Session 2 24.261 Philosophy of Love in the Western World

what I want to do today is to start with the um chapter I gave you on marriage same seex and opposite sex and Veronica I think was going to give a presentation which could I don't know whether I asked for that uh cover that as well as the reading in the pursuit of love I mainly focused on the pursuit of love that could talk a little bit about the marriage one I've read it but well then should we wait for your uh presentation until people have had a chance to air their opinions about the uh about the marriage chapter sure I'm waiting how many um um Veronica could you take a head count not counting St us yeah I got that right stas uh who's just arrived uh but on the people who the other people how many have read that and how many how many have read it okay how many have read it 100% % well yes everyone everyone then I'm sure you must have some ideas about him should I give you a little introduction to get you started it's a subject that um has been Taboo in various respects first even to talk about homosexuality when I was your age was something nobody ever did uh and when I was your age I had I'm pretty sure no ideas what that could be or who who might indulge in such behavior um people didn't talk about it and the Assumption was if you were a normal person which we all think we are um that um we would grow up in a very different way the boys one way aggressive manly and viral um chasing the girls and the girls in their own way delicate gentle not terribly um uh academic or intellectual and delighted to have the boys chasing them um all sorts of variations on that like in the um saying that um um a woman a man chases a woman until she catches him so that there was a kind of compliance in this stereotypical kind of relation ship in which the males were out to capture the women the women out to escape to run off uh but the women also wanting to be caught so that there could be some harmonious relationship that was that was sex as we knew it in my day uh which is a long time ago but nevertheless was characteristic of the much of the western world uh except that there was this subculture that nobody knew very much about about a hundred years ago people began um discussing and writing about that but it was always as a kind of subculture on on the fringes one good example of this situation is the writings of um marel po have any of you read his work but you by now you've all heard the name at least p r s hands down please um Marcel PR uh a a French author who died in 1923 um and uh in my opinion and in the opinion of many people he was the greatest philosophical literary figure that ever existed um he was a novelist and also a Critic and short story writer but primarily well famous for u a work of his that came out in 13 volumes called uh which is differently translated literally it means in research for lost time um and uh but it became famous in the translation of uh Scott monrie uh of which is very different and we don't have to go into that but the um the point is that PR was homosexual never married uh he um condemns homosexuality in the novel he is one of the great figures in homosexual literature he talks about it and talks about different kinds of relationships but always in a way that is pajara of and uh in one one volume in the ales uh called um uh the cities cities of the plain or Sodom and gomorah um he has an essay about the evil of homosexuality and so one wonders what's going on with him but it was not uncharacteristic that um people were homosexual felt guilty felt that they were doing something wrong felt that they were evil and then they coped with it in all sorts of different ways two examples of homosexuals that who the names of whom you I'm sure know one is Leonardo DaVinci famous at MIT because he was a great inventor as well as a great artist and sculptor and the other was Michelangelo Da Vinci uh was uh a person who was very even tempered and he never showed signs of feeling guilty or miserable because of his sexual inclinations which which were not uncommon in the Renaissance uh Michelangelo who was devoutly Christian grew up lived into his 9s as a guilt rck person who was very forceful angry the you know the famous cliche about Michelangelo who was so aggressive well part of it was this fervor of guilt feeling that was operating in him they were both homosexuals both at the same time very different kinds of temperaments and very different attitudes toward their own sexual behavior uh in the case of Leonardo D Vino D Vinci he drew magnificent paintings of women the monaa is the most famous uh he seemed to understand the soul of women and could capture their beauty in various ways particularly uh the Virgin Mary uh in various religious paintings in the case of Michelangelo um he also um understood women and wrote poetry particularly toward the end of his life and um it's um love poetry of the sorts that people were writing men about women he had a very close relationship uh with a famous woman and um it's not clear whether how well well he knew her but people speak of his affair with her undoubtedly it was not a physical affair it was a very intimate kind of relationship that doesn't necessarily have to involve sex and they were both getting on in years uh so that through all of these complications and the case of PR what's interesting is that he should be explicitly attacking homosexuality while also being homosexual himself well this is a pattern to be studied but overtly or in ordinary Society at least the kind of lower class society that I grew up in no one knew anything about that when I was in the Army um I at one point I was um uh assigned a room in a hotel in which my unit was being bued uh in France and um there was there was a um it was a deluxe hotel it had only one bed in it but two soldiers so we slept in the same bed the idea that this might somehow be uh a danger to me who was not who didn't know know what homosexuality was probably or at least had no such inclinations and wasn't even experienced in heterosexuality that the idea of sleeping with another man didn't mean anything it was something people did uh especially poor people throughout the world have slept together in beds with people of the same sex without anything sexual occurring between them so that what's especially interesting and that's how I begin is how um revolutionary the present generation is the generation that you've grown into who talk about these things on television and in various other ways and in which U there has been a sexual revolution in the 60s and70s which liberated people to express their attitudes more fre than they ever could have previously and one of these forms of Liberation occurred in a greater awareness about homosexuality it's more complicated in one important respect that I didn't want to go into and that is um the U work of Sigman Freud Freud's idea was that everybody is bisexual and if that's true which and so much of Freud has entered into the present day culture because things that he said people seem to believe in um well then why wouldn't it be normal for everybody to have the possibility of or the the potential of being homosexual um in a book of mine that I published three years ago uh called feeling and Imagination I think it's there one of my books no I think it is feeling imagination I attack the concept of bisexuality or latent uality which is related to it these two concepts coming out of Freud it seems to me to be a cliche nowadays that everyone is bisexual even if uh one doesn't act on that um and um it's a um a dogma of freuds that I contest that there's no reason to think that everyone is and if um a great novelist not crued so much CU he was no be homosexual but Thomas M for instance who wrote about um Fascination between men and in Death in Venice uh about uh a kind of obsession that an older man has for a younger one it he is interpreted as having spoken as a homosexual and uh I contest that that charge so the whole question of what homosexuality is how it enters into literature um and how it has to be thought about in various context is suddenly very much alive and especially so in the legal area that I address in the essay about same-sex marriage uh I gather there seems to be no lessening of the intensity of argumentation in this country uh uh since the book is coming out next month you can be sure it was written the chapter was written a few months ago I hadn't foreseen how long the agitation would go on and it seems to be going on and will go on for quite a while now you've read about this and therefore I would like to know what you think about it about this question about love love between a man and a man in relation to marital love or marital attachment and love between a woman and a woman in relation to marital attachments in other words the whole question question about same-sex marriage which I put at the beginning of the course because it's it's um uh what at MIT people used to like to call The Cutting Edge it's The Cutting Edge of philosophy of love it's the most recent Uh current uh thing that people are talking about and thinking about and that philosophers ought to engage in but very few philosophers as I was telling you last time nowadays do engage in this kind of question and that's why I felt that I shouldn't all right now does that help remember my image of St Sebastian standing at the pillar shoot your arrows at me I've given you a good opportunity because it's such a controversial question and um the majority of people in the United States would certainly not agree with me so what do you think what do you I what do you think about the issue and what do you think about what I've asked you to read well I think that one of the most important points that I think you bring up is the fact that this is more of an issue because of the social aspects of what comes with marriage and I think that that is one of the main fights for the same-sex marriage between social aspects of which song um I think you mentioned things like uh being socially accepted as a couple and getting the uh benefits of being a couple because I think it's very hard for someone to argue and say that these two people don't love each other you can't argue against someone's love so um I think it's more of a whether or not they have the right to exist as a couple in marriage and I find it hard to say that you can deny people most of the benefits that come with marriage such as um being able to adopt or do things like that because I think especially in the society we live in right now there's already the idea of marriage is already so broken and faltering that if there are two people that have love between each other then how could you deny them that type of experience let me sum up two principles one legitimization and the other um benefits that come with being legitimized as legally Maring you mentioned benefits of um um sort of personal one adop the ability to adopt children but then they're also material benefits money right okay so that's that's the of the problem right um and the um children come into it in interesting ways there's one um woman I know who um is um has been living in a lesbian relationship with another woman and uh she has two children I don't know where she got the children whether she adopted them or was previously married and divorced but she has two children when she was asked in my presence I didn't ask cuz I try not to pry but someone else did why is it that you care about marriage getting married to your friend um and she said because of the boys who were small uh I don't know exact ages but they're fairly small um because of the boys um my son so and so says that the kids uh kid him about it that his mother is not even married uh and he's afraid that they're going to beat him up kids you know can be very vicious they can be they're on the look for some vulnerable comrade of theirs that they can all gang up on right you you all know how how dangerous little children can be with each other and so he's afraid that