where true love is expressed by promising future love to the beloved, which is, par-
adoxically, something we have little control over (Schalkwyk, 2018). From a behavioral
and emotional perspective, love can also transform people into children, as seen in
Romeo & Juliet, Othello, and other plays where characters stricken by love lose their
impulse control and rational thinking (Astington, 2008).

Cross Dressing
Having numerous implications for the idea of love and its practice are the five instances
of cross-dressing in Shakespeare’s plays. This theatrical tool reveals the blindness of
love, where the imagination constructs a vision of the beloved that does not correspond
to the beloved in actuality (Quincy, 2009). Interestingly, the cross-dressing elements
also would have exposed audiences to female and male friendships, where women
were seen as having the capacity and constancy to be friends, something Augustine,
Aristotle, and Plato all thought was impossible (Schalkwyk, 2018). Theatrically this
tactic allowed for an easy way to resolve the tensions inherent in stories of love, where
the real identity of the disguised person is revealed (Wiebracht, 2016).

Love as a Positive
While most of Shakespeare’s handling of love is centered around its destructive capac-
ities, he also explores love’s positive qualities of togetherness, happiness, social bond,
and an association with the eternal. Some of these concepts are explored between the
two lovers in his Troilus and Cressida, where they discuss the nature of love, asking
what it means to love someone or something (Singer, 2009b). There is also an exam-
ination, in Antony and Cleopatra, of the notion of love as a negotiation, where Antony
is caught between two worlds (Shakespeare, 2014). Finally, Shakespeare provides exam-
ples of love moving toward stability, as many comedies end in a marriage, where love’s
promise is realized. However, consistent with the complexity of love, many marriages
are still threatened by suspicion, jealousy, and adultery (Wiebracht, 2016, p. 249).

Action
Like other philosophers of love, Shakespeare foregrounds the importance of action in
the definition of love, where it cannot be reduced to an emotion (Nordlund, 2007).
Some definitional properties of love for him included fidelity and constancy, both
found in action. Shakespeare might be drawing attention to this when he pokes fun
at bad love poetry, where words fail to capture the experience, and only action can
truly represent love (Singer, 2009b). Shakespeare’s dedication to the concept of love
24 D. BERMAN

being tied to action is also found in his wordplay in Twelfth Night when Viola asks,
“was this not love indeed” and as Schalkwyk (2018) elaborated, “in-deed” (p. 49).
Nevertheless, since there is no direct access to other people’s minds, a concept well-worn
in psychology (James, 1892; Watson, 1913), we are left to observe love as an action.

Love as Religion
While religion was hardly a significant concern in Shakespearean plays, he uses reli-
gious language to highlight the otherworldly nature of love. In Romeo and Juliet, their
love and deaths have been interpreted as a sacrifice alluding to Christ, bringing their
fellow citizen’s hatred to a close (Singer, 2009b). Juliet, embodying divine agape, echoes
the Christian notion of God’s boundless love, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,/
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,/The more I have, for both are infinite”
(Shakespeare, 2014, p. 255). While Romeo is cast as eros, repeatedly thwarted by his
impulsive nature, he fails to ascend to Juliet and is incapable of bringing her down
(Singer, 2009b). He makes use of heavenly imagery when describing them as star-crossed
lovers, where their fates have been drawn. Elevating love in this manner suggests that
love can be beyond our control and partakes in forces we do not understand, which
is consistent with Christian agape.

Audiences
As mentioned, a complicating factor in Shakespeare’s analysis is how the demands of
his medium must have influenced his decisions of what to include in his plays. Being
a dramatist, he needed to focus on the conflict and action of social relations and love
to maintain the attention of the play-goers. This means that he was writing for the
here and now, as people primarily focus on their immediate enjoyment when they
attend performances (Singer, 2009b). Instead, in his many marriages (Macbeth, King
Lear, Hamlet, Othello), we see bickering, conflict, animosity, power plays, and plotting
are familiar, rather than the exception (Singer, 2009b).
Additionally, the plays were written so that the audience was bestowed an extraor-
dinary capacity to observe much of the subterfuge the characters were engaged in.
Audiences were also assumed to know that love could evoke disturbing emotions while
instinctively knowing which character was best suited for whom (Quincy, 2009). An
example of this dynamic between the playwright and the audience is on display when
a wife poses as a mistress. This trick, used in Measure for Measure and Alls Well That
Ends Well, would have the audience in on the ‘joke’ where they could be shocked and
yet resolved as adultery was not actually being committed. Plot-wise, it also allowed
tensions to be quickly resolved or reconciled as the couple could recommit themselves
(Wiebracht, 2016). It also shows the fickle and sometimes healing nature of love.

Patriarchy
While Shakespeare included female characters who broke with traditional roles, they
were also punished for their intransigence. In the Taming of the Shrew, the strong-willed
Katherine is trained like an animal. While in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s rebellion against
nature through unsexing herself is punished as she is stricken by despair, leading to
 The Journal of Psychology 25

her suicide (Merchant, 1966). In contrast, the idealistic notion of a submissive female,
who was modest and virtuous, was best suited to be a good wife (Singer, 2009b).
Overall, his female characters embody differences in character, virtue, intelligence,
willfulness, cunning, emotionality, and competence, and yet, they are most often found
in support roles (Singer, 2009b). It is interesting that in comedies, men are sometimes
cast as “volatile, unreliable, narcissistic, belligerently competitive” (Schalkwyk, 2018, p.
49), while women are “reliable, consistent, compassionate supportive and long-suffering
(Schalkwyk, 2018, p. 49). This amounts to a considerable loss in the potential for
literature exploring women’s capacities. We are, however, reminded of the world
Shakespeare inhabits when we are exposed to men discussing their desires to rape
and sexually exploit the rival’s women as if they were objects to possess and exploit
in Romeo and Juliet (Schalkwyk, 2018).
To summarize, Shakespeare can be credited with showing how love, in all its com-
plexities, can and has been experienced. While there is an overrepresentation of the
dramatic elements of love due to his objectives as a playwright, he nonetheless is true
to the overwhelming complexity of the experience. He also provides an essential record
of the imminent experience of love’s manifestation. Whether that be violence, stability,
idealization, madness, or otherworldly., Shakespeare does not dissect love from afar
but intimately and subjectively. Moreover, while Shakespeare omitted an overarching
theory of love, he still contributed to establishing it as the quintessential human
experience.

