Fall Semester

Been awhile since I've posted anything - been mostly focused on hitting my stride this first semester of my junior year - still on track to finish with majors in philosophy and history and a minor in english. Came to a decision, though, regarding my "retirement" career objective - teach at the university level. I enjoy the environment and working with young people - slightly different attitude than one finds in the military - but still and all a very similar experience in terms of challenging young people to think, to set goals, to work. So, I've been looking at Master's programs that will give me the greatest opportunity at getting a position with a community college or small state university. To that end, my English professors have "hired" me on as a teaching assistant - been shoulder deep in evaluating and commenting on essays, working with the students and preparing my lectures - this and keeping up with my wife, two kids and the five other courses I'm taking. Time is short, but it is all certainly engaging!!!

I will post the following piece from my metaphysics class. We were working on the idea of love (strictly defined) as being an approach to discerning the meaning of life. It has potential - though there are some structural difficulties with the argument as presented by Frankfurt. It wouldn't be philosophy if there weren't some objections to worry over!!

Love:
A Matter of Choice?

I have been troubled over the past few weeks, in considering my own life, regarding a theme that Frankfurt returns to throughout his book, “The Reasons of Love,” regarding one element in the definition of love. If love defined is 1) disinterested (of the object for itself), 2) personal (no substitute), 3) takes the needs of the beloved as his own, and 4) not a matter of choice - then I have a problem, as it seems to me that I have either been choosing what to love for the bulk of my life or, alternatively, I have been so socially conditioned that I have loved, by and large, the socially accepted object, albeit a personal object within some set of social norms. So my difficulty, both philosophically and pragmatically, appears to reside in whether love, as we have discussed it, is in fact a matter of choice or not.

Frankfurt gives some clues early on that this idea of choice may be an issue:

"On the other hand, the self-awareness that is characteristic of human beings makes us susceptible to an inner division in which we separate from and objectify ourselves. This puts us in a position to assess the motivating forces by which we happen to be impelled, and to determine which of them to accept and which to resist. When various motivating forces within us conflict, we are generally not passive or neutral with regard to how the conflict is to be settled. We do take ourselves seriously. Accordingly, we generally enlist on one side of the conflict or the other, and seek actively to affect the result. The actual outcome of the struggle among our desires may therefore be for us either a victory or a defeat."

Unless I have misunderstood our class discussion and the stream of argument Frankfurt employs (which is completely possible) – this initial treatment of desires leads to a consideration of caring, and from caring he makes the case that, “So far I have characterized what I refer to as ‘love’ only as a particular mode of caring. In the next chapter, I will attempt to explain more fully what I have in mind.” And he does, in fact, broaden his treatment of love in subsequent chapters, but never rejects or replaces the foundational aspect of desire and caring as elements of love. If this is the case, then it seems clear to me that we must employ our will – make a choice as it were – regarding the ultimate objects of our love, else why the conflict and resolution process noted above? Therefore, the fourth element in the definition of love seems to be suspect to me.

As we demonstrated in class, vagueness of definition carries with it the inherent potential of the fallacy of equivocation. Let us suppose that through desire, some form of motivation, and caring I find myself with an object of love not of my choice – and this disposition of my will towards this object corresponds with the other three elements of the definition of love as discussed. If I then begin to reflect on this love, and determine to ‘accept or resist’ this disposition of my will – I seem to have violated the fourth element of the definition, it seems equivocal.

Frankfurt himself takes up this issue more specifically as follows:

"Finally, it is a necessary feature of love that it is not under our direct and immediate voluntary control. What a person cares about, and how much he cares about it, may under certain conditions be up to him. It may at times be possible for him to bring it about that he cares about something, or that he does not care about it, just by making up his mind one way or the other. Whether the requirements of protecting and supporting that thing provide him with acceptable reasons for acting, and how weighty those reasons are, depends in cases like that upon what he himself decides. With regard to certain things, however, a person may discover that he cannot affect whether or how much he cares about them merely by his own decision. This issue is not up to him at all."