um uh if if she remains unmarried maybe in this cont text of living with another woman uh that he will be um hurt now the reasoning on his part would be if she gets legally married then somehow they're going to leave him alone because their parents are legally married I'm not convinced that that reasoning works but but the question of adoption and of um legitimacy and relationship to the whole family the children uh is certainly a part of it and now that was the reason that the um the mother of the two children said she wanted to be legally married and then she did get me legally married um she said that she herself doesn't care very much one way or the other that U she and her friend have made out Wills that protect each other against Financial hazards um so that apparently they're sufficiently dead dedicated to each other that she didn't feel any need to have the um uh certificate of marriage and did wanted it only for the sake of the kids well for whatever reason um the question is whether uh women in her situation or men in in a comparable one should or should not be denied the opportunity to get married legally did I say anything in that that you didn't already know and feel this U this is that yes not really you just kind of brought to the surface I guess what most people are that but not the problem Li mostly in what people believe marriage is like you said like whether or not marriage is something that's a more of a religious context where it's a man and a woman getting together to make a like the starting of a family or if it's more of a legal aspect that you know has the monetary and other legal issues with it and I guess where people differ there probably you know has a lot to do with their religion since they're religious they'll probably fall more in religious side and if they're more liberal then they'll probably fall the legal side if they oppose it or if they're for it either way can you talk to each other in this if there's anything you don't agree um yeah I I think that the the main problem is um how society looks at this at this new issue of same-sex marriage because in other societies I know that it in some Nordic countries It's Perfectly Normal but not legal except in the Netherlands in the ne the Netherlands is the only country that has exactly identical legal status for marriage between men and marriage between or women and marriage between a man and a woman um the others are more complicated France and Belgium approximate that uh I don't know about Sweden you would have Sweden and Norway that well maybe Norway may be different but Sweden is generally a leader in terms of sex reform but I don't think they're even politicians equivalent a politician was married to another one I think in Sweden was it last year I don't know but in Sweden two women you mean oh there was I'm pretty sure it was it was in Sweden or Norway I'm not I don't remember um yeah were they married or they just lived together or had a civil union they were married I remember was headline news in Greece that was some years ago yeah two years then why is it in all the things I read it's only the the Netherlands that is cited as being um uh completely egalitarian in this respect well they probably got married they still have the same right they may not have the same right same rights oh oh that's crucial then they're not fully married no maybe that's what I should have said it's only in Netherlands at the moment that um people of the same sex can be married in the same sense of Rights the fullness of rights as the heterosexuals that might be is BR um in my opinion the way Society accepts this is very important for facilitating the legalization of same-sex marriage for example if here there wasn't so much opposition probably it would be easier to legalize it and the in the example you just gave that the kid is scared because they are going to beat him up um in those countries it it's totally normal and well let me I I don't know you can tell me better about a country like Mexico for instance but when I lived in Italy um the church was still Fa l strong more so than now and that meant that the people didn't get divorced but uh they separated and uh the men and the women um hooked up other people of the opposite sex so it was sort of routine everybody knew that you'd be married to the man and would be married to one woman but live in a marital relationship with another woman and it was that was the way things were um I don't know about homosexuality whether how openly that was understood but it isn't just a question of how people behave it's what you call the Social acceptance that's important because that's how the um the material goods are distributed that gives a kind of structure to the morality to and to the society that's different from the alternative which would be to fully legalize relationships regardless of gender incident tell me what the situation is in Mexico well in Mexico I don't think that uh it's even close to being legalized because it's a very matal Society so uh homosexual people aren't as open about their sexual inclination as they are in America for example a lot of homosexuals are very matcho they they're Macho with women who like that kind of thing even though the man might be really not heterosexual but he can he can perform and he can dominate a woman The Pimps of prostitutes uh generally uh have other interests but they know they know how to get the love and uh dependence of the women who support them uh and they can be macho in relationship to each other so it's more than just Macho unless by Macho you mean a way a man treats a woman that he's in love with you know like in the Tango I I also mean the fact that um it's not considered very manly if a man feels attracted to another man um you mean if he's a feminine e either that or or a homosexual but all of these Concepts have to be analyzed more minutely I don't even go into it here uh being homosexual means that there is a sex sexual attachment or urge or interest in a person another person of the same sex but the nature of that attachment can be almost as variable as in heterosexual Arrangements uh the uh some of the men might be effeminate some might be very viral very Macho among the effeminate ones there are those who feel submissive in ways that women used to be and maybe often still are towards men who are going to protect them and some of them uh sort of mimic traits that we associate with women though nowadays we realize how not all women have those traits other words shaking their hips and lisping and you know the word eminate the way it's ordinarily used refers to only this one subclass of men right and a feminite man doesn't yet tell you whether he's homosexual or heterosexual something about his uh his attitude um his way of presenting himself to the world world one further complication is that um in many art forms having the kind of Grace and suavity and intuitive power that women have is part of the male role so that if you see if you go to the ballet and you see a very graceful man you might say oh it's because he's homosexual but he might it might not be because he's homosexual it might be because he's graceful he may have interpreted that himself it's meaning he must be homosexual and it might be in our society that it's only once you find some uh some Haven among people who are homosexual that you can't get away with being graceful in the dominant heterosexual Society we live in I've always long before this became controversial felt the um unfairness of this because I try and do I think see the world aesthetically and if somebody is extremely graceful in a work of art a ballet I don't care what he is and I don't want to make any inferences about what he is anymore than I would about a woman who's very graceful you know I don't want to say you know she's not representative of all the other women who are tough who are who are determined who you know who are going out to beat the males um they great variety and self-presentations among women and among men and a man who is very graceful if he's a good artist he's wonderful the sex doesn't matter it has nothing to do with it and yet unfairly has always come into it now part of the excitement of this intellectual issue that we're talking about is that all of this has erupted so that if people can say I am ex or I am let the person says I am homosexual and I want to get married to another homosexual sexual well that's taking it this complication as far as it can go because without that somebody might say um I'm not interested in married being married but I want to be graceful and doesn't follow I'm homosexual or I'm homosexual and I'm graceful all of this is now more overt than it ever has before there were movies like Victoria Victor Victoria you probably know and uh um uh what's the one the musical comedy well was also before became musical company was a mover uh the bird cage or there were and then there was a sequel whatever it's called birds of paral I'm not sure uh in which the whole question the lifestyle of uh of overate homosexuals uh is treated very clearly and it's comically times because people can be comical but um that's that's what they are and there's even that song in the musical I am what I am which is uh a kind of manif Veo uh of acceptance of oneself now one one of the U variation or derivations or complications in my philosophy of Love Is that uh love consists in acceptance of the other person as that person is um I'll talk about that later uh because it it it is one of the consequences of some of my earlier ideas that I may have talked about Bolen appraisal did I talk about last time well I'll be talking about all of them um now if that's true then somebody who accepts himself has self-love and why isn't that a good thing if that's what you are and you can accept yourself for what you are what's wrong with that it's a kind of self love that is very admirable and very few people can get away with it's not being selfish it's simply accepting yourself as you are and we all have a great deal of trouble about that because when we're young we don't identify with our Origins and sometimes it's unwise but eventually we work it out I'm sorry go on um I have a question because in the beginning like in the middle I guess you were talking about like how it's been like pretty much proven our society right now how separate but equal doesn't really work like like through the Civil that's separate but equal the separate but equal like marriage versus the does or does not does not that was the the ruling of um the Massachusetts Supreme Court right it wasn't my view because on the contrary what I was saying was right then you went on to say that marriage is just like the societal like view no in in context does anybody want to clarify this maybe I didn't do it well enough but I was trying to say was let's say that um The Situation's finally resolved and there are being two kinds of marriage or two orders of Quasi marital relationship and the civil union that's right that was the context civil union and marriage um and then uh some gay liberationists might say oh but that's separate but equal and we know that doesn't work in in terms of ethnic origin in terms of religion in terms of the color of people's skin and fortunately though this too took a long period of development but fortunately that is widely recognized by the laws though maybe not in every situation uh so there's still a lot of discrimination but you know there's been a a very radical change about that all right so separate but equal doesn't work in education for instance uh the gab liberations would say neither would it work in terms of marriage and my idea was um why wouldn't it work let's let's say that people who are heterosexual can get married because that's what the majority want and that those who are not heterosexual have a civil union which is identical in terms of Rights and Privileges and responsibilities with marriage it simply gets to be a verbal issue well I don't consider verbal issues worth fighting up fighting