Modern
Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer explored the nature of love during the
rise of industrialization. Having developed an innovative metaphysics, Schopenhauer
believed he was uniquely positioned to properly understand the nature of love as a
grand manipulation (Ellis, 2017; Time, 2007). However, it should be noted that since he
held that friendship and passion were essentially irreconcilable, his theorizing lacked
insight into what we would consider a typical loving relationship that consists of affec-
tion, passion, and friendship. Instead, his theory of love lacked practical application and
was informed by his jarring misogyny, proto-evolutionary ideas circulating at the time,
and his understanding of Eastern religious beliefs. Consistent with his profound pessi-
mism, love was described as an illusion orchestrated by an anthropomorphized ‘human
species’ that sought to propagate the human race above all other concerns. Bestowed
with the supernatural ability to manipulate individual minds, the ‘human species’ also
had the capacity to foresee future generations (Woods, 2021). Largely unaware of this
external influence, humans were depicted as pawns in a cosmic battle for the supremacy
of species (Atwell, 1997; Woods, 2021). Much of his thinking on sexual love and its
tensions with friendship can be found in his essay, The Metaphysics of Sexual Love,
where friendship is selfless and compassionate, while passion is an egoistic impulse, and
an illusion leading to personal ruin (Ellis, 2017). Complicating this summary is how
Schopenhauer was at times inconsistent with his definitions and was in the habit of
making grand declarations only to qualify them soon after (Singer, 2009c).
26 D. BERMAN

Passion
Given this framework of an interested, active, and nearly omniscient concept of the
‘human species’ orchestrating events, we can now turn to Schopenhauer’s troubled
understanding of love, which he dubbed the malevolent demon. In general, passion
was considered an individual’s phenomenological experience of the species’ will-to-
life running through them. However, this lustful impulse is not experienced as a
foreign influence but as a personal desire to attain a person of their choosing. The
illusion of choice was thought to be maintained until the moment after the sex act,
where their overestimations of pleasure and the beloved’s intrinsic value became
apparent (Ellis, 2017; Janaway, 2015; Singer, 2009c). Schopenhauer quantified the
illusion by stating that the more intense the impulse, the greater the illusion, and
the greater the remorse (Milligan, 2011). This characterizes love as rife with mis-
judgments, a subversion of free will, and the false conviction that the beloved is
irreplaceable (Janaway, 2015). Schopenhauer believed a period of disillusionment and
misery would follow as people came to terms with their limited freedom (Ellis, 2017;
Milligan, 2011). This undermining of the will made much sense to Schopenhauer
since he thought no one would freely choose to have children without the illusion
(Woods, 2021).
From the perspective of the human species, the manipulation of couples through
sexual impulses was not to reproduce but to give birth to an ideal type of person
who could best carry on the species. While somewhat vague, Schopenhauer argued
this meant avoiding extreme characteristics, e.g., weight, height, etc., so that only
optimal characteristics for survival were propagated (Ellis, 2017; Singer, 2009c). The
mechanism for the desirable characteristics was the will-to-life manipulating people of
different characteristics to fall in love. An example Schopenhauer provides is how a
tall woman and a short man can produce a child of optimal height. This
proto-evolutionary thinking also explains to Schopenhauer why opposites are attracted
and the perception of irreplaceable lovers (Atwell, 1997; Singer, 2009c; Woods, 2021).
Nevertheless, it is not the opposites that attract but the will-to-life pushing specific
people together. Pessimistically, Schopenhauer theorized that the cause of the shame
associated with sex did not stem from social practices but a vague awareness of the
will-to-life and the pending misery of countless future generations (Singer, 2009c).
Ultimately this led Schopenhauer to conclude it would be better if no one ever had
sex and the human race was left to die out (Woods, 2021).
Connected to this theorizing of sexual love, Schopenhauer’s views on pederasty
provide insight into his thinking as well as an example of his general inconsistencies.
First, believing that since it has been practiced throughout history, it could not be
considered unnatural, he also wrote that pederastic lust could be a valuable mechanism
to remove unsuitable males from fathering the subsequent generations (Woods, 2021).
Second, Schopenhauer, who mistakenly thought this impulse emerged in later life,
thought that the practice could benefit men who are too old to produce while also
addressing younger men’s impulses who were too young to have children (Singer,
2009c). Confusingly, it is difficult to reconcile his stance that sex acts that do not
facilitate procreation, like pederasty and masturbation, are more harmful since they
affirm the lust impulse for its own sake, ignoring the misery of the next generation
(Time, 2007).
 The Journal of Psychology 27

Agape
In contrast to eros, friendship was characterized as compassionate, self-sacrificing, and
generous (Ellis, 2017). Additionally, Schopenhauer argued that friendship annihilated
the distinction between the self and all other life, where compassion for all others,
through overcoming the will-to-life, led to egoless salvation (Time, 2007; Woods, 2021).
Unfortunately, Schopenhauer depicted friendship and passion as conflicting and might
have inadvertently highlighted the importance of friendship within relationships since
sex was incapable of being a foundation on which to build one (Singer, 2009c; Time,
2007; Woods, 2021). In his characteristically bleak interpretation of life, he argued
how death becomes a welcome end to this ongoing struggle, as we are returned to
nature at the expense of our ego (Singer, 2009c).

