5 - Togetherness and loss

Summary

I have tried to make sense of the idea that love is a deep part of human life. In doing so I have advanced a number of discrete but interrelated claims, such as: the claim that sexualized intimate love is a good exemplar of love in general; that love involves seeing others as unique but doing so in the light of our own history; and that, for our own well-being, we need at some time in our lives to be loved because nothing else discloses our value and worth in quite the same way. The guiding, but so far unstated, assumption behind this rather piecemeal approach is that nothing works as a complete theory of everything that we are inclined to call “love”. Another way to make the same point would be to say that love is, in some respects, mysterious. The elusiveness of a complete theory may have something to do with the absence of any plausible and complete account of the emotions in general, or with the fact that, if we think of love as an emotion, it will turn out to be an emotion that is somewhat anomalous. The elusiveness of a complete theory of love may also be related to love's depth. There are deep aspects of ourselves that humans have always found uncanny or slightly beyond our comprehension.

As well as holding back from a complete theory of love, I have also tried to avoid presenting a complete theory of what love's depth involves.