over if it that's all it is it would be a way of enabling the bigoted heterosexuals to save phase course or particularly those who are religious like in the the state one of the was it a Southern state or a middle was it Missouri I can't remember just just recently which which state was that I it was which Louisiana I thought it was Missouri she what I thought it was Louisiana she thinks it's Missour so no I no I think it is Louisiana um that's part of the Bible Belt uh people are U very conservative Baptists U of A Sort who um try to adhere to the fundamental teachings of their religion now they all want to keep the word marriage for people who are heterosexual because of their own religious views I don't feel it's worth having a civil war over um provided that those who are not said to be married have civil or allowed civil unions that are equal in every respect that it's just a verbal issue unfortunately in the case of the the Louisiana decision they banned both civil unions and uh homosexual marriage so that's a complication but I wasn't talking about that what did you go no I just think that it might be like in theory it might sound like reasonable oh you know if they don't want use marriage then um then let's just give them the same rights and just call it something else but I think that's just like avoiding the conflict and like it is it is trying to save face I agree it's it is trying to avoid the conflict not all not all issues have to lead to as much agitation and misery as this one seems to be on the way to do I I always felt that if President Kennedy had been the president at the time that Lincoln was elected we might not have had a civil war he might because his practice was to get everybody to talk to bring them in and try to try to work things out um and if necessary to bring in um uh the National Guard as he did in the question of um black children being admitted to the University of uh Mississippi ne's education he he brought in that was taking strong military action but prior to that um he was very very prone to negotiation and I don't think Lincoln was I don't think Lincoln was a good president in that respect no he was admirable in other ways but um I don't think he knew how to handle the situation uh and in general these deep deep uh problems like abortion um uh uh slavery um uh same-sex marriage are are very difficult to resolve and not worth resolving the way that the slavery issue was where 600,000 men were killed and whole parts of the country devastated and the country in turmoil for four even more years not that I think that they should have uh tolerated slavery but it didn't have to lead to a civil war but or I hope or I would hope it wouldn't have in my opinion I think the whole civil union thing that you propos might be a good way to like just Institute that for the time being and then keep the lines of communication I guess open and keep talking to like build up to the point where on the model of the Netherlands I mentioned that in the Netherlands first there was civil unions and then there was marriage but if there is going to be a large public sentiment against even civil union then you should take then that's a complication and then I'm not sure I know what to say I I think there is I mean I think like unfortunately a lot of these people are are against homosexuality itself right and and think that that that in what way well I I think in largely religious sense no but no I mean is it that they don't want their children to be one they don't want their children to marry one they they think I I think that they feel it it would be uh it would be no it would be it it's it would be bad for soci would also not be right for them to even tolerate it but they have the same way but it's already tolerated because all of the anti gave laws have been taken off the books in terms of uh behavior and lifestyle until recently being homosexual was a criminal act and so is so is abortion right but I wouldn't really call either of these things tolerated I mean they're tolerated by the law sure but that's we're talking a societal issue I well no there there's a complication here it's not a question of whom you like because that people in a sense may not tolerate homosexuality that they will be free to show their dislike of those who engage in it and to teach their children say the children know you must never do this sort of thing that that's a First Amendment freedom people have a right to that and the same sense and the same is true about their you know their feelings of any sort I mean they may not like Jews so um they may not like Catholics I don't like my colleagues that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that um they should be prevented from going on and living their own life we're free to have any feelings we want when it comes to actions then uh that's decided by the Constitution and the laws and the structure of society the way the um um attitude toward homosexuality is now handled is that it is tolerated in so far as it's no longer illegal it wasn't tolerated until fairly recently because it was criminal decriminalizing it see is a kind of Toler Toleration the question of marriage is a form of Toleration that we're talking about so could you clarify what you want to say in terms of that distinction well well I guess we're talking about a case in which there like all forms of like homosexual civil union were declared illegal right in Mississippi or Louisiana or Louisiana Massachusetts ined red in Massachusetts I don't know when it stopped but I remember when I got married um it was something of interest uh any kind of um anal intercourse between a husband and a wife for instance was illegal adultery was illegal there were all sorts of uh laws against intimate behavior that um went back to the Puritans who thought that God had prescribed these things as evil Now by now they're all off the and they've been taken out of law books and the same thing about homosexuality no I'm sorry go on well I I I guess I was I was just saying I think you know I mean I think uh Massachusetts is kind of the exception to the rule in a lot of these cases right I mean it's I I mean it tends to it tends to be pretty liberal right but I mean I think a lot of these Bible Bel States and so forth um you know the people who make the laws I think are often of of this opinion that that homosexuality itself is inherently like wrong it would be wrong for them to even tolerate it right the law is tolerated in that sense um in Massachusetts I don't know what the laws in the southern states are but the federal law um has decriminalized that kind of relationship that's the crucial thing okay but um what was your M main point that it's it's the fact of homosexuality that the present agitation is really about so I mean I think I I think uh so like my personal opinion right is is is like I I have no problems about you know about like people being homosexual and and like um getting married and stuff right I that I I I don't feel that hurts me in any way right so um so like I I would be in full support of civil unions and and even full marriage to some extent right but um I I mean I guess I'm I'm just trying to get in the mind with someone who is against even civil unions right and and try to understand why would they be against even this thing where they're trying to sort of sterilize marriage and take all the religious things out of and make it just the legal and um sort of you know practical benefits to being married um and and I guess the only way the only I can only understand that in the context of thinking that homosexuality itself is actually evil I no I think you're probably right that that's what their view is and that's why it's such a difficult thing to resolve because how can you commit convince somebody that he should allow the laws to tolerate something that's evil but um when that makes the issue comparable to abortion because people but then the laws do tolerate they can they can try to get the a change in the Supreme Court decision but as of now they haven't yet done it I think it might be possible that um um same-sex marriages and same-sex civil unions will not be tolerated in that sense for many many years simply because because there seems to be such a backlog of uh resistance to it particularly in a large part of the country um which is your state uh I'm from New Jersey oh New Jersey is um probably more liberal um but people from California would be more tolerant I would think people from Hawaii very much so because Hawaii gets close to allowing same-sex marriage um and and but for in the Florida or or Louisiana Mississippi Alabama Georgia those those States um maybe they'll never come around to that do you think they'll they'll never come around I mean I the like the issue has always seemed to me is kind of one of inevitability I don't know I I just think if you go back in history and and look at all these big societal issues and changes like the the people who try to resist it lose every time it seems to me I don't know well not all of those issues um actually can anyone think of one that in which people yeah I'd be interested to know of an example also right would look like I don't know was there like a cannibal movement at some point I don't know this this however I you think I think you go back and look at slavery abortion or civil rights or you know look at where stem cell research and all those it seems to me like the side that tries to resist these types of things like loses always I don't know um maybe maybe that's true um but this is a very one that is very deeply rooted because by defining yourself as homosexual or heterosexual you're really getting to the roots of your feelings the roots of your being that's why this whole area of philosophy is for me so important because that seems to me the kind of question that philosophers should be trying to resolve who are we what are we how do we determine what our feelings are and how we should adjust to those feelings or make the feelings adjust to something else uh but it's so it's so difficult and so complicated that or so maybe embarrassing I don't know uh philosophers have ignored it but that for me was the Big Challenge and I hope you feel that way too s yeah I just wanted to point out that I even if they make it a a civil union I still don't think that's good because for instance okay they will have equal rights according to the law but they will be socially stigmatized like if they want to apply for something and they'll say are you married yes no or civil United and if you just inevitably the there will still be social racism against them until you can just make sure that they're equalized it's hard to know when I was depends on who's going to get that application or whatever but it seems like I feel like that would also fall under like the equal opportunities you know can't discriminate against someone based on like their race ethnicity uh physical abilities or if they marriage or civil union you know like no but you know in all of these movements there are two there are two attitudes um among groups who are liberating themselves whether they're Jews or blacks or Latin uh Latinos or Asians um one is to want to assimilate with everybody else to be treated just like everybody else right so that there's great sensitivity if somebody calls it if an authority for instance even Professor calls attention to the color of somebody else's skin because then W he's not he's categorizing he's treating me as whatever it is uh and I want to be treated like everybody else on the other hand uh once that has been established what happens in the Dynamics of this process of self-discovery Liberation and ultimate Equalization is a realization that it Unity brings about strength and so you if you're black you join the NAACP or you vote for uh black representatives for your District that there is the black vote in Congress because otherwise there won't be any political power and the interests of people who happen to be black whatever that means by black