Marriage
While marriage received little attention from Schopenhauer, we can, by following his
thinking, assume that most marriages consist of two people suffering from profound
disillusionment caused by unrealistic expectations. One would assume this would have
considerable implications for child rearing, but Schopenhauer promoted it as an insti-
tution chiefly that offered security for the next generation (Singer, 2009c). Schopenhauer
considered the possibility of a happy marriage consisting of passion and friendship
exceedingly unlikely but also noted that couples had a chance to embrace friendship
once passion dissipated in later life (Singer, 2009c; Time, 2007). In an apparent con-
tradiction, Schopenhauer thought polygamy could offer an equal opportunity for women
to have children, yet he failed to remark on the myriad of problems that practice can
cause or how this would contribute to the suffering of the following generations
(Singer, 2009c).

Misogyny
As mentioned, it is not easy to consider any of Schopenhauer’s thoughts on love
without considering his misogyny. Influencing what types of relationships are even
possible, he believed women were short-sighted, trifling, weak, rarely matured past
young adulthood, and best suited for domestic work (Atwell, 1997). His own words
disparage what he believed was the inferior sex, where only a man who is suffering
an illusion could be attracted to “under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race” (Schopenhauer, 2015, p. 551). Further, he also thought that pregnant
women embodied the guilt of all human suffering and the shame of facilitating the
suffering of the next generation (Time, 2007). While shame is not restricted to women,
it is implicit in Schopenhauer’s work that they are more likely to suffer from it.
To summarize, it is inarguable that Schopenhauer’s scholarship on sexual love is
problematic. As they promoted ideas that were potentially damaging to those striving
for a healthy sex life while also reinforcing misogynist beliefs. That said, he left a
body of innovative work that foreshadowed some of the developments in evolutionary
theory and greatly influenced future mental health pioneers, including Sigmund Freud.
While his pessimism is hard to dismiss and might promote negative thinking toward
the future, his emphasis on friendship as a salvation could provide positive insight for
people. The notion that all people will one day return to our connectedness with one
28 D. BERMAN

another is of possible heightened value in our siloed, isolated world of technology,

where neoliberal branding efforts mediate our relationships.

Assertions Corroborated by Psychological Research

Similar to Schopenhauer, the discipline of Psychology has long been interested in
investigating the relationships between sex, shame, and agency. However, beyond Freud’s
thinking that shame and sex played a significant role in human behaviors, the more
recent scholarship has been more circumspect, with the recent efforts to construct
sexual shame inventories speaking to this disciplinary interest; some of these include
the Kyle Inventory of sexual Shame (Kyle, 2013), the Male Sexual Shame Scale (Gordon,
2018), and the Sexual Shame Inventory (Seebeck, 2021).
Sexual shame for Schopenhauer was characterized as a ubiquitous experience,
which finds some support in various studies (Mollon, 2005), with psychologists
identifying numerous causes. Two that have gained considerable attention are sexual
abuse and sexual dysfunction (which are themselves interrelated). Pulverman and
Meston (2020) found that women with a history of childhood sexual abuse and
suffering from sexual dysfunction experience considerable shame, while Weiss (2010)
identified how women could experience shame from sexual victimization leading
them not to report the abuse. Similarly, Henry and Powell (2015) explored shame
and sex and how modern technologies facilitate it. Given the negative impacts,
shame can be associated with slut shaming has also been explored in both the
workplace and post-secondary education institutions (Hackman et al., 2017;
Hess, 2016).
Schopenhauer was also keen to explain how the counterintuitive phenomenon of
opposites attracting was due to his metaphysics of love. The phenomenon of people
with different personality profiles finding mutual attraction has been corroborated
by the work of Dyer and Horowitz (1997), yet they also found it depended upon
the characteristics at play, with dominant and submissive partners mixing well, with
the opposite being less the case. Evolutionary psychologists have also studied the
phenomenon, finding that, in some cases, opposites can attract (Maisonneuve
et al., 2021).
Schopenhauer discussed the notion that sexual desire was a temporary state, and
here again, we find psychological backing for this. Studies of long-term relationships
commonly show that sex drives and sex satisfaction decrease over time (Ellison, 2002;
Mark & Lasslo, 2018). However, rather than welcoming the decrease in sex as the first
step to salvation, psychologists recognize that this decline can lead to relationship
strife and general unhappiness.
Finally, while not the originator of this line of thinking, Schopenhauer’s notion of
the reason being in tension with sexual impulses has been explored by some cognitive
psychologists linking compulsive sexual behavior with impulse control disorder (Walton
& Bhullar, 2018). The connection was also considered in relation to executive control
and the risky behavior of young adults (Reynolds et al., 2019). Unfortunately, this
problem, which appears in both Plato’s and Aristotle’s work, has proved intractable as
the debates continue on the likelihood of maintaining a passionate relationship within
a long-term relationship.
 The Journal of Psychology 29

Soren Kierkegaard 1813-1855

The Dutch philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who contributed
to the modern understanding of anxiety, held a lifelong fascination with the nature
of love. This interest is evident across his short academic career, with Either/Or in
1843 and Works of Love in 1847 possessing the most comprehensive discussions on
the subject, again noting the problems of translating the original works into English.
While Kierkegaard typically deployed Socrates’ indirect method of inquiry when
approaching his topics of interest, his love-focused scholarship also includes more
direct inquiries into how a person can love well (Bowen, 2021; Ferreira, 2013). While
sometimes branded as a proto-existentialist for his focus on the individual, human
agency, and personal meaning, Kierkegaard’s broad interests have him evade any
straightforward categorization.

Personal Motivation
Including the personal details of scholars as direct motivation for their academic
interests is rife with problems. However, here, Kierkegaard’s self-destructive experiences
with a failed engagement with Regina Olson when he was writing about the nature
of love. As seen in letters to Regina, Kierkegaard pleads his way out of the relationship
by highlighting his melancholy, dedication to his work (as a calling from God), and
fears that their passion will not survive marriage (Bowen, 2021). With these themes
appearing in his academic corpus Kierkegaard appeared to be searching for answers.
The thrust of this attempt to understand love is found in his reformulation of its
structure by merging the traditional division between eros vs. friendship into the
concept of preferential love while holding it in tension with the concept of
non-preferential love, or agape, as discussed further below (Ferreira, 2013).

