From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: WHAT IS LOVE?
Date: 10 Sep 92 02:13:18 GMT
Organization: Oklahoma State University

From article <1992Sep4.154454.19349@guinness.idbsu.edu>, by holmes@opal.idbsu.edu (Randall Holmes):
> In article <1992Sep4.035939.17938@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>>From article <1992Sep2.125759.16731@mips2.ma30.bull.com>, by fjc@mips2.ma30.bull.com (Frank Casper):

RH(Randall Holmes): 
> I did not come up with "policy" because "God" makes me feel
> uncomfortable and I needed a replacement.  I consider the
> identification of "God" with "love" to be incoherent.
> 
> [theistic mode ON]
> 
> Certainly God "loves" the world (and notice that this "love" is
> disinterested and not an emotion; God does not have emotions!); He
> "takes care of it" (not necessarily for _our_ sake).  But God is not
> the attribute of "loving"; God is the attribute of "being".  If God is
> to be identified with a relation rather than a predicate, I would
> think that the appropriate one is the universal relation (the one
> which everything has to everything else); this is not love.
> 
> [theistic mode OFF]

CO:

  Then perhaps what Paul wrote in Corinthians is more a description of
"Being"(in the timeless sense) than that of "love."

  Also, in terms of God as love and relationship in a "love" situation
consider this:  Some scholars, such as Heschel, argue that the idea of
a "covenant" with God is evidence that "God needs people."

RH:
 
> The notion of God introduced in the bracketed text should be
> understood to be a philosophical notion.
> 

CO:
>>Perhpaps what is most important is not the simple divorcing of emotions
>>from love, but the accepting of other emotions as love as well.  For
>>some reason, love as happiness and love as "being burned" are priveleged
>>and this privilege is subject to revision.  It seems to me that whenever
>>love is view upon this very dichotamy, of happiness and "being burned,"
>>we are dealing more with the "healing" aspects of love from shame.  The
>>problem being, of course, that love does not "heal" in and of itself.
> 
> If healing were involved, the lover is interested in healing the
> beloved, not himself.  Actual attempts to benefit the beloved or
> protect the beloved from harm are evidence of love, not tender
> feelings (these could be merely sentimentality without love); this is
> what I am driving at when I say that love is _not_ an emotion at all,
> but a way of acting (a policy).  Emotional heat is not a necessary
> condition for love (although it may be a cause of love or even an
> effect of its operation), and may even interfere with its effective
> action.

  Be careful here.  If the healing that is going on is thought of in terms
of shame, then the act of protection of the loved is an attempt to
reverse the shame.  All goes well 'till the loved is not protected 
any longer. 

  Also, I am inclined to agree with you that love is a policy,
but I am not sure that you can, phenomenologically anyway, divorce it
from feelings.   Just because "feelings" are not necessarily required
in the "loving mode" does not imply that the "loving mode" necessarily
exists without feelings.


BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III  Account at Oklahoma State University for summer.
Graduate Student in Religious Studies           onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu
University of Chicago
 
"N'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas, n'y pensez pas trop"
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