because uh in this country anybody who is brown or tan or anything tend it used to be tend to be called black but not really black but all of that lump together and the only way to um to um get Equalization is by identifying yourself as the minority that you don't want to be stigmatized by and it's it's a very delicate and difficult process for a young person to go through um I know because I was born Jewish and part of me wanted to go out in the world and be like all the Anglo-Saxons my parents were immigrants and their Hope was for me at any cost to go out and succeed in the outside world of America the process of Americanization all of the immigrants went through that at the same time uh you always feel well you're denying your Origins and then as you older you realize how much of you is is a function of your Origins and it's a question of how how to adjudicate and if you don't agree with religion and I never did think or thought of myself as Jewish in terms of religion and you are out in the world and don't live with the Jews and their habits don't mean that much to you what are you supposed to do it's a great problem particularly when you're young because Youth and Adolescence is a time of discovering yourself and what are you right okay now the same thing is even more so I think um in the question of um sexuality so that how can a young person know whether he or she really is homosexual or heterosexual or anything and yet now I'm beginning to forget what your original point was why do we go back to that my point was that I don't think a civil union would be a satisfactory solution oh no no I see now what it was I I remember now what touched this off when I was in the Army I they issued me um dog tags I don't know if they still use they they literally are dog tags metal tags like that are those are you in the ROTC yes huh yes is there a letter for your religious affiliation yes okay uh it's p or C no they spell it out oh in my case it was just lettering if if you were Protestant there was a p and if if Catholic it was a c and that made sense because if somebody got killed in battle um one had to know where to bury him or you use a cross or a star or or what kind of preacher to or or priest to um say the final rights right my case casee my metal tag said H which meant Hebrew and and I never thought of myself as a Hebrew it was even something I remember one time being in the south in America and somebody on the bus that I was on was furious at a uh uh ticket agent or something and he was shouting uh you know that that Hebrew and it wasn't the man was Jewish or anything just that it was a curse word he's a Hebrew he probably never met a Jew and I knew that but I was 17 or 18 and I felt hurt by it so that H was you know not something I would have identified myself with but of course now looking back of course I'm Jewish that's the way I grew up my so much of my life is a function of that early origin I can live with that that's my point being told that I can't get married or not doesn't apply to me but if somebody is told that he can't get married legally but he can have a civil union would I think be as insignificant as having the letter H on his talk tag um and anyhow in your case it says are you Protestant or Catholic atheist which atheist atheist why do they there's no a no atheist that you can claim to be no they read on oh they are oh on yours it says atheist they spell it all oh that's interesting because I thought um if it was Protestant you might say well I'm not a Protestant I'm a Wesleyan or Episcopalian or Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist what's this Protestant stuff or if a Catholic well they're different kinds of Catholics they've expanded but atheist seems very explicit they've expanded the religious core like in the Navy from um they used to have like five now they're up to like 30 plus they even have like Wiccan well well then my point isn't quite as relevant I was thinking that you one could live with this artificial denomination because they've given you H or t or whatever uh but a is something more explicit so on philosophical grounds we could argue about what it is to be an atheist but um you can even you could live with the ambiguity um and way a could oh it says atheist not agnostic it's not an a atheist okay um whatever it is you could live with that artificial categorization who cares and the same thing with being called uh having a relationship that's called a civil Union it would be a sort of joke you provided you get the same rights and Privileges and are understood to have the same same responsibilities but you you're not an M you're a c or well I mean a CU see you instead of them no but that's not that my point is that okay so let's say you had a card and they asked you what would you be when you filled out an application for I'm just bringing this as an example would you do you think it's um it's correct for them to have a question what is your religion if it's to apply for a job to apply for a position for something do you think that they should have um like a question says what is your religion I think that is no longer legal it used to be yeah so it is legal you can't ask you can't ask that's what I meant it's no longer to ask for religion and the reason was that uh there has been religious discrimination in all countries but in this country until very recently and still in this country but it's something the government recognizes is illegal undesireable exctly right in the case of um marriage um one if you had equal rights for the M's and for the cus that too could be something you can't you can't um uh require on an application form it was little like the policy of don't ask and don't tell for homosexuals in the armed forces they can't ask whether somebody is homosexual because he might be discriminated against or she uh and they don't they're advis or maybe they're not supposed to tell it's nobody's business yeah I mean okay so my point is well they still ask if you're married or not when but do but you but as veron's point I anything Financial is very relevant whether you're married or not for lots of things that have to yeah that's I don't think but I I feel like civil union that would work just as much as a marriage because the only reason they're asking if you're married is because they want to know do you have another income working with yours so if you have a civil union that's the same thing you would still have the other income so I don't see how they would be able to discriminate based on that because it's simply like a financial matter not like okay the financial didn't they ask you for the MIT application if you were uh married or not I think that's because of housing well and I feel like you didn't have to that would they like not let you if you that's for the units that accommodate married couples but couldn't you also have access to them because you want to live with somebody you're not married to no I don't think so you don't if if uh I think you have to I mean there are there are double Apartments so to speak or one-bedroom apartments for married people right and there's not for a couple who are unmarried they they're excluded I would have think that would be IL legalish MIT would be in Pro in trouble discrimin that would be discrimination on the bis I think they have limited amounts of that housing and they give it preferentially to people who are married and who have children and usually I think that if you oh children complicates things because that's another head yeah exactly and so um I think if you just want to live with someone they would probably like they wouldn't have enough spaces for those types of things I'm pretty sure the housing laws in Boston are such that you can't ask whether the occupants are married or living together in some relationship um that that's discrimination you can ask for the number of occupants but uh you'd be discriminating if you said well I don't I don't um rent to homosexuals or I don't rent to people who might be uh engaged in sex without being married or something that would be discrimination in fact that would you know I'm sure this is what the the gay liberationist movement would say that what I'm going to say now that uh the reason against Banning same-sex marriage is its discrimination on the basis of U what is it U lifestyle and that isn't that one of the things that the uh Supreme Court ruled out that they cannot the federal Supreme Court that they cannot be discrimination on the basis of Lifestyle just as there can't be discrimination on basis of religion or ethnic origin well why not the lifestyle since the lifestyle see that's the uh that's the paradox in this the lifestyle is now tolerated legally because in the federal laws and some of the states maybe most of the states now uh your behavior in your at home is nobody's business what you do in bed is nobody else's business uh so it's tolerated but then if that's true why wouldn't you have a responsibility to tolerate the lifestyle of people who engage in such Behavior so is the term marriage actually religious the origin I suppose is religious and it could still be you know you might that that's one solution to um Del legalize all marriages that marriage is a private activity you can go and get married at in a church if you want um and it's for the church to decide whom they will give the marriage to but it doesn't affect the legal rights and responsibilities is it a specific Rel religion that it would have to be in the you know if you go to one religion they might tolerate marriage uh if you go to another they might not so the Catholic uh clergy might refuse to marry people who are homosexual or overtly and homosexual that's my point though is but the Episcopalian probably would because they now have a bishop who's overtly homosexual and living in a permanent relationship with another man but if you have a um if you have a freedom of religion in the United States you know you can have whatever religion you desire so you can get married by under whatever religion whatever religious beliefs you have is that you can even have a homosexual religion which uh to participate you have to be homosexual and that in that religion you could be made as married as anybody else the question is whether any of these opportunities or Alternatives should have a special legal status which is the present situation presently the only marriages that are legally accepted in the United States are the ones that take place not in church necessarily but between people who of different Sexes I have a question so um because priests and people within different religions um are I guess recognized by the law to perform a marriage so when they perform the marriage it's also recognized that they can sign a form or something like that is that how it works that a form doing what that will also legalize the marriage to the state is this Li but does the priest have any certifi no priest the Catholic priest or any sort of minister or whatever did do they actually signed the like legal form that makes that makes according to the state they say the PRI says they got married yeah that mean they get divorced thei has to be certified to be okay exactly so my question is if we were to legalize marriage for homosexuals would it be discrimination for these priests to say that I will not marry you because technically like to the state they are like uh I guess Advocates of the state to perform like some sort of uh service all right your point is if a Catholic wants priest wants to marry a man his church will not allow that and might even defro him but there would be nothing to stop him from getting married in court and that would be legal but that's that's presently the case uh mean priest do get defro actually what I was trying to say was would a priest be required to marry a homosexual couple require require Mar I thought it for himself you would say would officiate with the marriage yes officiate with the marriage even if he didn't want to Simply Mar they don't even marry people have been