Influences
The influences on Kierkegaard’s theorizing of love are not exclusively personal. In
his youth, he was exposed to William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, and Johann Wolfgang
Von Goethe while studying the courtly love of the twelfth century (Brümmer &
Mmer, 1993; Søltoft, 2017). His studies also included the German Romantics, who
promoted the notion that there was only one true love for each individual. This
placed love outside the purview of logic in what amounted to a direct challenge to
Enlightenment thinking. A challenge Kierkegaard likewise embraced as he similarly
grounded love in passion, impulses, feelings, and imagination. While some of his
theorizing on love might sound familiar to modern psychologists, he distances himself
from discipline when he places the Christian God at the center of his theory of love
(Søltoft, 2017). Additionally, Kierkegaard likely found inspiration from the expansive
nature of St. Francis of Assisi’s (1181-1226) love, both secular and universal, empha-
sizing action and performance (Kona, 2012). Additionally, it is also possible
Kierkegaard had been exposed to the work of some Christian mystics, including
Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), who had dismissed the distinction between
loving God and neighbor as loving one’s neighbor was a necessary practice in loving
God (Beattie, 2013).
30 D. BERMAN

Fragments of Love
Adding to the mystery and the confusion over his corpus, Kierkegaard used pseud-
onyms in many of his earlier works only to change them or express regret that he
had not used his proper name (Bowen, 2021). This, combined with the wide use of
irony, has led to some disagreement about how his profile of love is constituted (Singer,
2009c). It also fostered critiques from such luminaries as Theodor Adorno and Martin
Buber, who thought Kierkegaard had constructed a concept of love that was other-
worldly and ignored how lives are lived (Krishek, 2009). Putting this confusion aside,
it is possible to say that Kierkegaard’s love scholarship begins with a focus on erotic
love and seduction and generally moves toward love as a duty, religious love, and
salvation (Søltoft, 2017).
Despite some inconsistencies with his definitions, Kierkegaard is unwavering in his
valuation of love, regarding it as a definitional aspect of human life, where “to love
people is the only thing worth living for, and without this love, you are not really
living” (Kierkegaard, 1847/2001, p. 375). For Kierkegaard, love was not only universally
possessed but, paradoxically, also universally yearned for (Ferreira, 2013). He was also
unyielding in connecting this to God, where God not only bestowed the gift of love
to all people but was also considered to love itself.
Unfortunately, like many of his predecessors and intellectual descendants, he also
possessed a narrow view of women. While he promoted the importance of dedication
to one another, he seems to have excluded women from experiencing love in all its
capacity by claiming women could not achieve a genuine ethical self, but this appears
contradicted by some of his thoughts on marriage as a mutual and equal commitment
(Ferreira, 2001; 2013).

Faith
Given the dominant influence faith played in his life and writing, it warrants consid-
ering how it impacted his theory of love. First, he understood love as a universal gift
God bestowed upon all creation. For Kierkegaard, this meant God loved each individual
first, and it is through this experience that humans gain the capacity to understand
what love is and, in turn, be able to love others (Ferreira, 2001; 2013; Søltoft, 2017).
While the church did not endorse his theory of love, he effectively transformed the
romantic notion of love into a Christian one (Søltoft, 2017). Of note here is how the
original love gifted people contains an erotic passion, which is sanctified because it
originates in God. However, for this paper, it is of more interest how his integration
of erotic love into longer-term relationships establishes a holistic theory of love rather
than reflections on the divine. It is the unification into one concept of love, which
became a major project for Kierkegaard (Ferreira, 2001).

Preferential Love, Non-Preferential Love, and Marriage

Kierkegaard bridged the traditional divide between friendship and passion by arguing
that they both belonged to preferential love. Experientially, preferential love is primarily
depicted as an impulse or drive focused on a particular target, either a beloved or
friend, where feelings and emotions influence behavior. Kierkegaard thought this
expansive notion encompassed most relationships, even those traditionally considered
 The Journal of Psychology 31

unconditional, including the parental-child dyad. This reformulation of passion and

friendship confronts traditional categories of love, and while Kierkegaard’s writings do
not always bring clarity to the matter, he was unwavering in its potentialities, “erotic
love is undeniably life’s most beautiful happiness” (Kierkegaard, 2013, p. 267).
Because this drive is an extension of a personal desire, Kierkegaard thought it was
also partially egoistic, vulnerable to sparking jealousy, and, similarly to Aristotle’s
pleasure and utility friendships, possess an expectation of reciprocity (Krishek, 2009;
Smith, 2007). That said, preferential love, or passion, generally avoids the overly neg-
ative profile typical of other theories of love. In another divergence, he did not char-
acterize it primarily as a justification for enduring the hardships of procreation (Ferreira,
2001). Lastly, Kierkegaard, perhaps untenably, believed that preferential love was mainly
focused on the qualities of the beloved or friend and not the person’s essence, and
since people change over time, preferential love is inherently unstable (Smith, 2007).
Regarding non-preferential love, Kierkegaard was inspired by and took quite seriously
the command found in the bible to love thy neighbor (Gupta, 2005). For Kierkegaard,
this was exemplified by a non-impulsive duty to care for and love everyone equally.
This type of unidirectional love was void of any expectation of reciprocity, and while
it is a call for equality, it does not assume everyone needs to be treated the same, as
people have different needs and vulnerabilities. The dividing line between the two
loves is also largely in concert with the psychological categories of cognitive
(non-preferential love) and emotion/impulse (preferential love). Ultimately, Kierkegaard
promoted making neighborly love the foundation for preserving preferential love, which
leads us to Kierkegaard’s stance on how marriage was best practiced (Ferreira, 2013).
For Kierkegaard, marriage was the exemplar of how preferential love could be united
with non-preferential love. Arguing that all people seek to prolong love, regardless of
the type, marriage is a way to transform fleeting passion into eternal love through a
lifelong commitment or a leap of faith (Singer, 2009c; Venkataraman, 2017). This leap
includes giving the self for all eternity while fully aware that both will die someday
(Søltoft, 2017). Moreover, since “all falling in love is a wonder” (Kierkegaard, 2013,
p. 121), he believed that not only was the leap necessary but also made arranged
marriages a farce (Søltoft, 2017). Kierkegaard believed this commitment did not abolish
passionate or erotic love but persevered it by connecting it to God’s eternal love
(Ferreira, 2013). This was to be practiced by maintaining passion and preference for
the beloved and treating them with the same respect that brotherly love demands. The
practice includes never taking advantage or objectifying the beloved while maintaining
commitment. Kierkegaard thought marriages generally strengthened over time as the
bond between lovers developed by the constant mutual giving away of the self (Bowen,
2021). In connection to Aristotle’s golden mean, Kierkegaard argued that marriage
needed to have an equilibrium between both types of love, which is connected to
reciprocal giving and taking. The establishment of a secure relationship through these
practices allowed for the establishment of the family, as it works to reinforce and
produce new loving relationships (Singer, 2009c). The practical application of this
theorizing is found in grounding preferential love in brotherly love, where spouses
value and respect each other for their immutable essence rather than their particular
collection of transitory qualities. The commitment was also to see people through the
inevitable challenges of marriage since it was a pact with the beloved and God (Singer,
32 D. BERMAN