He goes on to list “staying alive, remaining physically intact, not being radically isolated and avoiding chronic frustration” as instances characteristic of those in which we would have no choice in the matter. Really? I can imagine a number of situations in which those very things are sacrificed through an operation of the will, perhaps a will tethered to a unifying ideal such as love of country. I am not so much interested, however, in sorting through various situations one by one to determine when we might employ our will for or against the object of our love, or when we have no choice in the matter as Frankfurt posits. My intent here, simply, is to raise the question, “Where is the line of demarcation?” Is it a function of personal identity as to where that line exists – in that the set of objects of my love in which I have no choice more clearly defines who I am, rather than those objects in which I have given reflective consideration to in accepting or resisting them? Is it that set of the ‘choice-less choice’ that gives meaning to my life?

In fact, Frankfurt states just that; “It is by these nonvoluntary tendencies and responses of our will that love is constituted and that loving moves us. It is by these same configurations of the will, moreover, that our individual identities are most fully expressed and defined.” From this confusion over choice, this seeming equivocation, I may be able to legitimately ask, “Have I ever genuinely loved at all?” Apparently, according to Frankfurt at least, only if I did not have a genuine choice in the matter have I loved.

He goes on to say, though, “Any anxiety or uneasiness that he comes to feel on account of recognizing what he is constrained to love goes to the heart, then, of his attitude toward his own character as a person. That sort of disturbance is symptomatic of a lack of confidence in what he himself is. The psychic integrity in which self-confidence consists can be ruptured by the pressure of unresolved discrepancies and conflicts among the various things that we love.”
Without getting lost in rhetoric (hopefully), if I love nothing seemingly I cannot experience any anxiety. If I do love, I may encounter a disturbance, in that the object of my love conflicts with other objects or conflicts with my ‘attitude toward my own character as a person.’ If my character as a person, as Frankfurt holds, is most fully expressed and defined by the ‘nonvolunatry’ movements of my will – my identity as it were – where is it that I come up with this alternate character – the man I want to be – by which I compare these other loves, and derive anxiety, by which I am ‘constrained?’ This seems very circular – and I am certain I have not unraveled all of the threads to it. Anxiety, perhaps a better word would be just plain old fear, only seems to operate in instances of choice.

Leaving aside the more convoluted aspects of this issue, perhaps Frankfurt does resolve my suspicion over the “choicelessness” of love with: “We cannot show that a person cares about something merely by establishing that his desire for it would continue even if he should decide to forgo or to postpone satisfying the desire…He might have the misfortune of being stuck with a desire that he does not want. It does not continue because he cares about it, in other words, but only because it forces itself upon him.” I can certainly understand his rendition here of desire – and not necessarily being able to overcome it by any specific act of my will. I have no argument against his formulation here.

However, and as a means of drawing my uneasiness about this issue of definition up into a single concept, Frankfurt posits:

"It may happen that a person truly loves something but that, at the same time, it is also true that he does not want to love it. Part of him loves it, as we might say, and part of him does not. In order for a conflict of this sort to be resolved, so that the person is freed of his ambivalence, it is not necessary that either of his conflicting impulses disappear. It is not even necessary that either of them increase or diminish in strength. Resolution requires only that the person become finally and unequivocally clear as to which side of the conflict he is on. He has placed himself wholeheartedly behind one of his conflicting impulses, and not at all behind the other. When this happens, the tendency that the person has become resolved to oppose – by having made a decision, or in some other way – is in a sense extruded and rendered external to him. It is separated from his will and thereby becomes alien to him."

It is in this concept of willful choice as depicted by Frankfurt above that I worry about love as requiring, by definition, lack of choice. Frankfurt goes on to suggest that, if I am unable to come to a resolution through a process of becoming ‘wholehearted,’ of ridding myself of these uncertainties and conflicts, that at least I should retain my sense of humor. I think he may be on to something there, because the ability to not take myself so seriously may be a very good sign that I have entered a process of sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of life’s desires, and have yet to be drowned by the river.

Works cited

Frankfurt, Harry G. “The Reasons of Love.” (2004), Princeton University Press : New Jersey

Lecture notes, Philosophy 315, September 18, 2006. Dr. Longeway, University of Wisconsin - Parkside