like you have to have your marriage adult in order for the Catholic Church to marry you like even if you're divorced but the marriage isn't analed they won't marry you so I have no doubt in my mind that they won't marry homosexuals no no but the point is that um it doesn't matter what the church does the question is what is legal so the church might say that um we won't marry a homosexual couple but the couple can go and be legally married like anybody else right well I I I I think the question is since the the the priest in this case is licensed by the state is he therefore kind of an agent of the state and therefore practicing discrimination as an agent of the state in in not marrying homosexual couples or or whatever other is wrong is is are priests an agent of the state well I think I think that's the question no I don't think they are I think U marriage and church is one thing and marriage question is what is entailed by this becoming certified by the state to marry people um you can go on the internet and get certified to do it for 15 bucks or something so yeah I mean I think it's becoming like less of an issue but I mean I think before that was the case then I think this was a Val this I think this is a very valid question like the internet thing aside right if if it were hard to get the certification right if you had to be a priest in you know a church or the steeple and stuff but you can get married by a judge and I guess that's what like homosexuals would like if even if marriage was legalized and they were like I mean if they were catholic and they wanted to get married they probably wouldn't be getting married in the church they would get married by the judge I mean my parent my dad was divorced before he got married and my mom and my dad got married and they weren't married by the Catholic church that was like 10 but that didn't mean that they W married so I I I mean I guess I guess the the issue is um you know MIT isn't allowed to discriminate against homosexual couples right why is the church oh because the church is a private institution it's like a club you can have a club that excludes people you don't like well MIT excludes people without high enough SAT scores right no no no MIT uh is a nonprofit institution that receives a great deal of money from the government okay if it were just a private club okay that would be different so even there I think I don't know nowadays whether uh people could I don't see how they could claim discrimination if they're not admitted to some Club in view of their religion um no if it's a purely private club I think you can it's like a friendship you can have any friends you want government can't tell you who your friends must be um if however there is Government funding and if it is has a semi it that's a tax-free status that's very different so the church I think could argue well we are priv purely private uh except that of course they may find ways of getting money from the government but that's that's to be debated um and so they can decide whom they will marry and who they want and one of one of the solutions to the problem would be to uh Del legalize marriage as a whole and anybody who wants to get married can do so in his his or her religion or by sending in the $15 on the internet and there are no preferential benefits to be got from the government there is no uh no official legal status it's simply one of the things people do you know you can you can uh a belong you could belong to an atheist Society it's just you know few with people of similar thinking that's not a legal matter that would be one solution it's very complicated first because of the I think because of the primordial condition of sexuality that's why I wanted to start with this instead of ending with it at the end of the course that sex is so deeply embedded in our being and our conception of ourselves and one reason I I am such a severe critic of Freud about whom I've written I don't know well over 100 Pages I'm a Critic of freuds uh because he was a genius who dared first to handle this kind of question and was very inventive and wrong in many respects and but he he it was such a startling achievement that we have inherited all of this the all of the mythology and the loose thinking of Freud and uh I I could see through that and treating him as a philosopher I found him very wanting right um but he certainly is responsible for our realizing how deep sexuality is in us you know whether or not his account of it is correct um and I think that's one what makes the homosexual question so particularly the homosexual marriage section so important because marriage is a longstanding institution that embodies a whole system of values and it's going to take the world quite a while to straighten out its uh its philosophy of value in order to get this problem in order and second because of the question of the family um I I don't remember I don't do a great deal of research for the writing I do particularly nowadays uh I rely on my own intuition my own logic to be make ideas clear and in terms of my own feelings of what's import important I don't usually write uh paper articles in public policy the way this one is but if I feel it strongly enough enough and in this case as I mentioned last time I felt after all these years I can speak with some kind of authority and why aren't I speaking up right so I will speak up the way John Dewey my hero would have done as I told you um but nevertheless despite my ignorance of what other people have been writing I don't think there's been much done about the concept of the family as such what it is to be a family what is is the significance of families in human nature and the relationship to families of other creatures know all uh animals certainly all mammals live in families I feel like there has been some writing on it simply because I know there's a class here in MIT called the Contemporary American Family oh in sociology and anthropology there is now some and so I feel like they're probably reading but the philosophers the philosophy of family is something that has been neglected and my point here is that the part of the difficulty in this issue of uh gay marriage is that it's linked to our thinking about the nature of a family and that's why I referred to George W Bush's speech uh was it about about a year ago or so a year and a half in which um he said that marriage exists between one man and one woman all right and then he slipped into talking about the family that this is the nature of a family uh this is what government should be uh defining itself into into and that in that part of my essay you remember that section I want to separate the concepts because it doesn't follow that families and marriages depend on each other you can have a family without having a legal marriage you can have a legal marriage and not have a family if you don't have any children or or but the word is loose because uh a man and a woman who never have children but are married they might refer to their family in uh uh in terms of themselves alone you know that they they are they are the family the husband and wife without children but usually the word family includes um children relatives cousins uh people who are interwoven in some kind of social unit and it could even be Hangers On you know uh um servants who in the old days at least servants who uh were too old to work but they were still a part of the family so they kept living with the others even though there was no blood relationship so it's it the limits are are vague but that seems to me to be the proper use of the concept of family and it the relationship to marriage had isn't analyzed and I wanted to separate them two as against uh Bush who was uniting them well that fact that the concept of family is so vaguely inter over with the concept of marriage makes it harder yet to resolve resolve this and I'm sure lots of people in America until very very recently couldn't imagine there being uh homosexual families you mean two men two women not one in one and not even even um uh not the parents maybe adopted is that a family it's not a real you know it's very unclear so that this is a need of a lot of analysis and digestion uh in the values that will finally bring about some kind of uh resolution I don't know if any of you know a poem by um Frost Robert Frost um in which the line appears home is where when you come back to it they've got to take you in now I think that's part of the idea of family if you're a part of the family even if you sinned if you've been in prison if you were a derel if you uh um Wayward um The Prodigal Son if you come back home they accept you as belonging there because you're part of the family and then this gets to be very important of course in in other respects in the mafia always talks about itself is the family there are people like us who we can communicate with so the concept of family is in need of a great deal of analysis maybe you'll be able to do that I don't know anybody who has done it right I feel like in general though the United States has already started to accept a different concept of the family I mean you kind of touch on it in your in this introduction but I mean already the idea of you know know um two parents uh getting a child through like artificial insemination or things like that I mean no one questions the fact when that child grows up that those are her parents and that that is the family and that is the home where the child will be accepted back into and I mean even the same with you know divorced parents and single families and things like that those are pretty much completely accepted everywhere in America everywhere in America but America is not represent reprentative even of the western world and if you bring in the Eastern world or you know Middle Eastern world uh the Third World um their idea of a family is very different such that um if u a young lady a daughter wants to marry somebody that the family don't approve of she won't marry him that she has to marry for reasons that are acceptable to the family and in the Middle Ages um Mar marage was strictly con controlled by the family and that meant for political and economic benefit to the family and you know in ruling classes and royalty uh even now among the few remaining countries that have Royals uh they marry not purely out of love and sometimes not out of love at all but because it makes sense in terms of the family so there's a very different conception from what exists in the United States but I guess I was just trying to say that the conception of family in the United States is what's going to control the acceptance of homosexual families here and I think we're already leaning more towards that acceptance based on the radical changes in what we've seen in families just since I mean the 1950s I disagree I don't think it's going to be the family I think it's more just going to be acceptance of the homosexual in a religious context no but I mean as far as taking in accept family sheans yeah I mean as far as taking in like the idea that they can get the other rights that a family would have once we've I mean obviously gotten past that so what do you think is going to be the key because I mean we already have had to say basically that to an extent we legally accept homosexuality so now it's whether or not that uh acceptance that we've taken is really going to be allowed to go a step further to create the family through marriage so that's a legal acceptance though it wasn't a religious well I think it's it's mostly opposition comes from religion when people voice their opinions it's more religious groups that uh oppose it in such a grand way thus that the voters will you know later control what uh Congressman go way the congressman go because they want to be reelected so a strong religious group that has numbers is going to more control where that goes I think politically like George W bush can't say you know I I I don't want homosexual marriage because like I don't think like homosexuals should be able to marry because