2009c). We can see that although Kierkegaard was criticized for constructing an oth-
erworldly theory of love, it still possesses some utility for modern relationships.

Paradox
One concept that provides insight into the nature of love is how Kierkegaard under-
stood it as a paradox. This is born out of how love is a primarily hidden experience
yet can be observed through our actions. Complicating this fact is how identifying
love through behaviors is prone to interpretation errors, a concern not alien to the
practice of psychology (Ferreira, 2001). However, the paradoxical nature of love goes
further. It is individualistic, deeply personal, and subjective, yet universal and ubiqui-
tous (Ferreira, 2001). Love is also something given, desired, received, and already
possessed. It is both passive and active, associated with conviction and yet being fooled.
Defying the definition, it is neither knowledge nor an act of will. Biblically, a gift
from God, yet an infinite debt (Ferreira, 2013; Gupta, 2005). Kierkegaard made his
thoughts on this paradox clear, “What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than
the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it
that makes a person unwavering, more unwavering than a rock; what is it that makes
him soft, softer than wax?—It is love!” (Kierkegaard, 1992, p. 55).
Kierkegaard’s love amounts to a reconciliation of eros and agape while grounding
them in his religious beliefs. He believes this move calls for universal respect and
caring while not discounting the value of romantic love. Interestingly, while familial
love is important, he does not focus on discussing love as a coercive force to have
children. While love might harbor many paradoxes, it is first understood to be good
in itself; again, it is unfortunate that he is yet another thinker who discounts women’s
ability to establish a genuine self and thus rob them of experiencing love’s plenitude.

Assertions Corroborated by Psychological Research

Psychologically speaking, there should be little surprise that a thinker so focused on
individual experiences should find commonalities with the modern discipline. He
predated efforts by academics to understand love as a constellation of associated con-
cepts (Fehr, 2006) or constituted by several related components (Sternberg’s 1986
Triangular theory). Also, his expansive theory of love predates later social scientists
on how love was understood as a practice/behavior (Kierkegaard, 1843/2004; Ferreira,
2013), an emotion (Gonzaga et al., 2001), or a cognitive response (Fehr et al., 2009).
While vague at times, his high appraisal of love is echoed in subsequent research
tying love to positive emotions and healthy physical outcomes (Traupmann & Hatfield,
1981; Singh & Dhingra, 2014). Additionally, as mentioned, if we can assume there is
at least some connection between love and relationships, there is considerable research
associating stable marriages and relationships with better health outcomes (Diener
et al., 2000; Dush & Amato, 2005; Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001; Kim & McKenry,
2002; Viejo et al., 2015).
In line with his thinking that marriage needed to be grounded in God, religious-based
marriages have been found to enjoy higher satisfaction and longevity, but this requires
further study to determine if this is a product of a better result or unequal power
dynamics (Karimi et al., 2019; Tuttle & Davis, 2015; Vaaler et al., 2009). There is also
 The Journal of Psychology 33

a body of evidence showing how people’s personality changes over time and how
couples recognize this as a significant cause of divorce, something Kierkegaard thought
the leap of faith could overcome (Amato & Previti, 2003; Helson et al., 2002; Roberts
& Mroczek, 2008).

Information Age
Bell Hooks (1952-2021)
Including bell hooks (1952-2021) among the theorists of love introduces a badly needed
female voice to this history of philosophical love. It also helps illuminates how our
collective past is one where love’s identity is heavily intertwined with historical sexism,
where women, more often than not, are not seen as equal partners. hooks brings with
her novel perspectives the standpoint of an activist, feminist, cultural critic, and pro-
fessor of English literature. Importantly, hooks’ holistic theorizing on how to adopt a
healthy approach to love meets people where they live their everyday lives. While
hooks incorporates traditional understandings of love into her theorizing, she is careful
to contextualize how they manifest within a society still plagued by practices of
oppression and domination. hooks was born in 1952 in the small town of Hopkinsville,
Kentucky, where she, as an African American, endured the hardships and pain of a
segregated society. Unfortunately, hooks’ home life, due to her mercurial father, pro-
vided little refuge from her worldly troubles. Instead, he, who at first praised her love
of reading, later turned to mock the interest and taunted her with the likelihood it
would lead to madness (hooks, 2000). This experience with a parent who retracted
their love and support provided her with an intellectual curiosity to understand love’s
apparent unstable nature while at the same time leaving her with a personal void she
would struggle to fill for the rest of her life.
Far from experiencing madness, hooks’ love of reading eventually led her to degrees
from Stanford and Madison and a Ph.D. from the University of California. While love
was not immediately the focus of her studies, it soon dominated her career as a pro-
fessor and activist. hooks would realize love as the quintessential human experience,
where it was necessary for emotional, psychological, and physical health (Vega-González,
2009). However, for hooks, once love was realized, it possessed the potential to tran-
scend the individual, bridge gaps between people, and heal historical wounds while
promoting justice. These themes found voice in her trilogy of love, Salvation, All About
Love, and Communion, her children’s books, Happy to Be Nappy (1999) and Homemade
Love (2002), as well in her collection of poetry, When Angels Speak of Love (2007).
As an activist, hooks believed there is a desire in America, across sex, gender, race,
and socioeconomic status, to put an end to sexism, homophobia, imperialism, exploita-
tion, and racism—but recognized that without love, none of these were attainable
(Glass, 2009).

