To have truly loved is to have truly lived, and the person who goes through life without having loved has not really lived a fully human life.
―Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth

Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one “falls into” if one is lucky?
―Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

One cannot overestimate the importance of love in human life. However, to understand the nature of this important, albeit complex phenomenon, one is inclined to approach it from multiple perspectives.

In the following paragraphs, I would like to make a distinction between two kinds of love, which I identify as the metaphysical (transcendent) love and the pragmatic (immanent) love. In elaborating on these two types of love, I would make an attempt at arguing in favor of finding a middle ground between the two.

Metaphysical Love

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the most profound explications of the metaphysical (transcendent) love is found in the reflections of the 12th-century Andalusian philosopher, Ibn Arabi. He was a great Sufi philosopher famous for expounding the doctrine of Wahdat-al-Wujud, which may be rendered in English as the “Unity of Existence” or the “Oneness of Being.” Although he himself did not employ the term in his works, his followers attributed this doctrine to him based on their understanding of his teachings. The Islamic doctrine of Tawhid or Oneness forms the bedrock of his doctrine of wahdat-al-wujud. The basic declaration of faith, la-illaha-il-Allah (There is no god but God), takes on a different expression in his metaphysics. It is expressed as “There is no being but Being.” For him, there is only one reality, and that is Being. Hence, Being (Wujud) is the Real (al-Haqq).

The essence of Being (al-dhat) is unknown and unknowable except to itself. To make itself known, Being limits itself. This self-determination of Being is the first step towards the multiplicity that we observe in our universe. The first and subsequent self-determinations of Being bring in the notion of attributes that it possesses. It is through these attributes only that we may claim to have some understanding of Being. Pertinent to the present context is the attribute of love that Being possesses. Ibn Arabi believes that love is the very foundation of this world, the reason it was “created” in the first place. He quotes the famous hadith qudsi (God’s saying reported by the Prophet) known as the Hadith of the Hidden Treasure, “I was a treasure that was not known, so I loved to be known. Hence, I created the creatures and I made myself known to them, and thus they came to know me.” The great 13th-century sage-poet Jalaluddin Muhammad Rumi depicts this powerfully in the following verses:

Love makes the ocean boil like a pot,

Love grinds mountains down to sand.

Love splits heaven into a hundred pieces,

Love shakes the earth with a mighty shaking.

“If not for pure love,

Why would I give existence to the spheres?”

I raised the celestial wheel on high

So that you would understand love's exalted rank.”  

(Mathnawi V 2735-36, 39-40, ed. and trans. R.A. Nicholson)

Now, the characteristic feature of love is that it attaches itself only to what is non-existent. Usually, we believe that we love a certain person. But if we are asked a further question, what is it that we exactly love when we say we love this or that person? Actually, what we love/desire is the companionship or intimacy with the person rather than the person themselves. It may fly in the face of our ordinary understanding of love. But it is only the non-existent vis-à-vis ourselves that we love. In the above example, it is the companionship or intimacy, etc., which are non-existent at that moment that we desire, rather than the person who possesses existence. Further, once we have attained someone’s companionship/intimacy, we may argue that we have achieved the object of our desire/love, which is existent. But that’s not the case. Since what we now desire is the continuity of this companionship/intimacy, which again is non-existent at the moment.

Moreover, as love is always for the non-existent and the desire for the non-existent is infinite, it becomes the sustaining factor of our world. Since Being is the only reality, everything else is non-being or non-existent. It is the infinitude of the desire of Being for the non-existent that sustains the world, since this world has relative existence at its own level, but ultimately it does not exist in relation to Being. It is a mirror of nothingness in which Being manifests itself, rather makes itself known ultimately to itself only. The following lines, written by the famous 20th-century Kashmiri poet Rasa Javedani, express it quite beautifully:

Su manz äeeñ khānas,

Wuchhān oas päen pānas.

Karān haeraan jahānas,

Yuhai ālam misaeli.

“Within the hall of mirrors stood she,

Gazing upon countless reflections of herself.

A surreal scene causing unease,
Nowhere else such a sight to delve.”

Pragmatic Love

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rom the standpoint of pragmatic (immanent) love, it seems one commits a categorical mistake while attempting to answer the question of love from the metaphysical point of view. Sometimes, while delivering a lecture and making my students understand the idea of a categorical mistake, I ask them to imagine a friend of theirs enters the college premises and visits different classroom blocks, auditorium, library, stadium, so on, and finally comes and asks, “But where is the college?” In asking such a question, their friend commits a categorical mistake since she assumes that college belongs to the category of “units of infrastructure,” i.e., she assumes that college is one more building in addition to the buildings she just visited while the truth of the matter is that college belongs to the category of institution, i.e., this entire infrastructure with all the staff and students on the premises working together collectively constitute the college (The term “category mistake” was introduced by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind to criticize Descartes’ mind-body dualism).