like I don't like homosexuals he can't say that so like what he has to say is that you know it's bad for society as a whole and the way he says that is because it's bad for the family um so I mean I I think it's I think like you you have a point about the the source of the problem is religious acceptance but I think from a practical and political standpoint like very much the family is very deeply inclined with the issue um incident speaking of bush Carrie attitude is a kind of compromise um he doesn't want to alienate religious people and maybe not even the Catholic following that uh he inherits because he's Catholic um so when he was asked he said no he doesn't believe in uh in um homosexual gay marriage because the church is against it um but he does believe in civil unions right so that's a way of not entirely alienating the gay voters in while he's also trying to hold on to the religious one well that's a kind of compromise um bush is more extreme he doesn't want uh gay marriage and I'm sure he doesn't want civil union or if he does he's not going to say it um and he brings in the idea of the family and that's just a sheer confusion didn't Cheney said that he would be Pro marriage anyway he came has a gay daughter yeah and he came out in opposition to the President right so wouldn't that I mean but previously he hadn't hadn't said anything like that right so like wouldn't that just I guess the political machine like I guess if they know that Cheney is like totally Pro the whole marriage thing like the whole I think K might have to change his St just oh you think this might hurt Bush's chances because I think it might help Bush's chances just no but what if Bush dies and then Cheney comes in and permits gay marriages no I just think that um no I'm just this he his wife his wife and daughter uh who are par both are of course in favor of gay marriages um I mean the daughter would be but apparently his wife was before he made his view public they gang up on him and he ends up supporting gay marriage so you would think people with a little foresight might worry about that I think like anybody who's like very like religiously inclined might worry about the whole like cheny thing but people that are trying to look for a happy medium might just go for the bush chainy combination because if they need to agree like if they both come into power they're going to have to like talk it out and they're going to be the ones that are going to be putting the foundation of like what's going to actually happen I don't know technically technically well yeah it's another kind of compromise a different kind from Terri's that's true jie has power over other things but over game marriage probably you know I mean I think it's really interesting right that dick CH is one of the most like Infamous Darth Vader rightwing Hawks there is right and yet when it comes to this issue when it really personally affects him right he's he's way on the other side of the issue right I mean I I I just think that that's really interesting and you know an interesting way to think about a lot of issues like when people try to you know have have these really really conservative views on them you know how many of them are are really personally affected by but n's view is that this might be a shrewd political compromise so that people who want to be rep Republican can always point to Bush if they're against day marriage and if they want to be Republican but are for gay marriage they can always point to Cheney I think that that might be right it's like talking out of both sides of your mouth right I I I think which politicians do very of politicians do very regularly that should be the reason well in a normal if people if follow PE voters logic was normal I think they would that should be a bad thing cuz it shows that they have a double standard and that they disagree with something unless it affects them obviously if busha suddenly was left paralyzed he would be all for stemell research you know but I think we diverted from our topic yeah why don't we take a break and afterwards um Veronica will give a presentation on the pursuit of love right don't stay away long five minutes what I kind of wanted to start with oh you did indeed um what I kind of wanted to start with was what uh the chapter that interested me most which was uh the chapter the two myths about love MH uh which basically dealt with uh the first myth with uh had to do about love basically being a universal thing that you feel uh just because we're humans and that it's explains the reason for our existence and the way that we always are and then the second myth with the idea that um love brings about a merging of two identities and that two people become like one and form a union and um I guess that kind of summarizes the two main ideas that are being opposed I guess generally Throughout the chapter what do you think about those with the second I'll start with the second one because I have kind of more cont like ideas against the first but with the second one I think I generally agree with the idea that two people still remain independent after they feel after they fall in love or whatever happens and that there's not exactly any type of merging because you still are your own person with your own ideas and I think the the term interdependence does more greatly qualify The Experience however you do say that you still that there is no creation of a new self or of a new person and maybe I'm just not understanding exactly in what way you mean that but I feel like most people who have been in any sort of long-term relationship or married or anything like that would say that they have changed as a result of their experiences and that you do act in way way that you wouldn't if you hadn't been in that relationship and you although you do make your own decisions and form your own opinions you do so so greatly based on the situation that you're in that you are different cuz if at that moment in time you were single or you know something else you would not be acting in that way notice that you you're now are talking about a change having happened and I don't deny that and you're saying that you're you are a different person what I was denying was that there would be a change of the sort that is built into the concept of merging and second that there is a third person different from the two people who are merging resulting from the relationship so that there is a another self but it isn't as if so that's what I'm questioning both of that um but but I don't deny that people change because of their relationships and that um um they become different cells just that they're not part of this new supercell so to speak which um is true in nature I think I give the example of um sodium chloride making salt or two rivulets merging in a stream or uh a scrambled egg that's a good example uh you can't separate the albumen from the Yoke once it's been scrambled right is that what it's like to be in love and the answer is yes according to the Romantic Theory which thinks of love as this overwhelming experience in which you are taken out of yourself and that I think is a very common idea I think it's the most common idea and people who somehow don't feel they've merged adequately feel they're maybe not really in love uh it's the basis of a great deal of uh philosophy and great art some of which you are going to be watching in this class because when we get to 19th century um philosophy of n for instance and of Vagner Richard Vagner the opera composer we're going to be we'll watch um a um a documentary about Tristan un's older vogner's Opera which is all about merging and the words that they lovers use in their love duet is no more Tristan no more is isolda uh that th those old persons don't exist there is just this new merged Unity that they have become um and that is what I deny that's what I claim is not capable in human beings it's capable in rivers and in chemicals um but not in human beings as far as the changing is concerned you reminded me of something that a professor I had at Harvard used to say about a man and his dog the man walks the dog every night and um they get so bound up together the man ends up walking like the dog and you find this often with married couples who have been together a long time and they somehow walk the same way and they finish each other's sentences um uh they are sharing their being with each other but it isn't quite emerging because if that were true uh they would no longer be persons and the with other animals even though we get very close to them they're still very different from us but you know you can love your dog you love your cat uh but that your marage is not and I'm continually reminded of that with my cat um one of the issues that I don't know if I discuss in this book but it's an issue I discussed in other books and some recent philosophers have discussed Robert Solomon for instance who claims that animals don't love and we don't really love animals uh but I love my cat my cat loves me and I can tell when his gestures are loving and when they're not when they're loving uh he gives me velvet Paws he retracts his his claws and sometimes times Strokes my Strokes my face and even kisses me all over um occasionally when he's lying on the bed and I walk by he'll put out his arm just to touch me that's love I don't know I don't know what more to say about it and or even want more to expect of another human human being but at other times if I reciprocate with him and he's not I don't do it quite right I suppose or he's not in the mood uh he'll his claws will come out and he won't attack me but I will feel the claws as an indication don't forget I may be smaller than you and you can do me harm but uh don't try it um I'm not I'm not your subservient creature uh we don't merge with animals that the way the theory goes and we don't merge with other human beings CU they also can have laws that you might not have recognized and if they didn't we wouldn't love them they would just be sort of puppets or um terribly supine uh creatures so that there is the dual capacity to share their lives and to withhold themselves and that's very different from the concept of merging which I think is the prevalent concept among people who believe romantic love with a capital R coming out of the 19th century flourishing throughout the 19th century uh and into the 20th and nowadays back and forth as I point out in the first chapter uh being something where suspicious of but also something we give ourselves to I I haven't done any sociological work with popular um Arts low culture as it's called but I would think that if you tabulated the songs or the elements of songs or whatever units you as a scientists sociological scientists focus on in order to make a generalization you would find that there's a mixture sometimes it's this desire to give yourself or even to to merge and then at other times it's disappointment and withholding uh and that we fluctuate back and forth um so that on the one hand there you can imagine any number of romantic popular songs uh uh I don't know that merging can anyone think of one right off hand um I I I can think of one that I'm fond of which is Bob Dylan's song that you your generation still know who Bob Dylan is um and sung by Joan bz who you you know her she's not you don't remember her she was a great and still is a wonderful folk singer when I when I was young she started out and it was a real Revelation what a genius she was uh in folk music and there's a bob Dyan song that Bob Dyan song that she sings Called It Ain't Me Babe you know that uh you want somebody who will always be there for you It Ain't Me Babe you want somebody you can trust completely somebody who will stand by you somebody who will you know support you in everything uh something who will pour out our love I'm I'm fabricating because I don't remember the U the exact words uh but the refrain is it ain't me babe and then her voice gets lower it ain't Ain me babe and that seems to me what love always poses as