Influences
hooks, who made a career of challenging intellectual boundaries, called upon many
traditions for inspiration, including theological, Buddhist, psychological, literary, and
34 D. BERMAN

Western philosophy. Possessing such a breadth would prove instrumental in developing

a theory that bypassed entrenched categorical definitions while fostering a broad con-
ceptualization of love’s nature and how it could be best practiced. hooks’ granular
understanding of love was informed by Eric Fromm’s stance from The Art of Loving
(2000), where he defines love as an informed action grounded in respect, care, knowl-
edge, and responsibility (Davidson & Yancy, 2009). As highlighted by Vega-González
(2009), she also acknowledged psychiatrist Scott Peck’s (2002) The Road Less Traveled
work, where love was understood as “the will to extend one’s self to nurture one’s
own or another’s spiritual growth” (p. 81). She felt these ideas were particularly appli-
cable to women who, due to historical sexism, must first establish a healthy self-concept
and self-acceptance to establish self-love (Davidson & Yancy, 2009). It is no coincidence
that hooks, who emphasized love as a practice, found deep kinship with Martin Luther
King and his struggle for universal justice through the embodiment of the biblical
command to love thy neighbor. hooks’ adoption of this and his approach to nonviolent
activism led to the development of her “love ethic”, which transformed love into a
political methodology and is discussed in more detail below (Glass, 2009; hooks, 2000).
Because of the entanglements between her theorizing and activism, it is informative
to consider some of her cultural criticisms and the associated problems her theory of
love intended to address.

Culture of Unlove
hooks believed that contemporary American society was plagued by racism, patriarchy,
homophobia, and a form of virulent capitalism, all of which contributed to a dehu-
manizing culture of domination. She claimed mass media perpetuated these through
a near-ubiquitous use of violence that intensified preexisting cynicism, doubt, consum-
erism, and despair “cynicism is the greatest barrier to love. It is rooted in doubt and
despair. Fear intensifies our doubt. It paralyzes" (hooks, 2000, p. 219). Even more
troubling, it systematically defined Black people as threats while presenting violence
as a viable way to enact justice. The social paralyzation she identifies leads people to
pull away from dissimilar people while reinforcing the impulse toward the security
found in isolation (hooks, 2000). Materially, this manifests in the rise of gated com-
munities and personal security considerations and creates support for gun-friendly
legislation. All of these reactions are consistent capitalist ideologies, which elevate the
value of private property over people, as anxiety shuts people off from one another.
hooks inferred that since capitalism reinforces feelings of inadequacy, it drives people
to consume rather than addressing the root causes for the lack of personal meaning.
In this environment, the type of love that can dissolve differences and challenges fear
becomes an enemy to the status quo (hooks, 2000).
One particular institution hooks was keen to criticize, the nuclear family, where
rather than promoting care and compassion, it reinforced authoritarianism and
alienation while undermining connections to the community by treating extended
families with suspicion (hooks, 2000). The nuclear family was also thought to
bolster the importance of private property while promoting the consumption of
goods that could otherwise be shared. These practices only contribute to trends
of isolation and distancing the self from the wider community (hooks, 2000). For
 The Journal of Psychology 35

many of these nuclear families, children experience love strictly as a good feeling
and understand it as a state where needs and wants are met. Children then mirror
these experiences by attempting to practice love by pleasing others and through
physical performances (hugs, kissing, being sweet) (hooks, 2000). hooks believes
all these expressions are important, but more is needed to represent love in all
its complexity. Echoing her upbringing, she thought that children exposed to an
unstable environment, where love, isolation, and abuse were all present, could
establish generational trauma as family members adopt dysfunctional ways of
interacting (hooks, 2000).
The quest for love is seen everywhere in the capitalistic culture, but rather than
serious discussions of what it is or how it is best-practiced hooks details how it is
predominantly idealized as a mystical experience, where people are struck with over-
whelming passion, and the loss of control, which unfortunately can facilitate abuse
since it absolves people of the responsibility of their actions (Biana, 2021; hooks, 2000).
This notion of love as an uncontrollable impulse is associated with a culture obsessed
with sex, sex studies, sex as entertainment, and instructions for every conceivable
proclivity (hooks, 2000). Feeding this obsession, men are socialized toward sexual
satisfaction and performance rather than making meaningful connections. This has
led to a culture of lying with few consequences and has broadly been adopted as an
accepted part of the dynamics of regular dating (hooks, 2000). Further complicating
the formation of caring relationships is how men, more than women, mistake passion
and sex for love. This leads to ill-suited partnerships, lying, as mentioned above, and
relationships of avoidance (hooks, 2000).
Without serious discussions, people are left consuming simple axioms, which
provide the illusion of wisdom but construct a love easily won, inevitably leading
to lower self-esteem when they fail to realize this simplified love (Davidson &
Yancy, 2009). This, in turn, makes self-love more difficult as people conclude they
are not worthy of love. Self-doubt then leads to the construction of false selves,
whom people believe worthy, only to be later confronted with the fact that these
false selves are incapable of satisfying the needs of the true self (hooks, 2000).
These factors trivialize love and perpetuate ignorance rather than the knowledge
necessary to realize its emancipatory potential. Rather than encouraging the trans-
formation of the beloved into our perfect partner. Instead, the individual must
become self-actualized, where unconditional love requires dedication to personal
growth (Davidson & Yancy, 2009).
hooks foregrounded the threat of white supremacy, racism, and patriarchy to her
conception of love (Glass, 2009). As systems of domination, they reinforce inequality,
violence, isolation, and consumerism, while undermining the ability of individuals to
establish self-love, connections with others and the ability to address the concerns of
the wider populace (hooks, 2000). For hooks, patriarchy, in particular, erects barriers
to love by relegating love to a feminized realm of weakness. hooks refutes this mis-
conception by positioning love as a powerful political and personal force that can
overcome entrenched traditions of oppression (Glass, 2009). In this context, hooks
argued, in concert with King and Simon de Bouvier (1908-1986), that love is an act
of bravery and resistance. Furthermore, while love is understood as always potentially
political, it is, at the same time, deeply personal.
36 D. BERMAN