A similar sort of mistake is committed by people who understand love from a purely metaphysical perspective. No matter what kind of relationship they find themselves in and the myriad emotions which play out while doing different activities together in such a relationship, they still feel something is missing, an ideal they are yet to attain, and that “missing emotion” is what they call love since love always attaches itself to what is non-existent as I briefly elucidated in the section on metaphysical love. From the standpoint of pragmatic love, this (mis)understanding of love is based on a category mistake since it is presumed that love is a special kind of emotion different from the ones that unfold when, say, two persons are romantically or otherwise involved and spend time together while performing different acts of kindness and care for each other. It is assumed that love belongs to the category of possession, and here it is the possession of a special kind of emotion that is missing. But, from the pragmatic perspective, love belongs to the category of action. In other words, love is not something we have; rather, it is what we do. Love is performative; it is not a possession.

It seems our generation, by which I mean the millennials and the subsequent generations (presumably, a good number of them), have a fair understanding of love as an act rather than a pure ideal. More often than not, one’s curiosity regarding a proper understanding of love is explained away as a mere philosophical inquisition, i.e., if you want to understand love, then you are supposing it to be an abstract (ideal) concept and hence transforming it into a topic suited to philosophical inquiry. This kind of attitude makes it clear that, in the present times, love is seen as an act, rather than a series of acts. From such a standpoint, for example, it would not be enough to tell our family members (immediate as well as extended ones) that we love them or we care for them unless these claims are transformed into something very tangible. Words are to be given some concrete expressions, e.g., making a phone call asking about their well-being, providing some money, gifting a book, etc., to show your dear ones that you really love or care for them. All the above ways of expressing love are not descriptive at all; rather, they are performative. They constitute a stream of acts, a stream of concrete expressions. Perhaps, love is better shown than said.

Now, let us consider the manifestation and importance of pragmatic (immanent) love in different real-life scenarios―A mother’s love for her child: it is often said that a mother’s love for her child is unconditional, and it is idealized as the only kind of love of that sort which exists in this world. Yet a mother does not express her love for her child merely through using words of affection; rather, she performs different acts of kindness and care vis-à-vis her child, which reflect her love concretely. Similarly, at any workplace, love for one’s occupation is manifested through the devotion, hard work, and seriousness of one’s endeavors. Here again, action speaks louder than words. One more example would be the love for one’s environment, which finds its genuine expression not in any kind of sentimentalism in relation to nature or invoking the name of God while stumbling upon some beautiful natural landscape. Rather, the genuine expression of such a love manifests itself in the performance of various acts like waste management, polythene disuse, reduced energy consumption, proper water management, and so on. And last but not least, love for the whole humanity: while common people with some conscience more or less do take certain concrete steps given their limited resources when it comes to alleviating the pain and sufferings of the oppressed and the marginalized people all over the world, it is the ruling minority, i.e., people holding positions of power and claiming to be the champions of democracy who are paying lip service to the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. This is most evident in the case of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians committed by the Israelis. The genocide could have been stopped had the love for humanity been understood in terms of the performance of some concrete acts by the international community (ruling elite), which by any measure utterly failed to do so. The Palestinian genocide is a paradigmatic example of the failure of pragmatic love.

Finding the Middle Ground

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]oth metaphysical love and pragmatic love tend to verge on something which seems antithetical to the very purpose of love when it is assessed from a common-sensical point of view. Metaphysical (transcendent) love starts becoming paradoxical the more intense it becomes. The more intensely a lover feels love for their beloved, the more detached they become from the embodied (physical) figure of the beloved. In such a state, the “imaginal” figure of the beloved becomes more real than the physical one. A pertinent example here would be a scene in the 2018 Hindi-language romantic drama film Laila Majnun. In the scene, when Laila finally comes to meet Qais Bhat (the two protagonists in the movie), at first it seems he acknowledges her presence but immediately afterwards he looks everywhere around pointing towards different objects identifying each of them as Laila since the intensity of his love for her paradoxically detaches him from her physical/objective figure making him feel her presence, rather see her everywhere in the world of “imagination” to the extent that Laila’s omnipresence becomes akin to the omnipresence of God which is evident from the shift in his utterance from Laila to La-illah-il-Allah (There is no god but God).

Similarly, pragmatic (immanent) love tends to verge on something very crude and basal. Some people argue that, in the present times, love has become nothing but a way of fulfilling one’s basic desires. One may not completely agree with such an argument, but it seems there is some element of truth in it. Increasingly, love is taking on a form of something very transactional. That is why many youngsters are wary of even using the word love in their romantic discourse since they want to do away with the baggage that this term carries. Rather, the use of phrases like ‘friends with benefits’ etc. has become popular among youth, which proves the point that an extreme form of pragmatism in relationships will defeat the very purpose of love itself.

There is a need to find some middle ground between the metaphysical and the pragmatic love. This middle ground is what I call transcendence-in-immanence, which means that love should be constitutive of both the transcendent and the immanent element to prevent it from taking on either of the two extreme forms. The former element will provide it with some ideals, and the latter element will ground it in the concrete real-life scenarios. This transcendent-immanent constitutive combination will help love regain its proper place in our lives, which it has always held in the lives of people from times immemorial. A metaphor may be offered to conclude the discussion. Love is a river: its banks (transcendent ideals) guide its course, but its currents (immanent acts) carve canyons through stone. Neither can claim supremacy since the banks would crumble without the waters’ pressure; the waters, without banks, would get dispersed and vanish into thin air.

The author would like to thank Haroon Lone for his valuable suggestions and for making some necessary changes to the essay.

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