a potentiality that the claws of the cat can always come out as a way of asserting his separateness for me um and that's why I attack the concept of merging in Romanticism I think I tend to agree though with the rest of I tend to agree with also with the rest of what you have to say about the merging I guess I just wasn't very clear on that one point that you were making because I think the idea that was stated somewhere about trying to find the person that is just like you and your alter egoo who you will mes with that's I think obviously not the case because many of times it's the differences between people that make them right you know so compatible is that you don't want want to be with someone who's just like you in every single aspect because that's boring you know now that fit that idea that you love someone different from yourself is a common one and it fits in with my idea of sharing that um the rough man and uh truck driver Macho type he falls in love with a gentle woman because he knows he's not gentle and feels an inadequacy she supplements him and she falls in love with him because he's big and strong will take care of her that there's a kind of compensation that you get from the other person that you couldn't have got except in a Unity now the unity can take place in a marriage and uh often the contribution of different assets makes it a stable marriage for there to be love um the unity has to be more deeply embedded in some kind of uh Union it it's not just she relying on him for protection him relying on her for for children he wants or his being uh rugged and her being beautiful it's got to be a a richer exchange and to explain that richer exchange I introduced the concepts of bestow and Appraisal which I touch on here and I won't launch into until you've had more chance but to finish my sentence the trilogy the nature of Love 1,400 Pages which I don't assign to you because that would be too much though I have in previous courses um and people seem to get get something out of them but that's a different kind of course uh the trilogy starts out with a chapter on the distinction between the praisal and best and then the whole rest of it that's the guiding theme that's the dominant to which the rest of the chapters return uh about appraisal and besto as constructive of the philosophy as well as being a view about love that the philosophies the different philosophies are about well that for me is a way of showing how this uh sharing takes place and we'll we'll come back to it but why don't we go to to what you were saying about the first merging I mean the first uh of the two myths so unless somebody wants to interrupt com if I can say something I almost think that or it's confusing to me how uh you say that two people cannot really merge yet I feel as if complimentary personalities being a basis for love almost prompts emerging you can't work unless there is a merger there there could be an intimacy because of these these these uh combined efforts the way in which they complement each other but wouldn't if they were merged they wouldn't really be people persons anymore they would be part of this new entity and I feel like also if they merged then they would didn't have those different things that would be able to complement anymore that the idea that they are different automatically suggests that they can't become one thing which is the same do you do you know the uh novel and the movie called weather and Heights no none of you saided that you do Alana do you remember the place in the novel which also comes out in at least no I think both of the uh I I know two or maybe three versions comes out in the movies too uh the most famous of these movies is the one with Lawrence olier and Merl lubron made about 1941 um in which Kathy who was fallen in love with this slave boy not slave boy servant boy who's very rough um who his name is um um heathcliffe um she says after he's left and after she's married somebody else whom she doesn't love that way though they have a good marriage she says I am heathcliffe I am heathcliffe now I think that's the idea of merging and for me that's very poetic very metaphoric uh if she's saying heathcliffe is all I think about heathcliffe is the person I should have married heathcliffe is the one for whom I feel strong sexual passion but not for my husband you see um I can understand that but that's her expressing her feelings how does that make her Heathcliff she is going to respond to him in a way that is distinctive of her and he will respond to her ideally um though it's a tragic tragedy and it doesn't ever really work work out um in a in a related way but it won't be either them being the other and that built into the idea of merging maybe I'm just unlearned but the whole concept of of the merging just seemed completely foreign to me like like when when I read about I I don't think it was something that at any point I've ever believed in like the to me again maybe I'm just young and naive but the like the whole concept that that you're saying with interdependence and and stuff like that was was much more the more natural and obvious description for me I don't does anybody want to comment on that I can comment on it do you think that I've never really felt that about anybody and I'm much older than you it isn't a question of you're being young I think it's temperamental some people do have that feeling I don't want to CL that it's all a confusion on the part of these poets and philosophers who were Carried Away by language I think some people really feel that and want that desperately sometimes pathologically even I just want to say that uh the feeling is just a feeling and not a representation of what is really possible it can be a beautiful feeling which I've always felt was is denied to me because I'm such a cold fish I'm not a cold fish in the sense of having feelings and emotions and crying on all sorts of occasions it's just that I don't have this feeling which is so many other people think of as what they are what they feel and what they want and and I guess cuz you said the claws come out any time do you think it's it's kind of like feeling that way is kind of bad kind of like setting yourself up like to be harmed um I don't know I think it's a bad concept because I'm a philosopher I think it doesn't sustain analysis but Arthur May disagree in terms of it's a bad thing for people to have I think probably on balance they more often get hurt than benefit from it but then it it must give a wonderfully ecstatic feeling as long as it lasts it's just that uh I can't believe it lasts very long uh Freud writes a great deal about uh his patience you know he his case histories and the early development of theories and one thing he discovered was a lot of the people who come to him with their problems and whom he classifies as neurotics or sick in some sense that they're somehow living under a romantic dream a romantic illusion and that they fall in love with somebody in a way that so powerful they can't be satisfied and the other person ditches them and they can't get over that now that's a reality but one of the profound things flud said about every well he said many profound things but this one is about um Neurosis in general he says neurosis must be very satisfying it seems like a you know Paradox uh course it means being sick Neurosis must be very satisfying in view of all the trouble that people go to in order to carry it out well I think this is a good example uh this falling in love and being hurt falling in love with love that song that marlina dri sings must be ecsta is ecstatic I don't deny it you know I observe it with awe um as long as it lasts but it doesn't usually last very long uh some sociologists have done a statistical study and they say that most people who fall in love literally fall in love because that's another distinction I make between falling in love being in love and staying in love we'll come back to that but you know falling in love in the strong romantic sense that you all understand and that some of you have gone through and some of you may be in right now uh that it doesn't usually last more I mean the on the average it doesn't last more than two months that's the statistical Norm that they found in their sociological uh research maybe but uh what a jol that gives you know it's like getting drunk and I can't say it's bad to get drunk I can't say it's bad to have ecstatic feelings for those who are willing to run the risk of being hurt for those who have somehow managed to learn the secret of falling out of love and then some people keep doing this over and over again they fall in love they fall out of love they fall in love fall out of love um maybe it's a way of life that I am simply incapable of having and uh you also being a uh a person of intellect you may suffer from the same disability than I am so can't say it's good or bad but Freud would have said it was bad he was an enemy of romantic love because he says it brings about so much suffering all these patients come to me now he doesn't rub his hands with Glee and say all this all the money I'm getting from from my clients he Grieves that there are so many sick people who need his help well that's the reason they need it so well that all all I can recognize are what the facts are and I can't start using the evaluative terms of good and bad unless you give me a particular situation you know here's so and so who had such a brilliant career in front of him who was a genius and um who was capable of doing marvelous things and did marvelous things he had it in him uh he was so creative the world would have benefited and then he he fell in love with a woman who who ditched him and it was so painful that he committed suicide no then that was bad certainly right other people grow out of it and then and they learn from it and they develop and maybe then it's good verical you were saying something you just quickly explain your distinction between I think you just said falling in love being in love and staying in love okay I don't know that I go into it it's not in in there in the beginning it comes out in the third volume of the trilogy so if you look that up in the library under those words you might get more of treatment but I have to say before I get to there if you allow me um my philosophical life as I think I mentioned last time is in the making of distinctions and so I start out with one distinction see that philosophers have made have reified the alternatives and they've made them into a kind of dualism that can't be resolved and that's the big problem and for me the the solution is to show that um they they interweave in a way in Practical life and are presented artificially by philosophers because that's what the brain works well at making these Alternatives but in life somehow life harmonizes them so my methological procedure which I haven't which I don't do as a matter of calculation but this is seems to be the way I work this is the way my mind works is to make a distinction and then to attack people who carry out a similar distinction to extremes and then feel the need to harmonize the two having done that I then go on to another distinction and so particularly in the case of love work is a series of distinctions the first of which was bestow and Appraisal then there's dependence and interdependence then there's acceptance and rejection um U then then there is the U the sensuous and the passionate then there is falling in love with ideals being different from falling in love with things or falling in love with persons and that I do go into here and how the into weave in some way um I all of that comes out of the trilogy too but presented in a later at a later period in in the book and staying in love falling in love and being in love are are distinctions that I make and yet they can all occur simultaneously by Falling in Love I mean a very powerful ardent feeling that usually happens very suddenly that changes one's whole whole life and that sometimes can be so strong as a feeling that