Spiritual
Understanding America is primarily an individualist country, where the hunger for
power and money are guiding principles for many, it still has a high percentage of
people that belong to organized religion (many of which have founding documents
explicitly condemning greed). Unfortunately, these institutions have largely failed to
address the country’s spiritual hunger. At the same time, new faiths promote salvation
through materialism and the prosperity gospel–which frames the poor as having decided
to be poor. Furthering the culture of individualism and isolation is how the church
is one of the most segregated institutions in the entire nation (hooks, 2000). hooks
argues that this is an obstacle to love as it contradicts the Christian doctrine to love
all God’s creations and love thy neighbor. To counter this isolation, she advances a
nonaffiliated spirituality that can establish bonds between dissimilar people, where love
is about the spiritual growth of all (Monahan, 2011). hooks wanted all people, including
the non-religious, to see the spiritual as the unquantifiable animating force that makes
life possible, one that connects us all, and puts everyone on equal ground. (Glass,
2009; hooks, 2000).

Definition
Coming to hooks’ definition of love, she avoided the over-determined notions grounded
in cognition, biology, evolution, or metaphysics by detailing how love could be most
healthfully practiced in everyday life as the love ethic. While she does not omit tra-
ditional notions of romantic, eros, familia, and agape, this ethic was seen as a catalyst
for self-love, justice, the end of domination, and the objectification of people. For
hooks, love is an act of care, commitment, trust, altruism, equality, compassion, and
responsibility (Biana, 2021; Glass, 2009). The love ethic, in particular, was seen as a
movement away from domination and toward partnership, interdependency, the ability
to express emotions openly, and the development of the four Buddhist components of
love benevolence, compassion, joy, and freedom. (Vega-González, 2009). In addition,
hooks identified how to adopt a love ethic, people first needed to practice a love of
self. From the abovementioned definition of Eric Fromm’s approach, where love is an
act of care and respect, hooks wants these practiced toward the self. This is particularly
challenging in contemporary America, where people must overcome the ubiquitous
materialism and competition promoted within the culture (Biana, 2021). For Blacks
and females, this becomes even more difficult. It requires considerable courage and
inner strength to dismiss the bombardment of messages of inadequacy to create the
conditions of self-love and a more expansive love” (Davidson & Yancy, 2009). Instead,
the ongoing practice requires nurturing, sustained commitment, and ongoing engage-
ment (Monahan, 2011).
In this understanding, the institution of marriage is transformed from a private
pact to a bond with the entire community, where it becomes a foundational force for
a more just society (Brosi & hooks, 2012). hooks draws the parallel where self-love
is the foundation for marriage so that each loving bond depends on the other. Rather
than leaving it vulnerable, this interconnectivity only makes the community and broader
society more resilient (Vega-González, 2009). hooks was careful to state that defining
love as a willful act does not undermine the intimacy people can experience. She only
 The Journal of Psychology 37

wants to avoid the erroneous belief that love is an incomprehensible type of magic.
Rather than a noun, which is thought of as an emotion or experience, hooks thinks
people should adopt love as a verb, where love is a decision that leads to empower-
ment, freedom, and liberation “"love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely,
both an intention and an action” (hooks, 2000, p. 4-5). However, we must also take
responsibility for our actions and decisions, even though our culture can lead us astray
(Monahan, 2011). Following this line of thinking, love is also a kind of knowledge; if
we engage in love, we need to learn the needs of others, dislikes, likes, and how to
care for them.
Providing more prescriptive approaches that facilitate the love ethic, hooks suggests
looking into the past for sources of our thoughts of worthlessness and learning how
we acquired these thoughts/feelings. This process can catalyze change but has the
danger of repeatedly describing it (hooks, 2000). Additionally, she promotes adopting
life-affirming thoughts and behaviors, living consciously, thinking critically, and stop-
ping listening to harmful internal and external sources of negativity. Self-assertiveness
is also a path to respecting and standing up for ourselves. Ultimately, hooks wants
people to give themselves the type of love they fantasize about getting from others,
live simply, promote sharing, ignore consumerism, and expand their capacity to love
(hooks, 2000)
To summarize, Love grants the capacity to see the interconnectedness and
interdependent ways people live their lives, which in turn confronts unwarranted
fears of the other (Glass, 2009). hooks thinks a society-wide love ethic would end
the empathy toward many forms of violence and oppression while eventually
leading to public policy that provides freedom for those whose lives are overde-
termined by race, class, and gender (Glass, 2009). hooks believes that for this to
happen, Blacks must forgive Whites, while Whites must divest from white suprem-
acy, confront privilege, and commit to an anti-racist struggle (Glass, 2009).
Moreover, love is understood as the method to enact a nonviolent path toward
liberation and equality (Glass, 2009). hooks even allows for a purposeful failure;
in places where love fails to overcome oppression, it will still provide a path
toward meaningful change (Glass, 2009).

