The human understanding of romantic love has two prominent necessities. We expect love to be a spontaneous infatuation and a never-ending journey at the same time. However, our requisite expectations of love and the fairy-tale like concept we hope love to be creates an indefatigable contradiction according to Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard states the absurdity and the impossibility of love being both immediate and eternal by examining separately each of their necessities and dissecting the concepts of passion and commitment in love. Whilst passion serves love to be spontaneous and exciting, commitment promises love to be perpetual. According to Kierkegaard the two differentiating notions cannot (successfully) co-exist in one romantic relationship and hence we are unable to reach the quintessential image of love we so often imagine. In this essay I will examine the state of love we aspire to have by analyzing eternal and immediate love, explaining Kierkegaard’s contradiction as to why such a concept is unfeasible through the rebuttal of passion and commitment and lastly prove the actuality of Kierkegaard’s claim.
We define love as an attitude of ours towards certain qualities of the beloved. True romantic love is expected to be an emotion we abruptly surrender to as well as an emotion we’ll forever feel. For example, in the case of a couple who are truly in love, we’d expect their love for each other to have erupted suddenly out of spontaneous sensuous feelings they didn’t necessarily have control over. At the same time, we’d expect their love to be ever-lasting since if it indeed has an end the love would only be a temporary feeling rather than a ‘true’ sensation. These two qualities we demand from ‘true love’ states that true love is bound to be (i) immediate and (ii) eternal.
We believe that true love is supposed to be immediate, a natural sensation that is heightened impromptu by certain qualities of the beloved. “One might say in one word that it [love] is immediate: to see her was to love her; or, though she saw him only once through a slit in the shuttered window of her chamber, nevertheless from this instant she loved him, him alone in the whole world.” (Kierkegaard, EO p. 82) This way, love proves itself to be natural and ecstatic rather than a makeshift state we put ourselves in. When love is spontaneous and not dependent on our control as such, we call it passion. Passion is immediate, lively and captivating. Thus, it prevents the relationship from becoming dull and the lover from retreating to a frustrating state of boredom. However, passion on its own isn’t satisfactory when we’re talking about ‘true love’ for passion (an ungovernable feeling) doesn’t necessarily promise the continuance of a romantic relationship. If passion comes and goes completely independently and we’re not in charge of it then we can’t be sure of how long it is to last. Even if we’d like to call the relationship ‘eternal’ we’d be simply lying because we have no power over the relationship’s future. Passion is the superior force and it can disappear whenever. Hence, when relying on passion in a romantic relationship, we are unable to call that relationship eternal. “The lovers are sincerely convinced that their relationship is in itself a complete whole that can never be altered. But since this assurance is founded only upon a natural determinant, the eternal is thus based upon the sensuous and thereby cancels itself.” (Kierkegaard, EO p. 83), this on its own serves as the contradiction of love because it implies passion cannot be eternal and therefore, love cannot be both depending on passion and ever-lasting.
On the other hand, ‘true love’ is meant to be eternal: “The task is to preserve love in time. If this is impossible, then love is impossible.” (Kierkegaard, EO p. 88). The eternal state of love dictates that it is both unchangeable and imperishable. “The lovers are sincerely convinced that their relationship is in itself a complete whole that can never be altered” (Kierkegaard, EO p. 83). If love is eternal, it is forever the lover’s to hold and a fear of losing it is unintelligible since eternal love isn’t under the threat of ‘change’. However, a mutual oath between the lover and the beloved is necessary when seeking to protect their love form any altercations. This oath serves as a commitment between the two (or more) parties. Hence, it defines love not as a passion but as a commitment. This commitment is ultimately unconditional, it is not forced upon the lovers and does not diminish their free will. However, it does call for a predetermined promise e.g., marriage. “But in order to produce this true eternity a determination of the will is called for” (Kierkegaard, EO p. 83). Since commitments are purely dependent on the lover’s consensual agreement rather than an autonomous feeling (i.e., passion) it takes away the liberty of love. A shared unconditional oath such as marriage declares passion futile and underlines its unreliability, putting in its place commitment. This again showcases how love cannot be a passion and a commitment synchronously. As a result, Kierkegaard’s claim (our expectation of love to be a passion and a commitment simultaneously is unrealistic) proves to be rational and the fact that ‘love should be “either” passion, “or” commitment’ is verifiable unless few objections are raised (e.g., passion can indeed last for eternity or be promised).
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