Discussion - Major Themes

Documenting the repeating themes that run through the various texts discloses how the
various thinkers establish consensus or diverge across the history of theorizing about
love. Similarly, identifying novel themes can reflect more significant cultural shifts and
trends. During this examination, the prominence of Christian thought in the Western
discourse on love is evident as its influence spans much of its history. Beyond the
explanatory metaphysics love establishes, with the notion that God is love, it also helped
rationalize the church as the authority on acceptable love practices. Outside of religious
concerns, Schopenhauer’s use of proto-evolutionary concepts, Kierkegaard’s application
of existentialist ideas, and bell hooks’ activism all speak to how the theorizing on love
was partially a product of the time and place these writers were situated in.
Unsurprisingly, the two theologians, Augustine and Kierkegaard, followed the scrip-
tures in originating love in God, where love was God, and God was love. Ontological
38 D. BERMAN

and scientific concerns aside, the implications for how love was practiced were con-
siderable, as God becomes present in each relationship. Moreover, while Kierkegaard
might have been promoting the importance of personal agency, love was still principally
mediated by God. Tracing this Christian influence to the present day, bell hooks (2000)
incorporated the notion that all people have intrinsic value into her love ethic.
Dovetailing with an otherworldly love, sexual shame is a concern for both Augustine
and Kierkegaard with its connection to lust and sin in religious teaching (Clark,
1996). That said, it is Schopenhauer who foregrounds shame as a significant concern
as part of his metaphysics of love, where it is a type of acknowledgment that the
lustful are perpetuating the misery of the human race by prolonging its existence
(Time, 2007). The framing of desire and sexuality as worthy of shame was, unfortu-
nately, common practice and has led to enormous harm over the centuries to people
who would have otherwise enjoyed healthy sex lives. While the proliferation of
sex-positive messages has directly confronted sexual shame, other trends, like the
anonymity provided by social media and the rise of reactionary and regressive ide-
ologies, have facilitated its proliferation.
As mentioned, several scholars failed to apply their thinking about what con-
stitutes a healthy friendship to romantic relationships due to their misogynistic
beliefs. While Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Plato were guilty of this restrictive
thinking, Aristotle, in particular, missed the applicability of his theorizing. Having
devoted considerable thought to the composition of the most rewarding friendships,
he failed to see how these practices applied to relationships between women and
men. This omission speaks to how culturally engrained patriarchal ways of think-
ing were.
Another example of the social and cultural influences on the expression of love is
the historical practice of pederasty. This type of relationship, now categorized as
abhorrent and damaging, was venerated by Plato and Aristotle as a practice that pro-
liferated knowledge and wisdom. Even so, Schopenhauer’s defence of the practice, since
it has been a constant throughout history, reveals the complications of identifying
natural expressions of love and the problem with using longevity as evidence or jus-
tification for customs.
Across the various texts, the philosophers claimed that love should be first under-
stood as a type of action. From Augustine’s notion that love can only be seen in
action, to Shakespeare’s necessity of revealing it through action, to hooks’ argument
that it is better understood as a verb than a noun, understanding love as an action
was widespread. This is not to say they restricted love from being an emotion, but it
was either less vital or verifiable.
Documenting a near consensus among the philosophers, love was depicted as a
dichotomy between an ego-driven desire and selfless compassion. With these ideas
dating as far back as the Socratics, it would later become an essential concept for the
early church. Acknowledging Schopenhauer as the harshest critic of lust, all these
thinkers thought it was a danger to the self and broader society. Shakespeare most
compellingly depicts the enormous implications of lust in his plays, including Antony
and Cleopatra, where it threatens to upset the social order (Singer, 2009b). For hooks,
lust had little to do with real love in how it reflected a vacuous consumeristic culture
(hooks, 2000).
 The Journal of Psychology 39

Finally, the multifaceted nature of love is detailed in the numerous feelings, thoughts,
and concepts mentioned in these works. Supporting the notion that love is hugely
complex, lust is not seen exclusively as one-dimensional, with Kierkegaard exploring
its origins and how it was also a drive toward a closer relationship with God. At the
other end of the spectrum, selfless love included love for romantic partners, the rec-
ognition of the intrinsic value of all other people, and the desire for good to happen
to others for their own sake. Furthermore, the umbrella concept of love includes
biological, cognitive, and behavioral elements. All of this complexity hampered efforts
to establish a succinct definition, where they were either too simplistic to provide any
insight or too complex to provide clarity.

Conclusion
For all these antiquated and conflicting notions of love, some of these ideas are still
relevant to contemporary society. For example, Kierkegaard insightfully identified a
paradox at the heart of how love is expressed, where it requires lovers to promise
their future to one another, something neither has control over. He also noted how
it could not be promised for a specific amount of time but for all eternity, even while
acknowledging that both will die one day. While this is grounded in Christian notions
of eternal life, the observations are relevant for anyone attempting to navigate love’s
confounding nature. They also highlight the paradoxical nature of human existence,
in how a major constitutive force in life cannot be articulated with precision.
Through these readings, it is apparent how some of the best-known theorists of
love for the past 2000 years have held the idea that women are not equal to men. This
challenges any recognizable definition of love that does not adopt the master-slave
dynamic. And while that framework has been largely abandoned, remnants still exist,
as seen with bell hooks’ efforts to confront and transform ideologies of domination.
In parting, these contributions reveal how love can encourage both the destructive and
the compassionate nature of people. Still, when appropriately focused, love can be reve-
latory, bridge gaps in historical divides, and provide a foundation for a just society.
Unfortunately, in the current system of domination, neoliberalism, with its profound
isolation, technological mediation, and meaninglessness outside of economic understand-
ings of identity, love’s negative potentialities are too often exploited. Too many feel inad-
equate, being forced to brand themselves in ways that twist their identity into unrecognizable
doppelgangers, which leads a self-distancing, a lack of community, and unabated con-
sumerism. It is precisely in this time, where the social, ecological, and existential challenges
we face appear insurmountable, that love provides the only viable path forward.

Author Note
David Berman, is a Ph.D. student at York University in Toronto. His research interests include
aging/long-term care, boredom, love, loneliness, and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities.

Funding
The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.
40 D. BERMAN

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