it undermines one's cognitive capacity it's what people of usually mean when they talk about love except they mean falling in love and then that gets to be interpreted in relation to 19th century uh romantic philosophy which um uh I spent about 200 pages on in in the second volume uh and which is based on the idea of merging and and other other Concepts um that's falling love um do you know you might you probably do know a movie called um it's with share and um and a uh a afo what is his name uh Affleck Affleck yeah um Ben Affleck um in which he uh falls in love with her and she uh doesn't feel that way towards him and or anybody and is ready to marry an older man who will take care of her but he he suddenly falls in love with her and at one point declares himself and she slaps him in the face you know share the kind of character that she usually portrays she slaps in her face and she says snap out of it in other words it's something that happens to you and then you're Gaga and can't see things right but it's very strong very powerful uh could be joyful if the other person resp wants it could be hell on Earth if you feel rejected but you can't turn your back on it you're dependent on that feeling That's Falling in Love um and all and it usually is uh directly related to some sexual excitement and sexual excitement of the sort that I call the passionate in my analysis very briefly well I maybe I go into it there I don't remember um that comes out in other books of the sensuous and the passionate the passionate is having a sexual feeling that is very strong usually libidinal that is related to the genitals um a very strong inclination of feeling uh for Oneness with another person it's not cool it's hot right cool cool sex is what I call the sensuous and that's uh result from some kind of arousal or stimulation of uh one of the erotic zones in one's body and the way in which I like to illustrate that is um with the short little hairs on your wrist if you you can this is forgive me for engaging in a eroticism in public it's something you can do by yourself if you just stroke your the little hairs it's cool it's Pleasant it's a sensuous enjoyment there's something in the sense organs that is enjoyable well that is a very important part of sex and for some people that's the main part of sex they just like being stimulated um they don't their emotions don't get involved it's a sensory experience rather than an emotional experience it's cool the way this is cooling it's very cooling um and uh not hot right in the case of falling in love I don't think one could really understand it if one thought of it as being sensuous it's TD it's hot it's strongly emotional a sex drive usually directed toward some person that you fall in love with or some image of a person or whatever the the sex object may happen to be That's Falling in Love right being in love is uh a different state though one that can happen after falling in love very often people fall in love and then they fall out of love and that's usually that may be what the sociologists are usually studying when they say that it lasts love lasts only a coule romantic lovees lasts only a couple of months but there are many people who uh start out with that strong powerful feeling and then they sort of settle down um either Society forces or their feelings about Society or forces them to get married maybe the woman becomes pregnant and is embarrassed to admit her condition or they just sort of work things out in a way that they make sense out of their inter inter interdependence of living together and uh they would be in love because they get to be attached to each other and they develop as as a unit and they start thinking in comparable ways instead of his thinking about how to succeed in the world he thinks about how to make a living for his family for his wife and maybe and possibly future children U uh instead of worrying about his own self-preservation he also worries about hers that's being in love but you see it doesn't have to be tared it can be a phase after that it or it can be independent of that people can be in love without ever having fallen in love the great tradition of marriage even in the western world but above all in the Eastern world where um the spouses were determined by the Elders of the group or by some political or economic necessity right sometimes without even knowing each other right or just getting a GL a glance at each other but that's all uh an arranged marriage through some kind of uh uh intermediary or the elders right that's by that's the great majority of human marriages it's not because of the western romantic ideas of falling in love with somebody and being on your own to decide whom you're going to live with there's a great tradition uh and Shakespeare is right in the middle in the Western World of the struggle to attain the modern democratic individualistic personal attachment and of a romantic sort but that's by and large has not been characteristic of the human race right so that people who get married under those conditions May sometimes be miserable because it's a bad marriage or they hate their husband or wife very shortly uh you know I didn't want her how did I get how you know it was good for the family but it's not good for me but if it's a wise family and if it comes out of a uh a healthy family and the parents are wise or whoever makes the decision they might or if they have good luck they end up with just a good person somebody they can live with very well if they don't have any emotions then it's what's called The Marriage of convenience so that it's convenient to the wife to have a support and to get money and um to have a husband who will not beat her but uh will give her children and it's socially advantageous or in in France where uh dualism has been a philosophy for centuries at the various points women married a man in order to be married and after they were married they would take any lovers they wanted because they would be a married woman with money and so on and the husband probably had uh Mistresses so either he wouldn't care uh or if he was afraid of being called or cockled U the woman would contrive that he didn't know you see provided the woman being married provided her a degree of strength and Independence such that she could exercise her freedom to fall in love with somebody she does one that would be more like a marriage of convenience but uh being in love would be a situation which is more like the present contemporary scene because in America we haven't gone into these marriages of conveniences very much people are expected to marry somebody they will love and try very hard and fail very often and so we have an enormous marriage uh rate of marri uh I mean rate of divorce um enormous rate of divorce lead uh and therefore a large number of remarriages or you know all the people get divorced in this country generally remarry so it isn't as if divorce is destroying marriage in this country it's uh part of the perpetuation of it it's in succession Mar success of marriages and then with your generation there are complications because they all of the informal marriages um trial marriages in which people live as if they were married and then separate or don't but uh the point about the American dream until recent L was people would uh marry somebody they can be in love with whether or not they actually fall in in love they need may need a little proding from the family they may have a need it would help for them to fall in love but not completely because then they'll end up being carried away uh and losing their reason but to be sufficiently engaged so that when they do marry they real feel they feel authentic love for the other person that's being in love all right staying in love um and being in love is usually sexual because that's what marriage is all about marriage is a way of approving the unlimited access to the per the other person the person of the opposite sex for sexual P purposes so that uh if your promiscuous at least the way it was in my you know until recently if you were a promiscuous woman um every the society frowned on you if you were a prostitute meaning a professional Society considered you sinful evil and even criminal but still the men kept the kept encouraging the perpetuation of that institution uh if however you're a woman who with her husband is is very lustful and has as much sex with him as some prostitutes have with their clients and the Kinsey Report I don't know I was surprised in one of my classes nobody knew what the Kinsey reports were it he was the first one to take uh polls and find out how many times people had what he called sexual outlets and in marriage and out of marriage and um in some cases there were I remember seven a day per every day of the week for married people that may not equal what some prostitutes do but probably maybe it's more than some but the point is that if you're married that's toally respectful who's nobody cares you're married you can do what you want in your bedroom with your husband as long as it's consensual and he doesn't rape the wife or she doesn't beat him into submission or or uh hurt him when they she uh gets him into satom masochistic situations uh nobody cares uh so that marriage perpetuates love and it is part of being in love or can be depending on the individuals you can be in love with somebody and have a sexless marriage which exists but in most cases sex is a very important part of being in love in that inter intermediary stage I say intermediary because uh people live very long particularly nowadays and they don't they're not the sexual creatures very long uh the passionate sex uh is directly related to hormones uh above all testosterone in the men and progestin and and and EST estrogen in the woman and that which and those are all geared to reproductive Necessities so estrogen um is at a peak in women just before the period of ovulation so that she'll get excited and available and then it uh in her ludal phase which is the menopause not the menopause the menstrual per part of the uh period uh it won't be Estrin it'll be other chemicals so that she isn't excited because that's not a good time uh to become a fertilized right uh so that passionate sex is surely geared to the requisite hormones in men and in women they're different than men and from women but still the hormones are important for passionate sex uh sensuous sex you can have forever because it means somebody's stroking you or you're feeling sensuous pleasures espe especially if they're related to your genitals but it may not there may not be much that's happening to your feelings and eventually they may not be much that's going to be happening in the genitals because of the diminution of the um of the hormones if you live long enough and if you become intimate enough not not talking sexually but if you become close enough and interpenetrate in enough and share your life enough with another person if you depend on each other in this interdependent way that I talk about you may very well Outlast the period of sexual excitement but you won't care anymore you know if you had a choice at that age between going back to the days when uh the man for instance gets excited by a beautiful young girl walking by or not having that excitement but having your beloved wife with you the wife that you've had for the last 60 years let's say their in their 80s uh and whom you can't bear to think of Living Without You Might Pro prefer the latter now that's staying in love that's a different that's a prolongation of the being in love which involves alterations that happen in human being given our nature given our physiology over the course of many years can you have all at once maybe uh can you have all three I think that does happen that some people fall in love and then they are are in love and they stay together that would be a happy really happy marriage there are lots of divorces but there all there are surely people who succeed in their marriages in the sense of having all three of these maybe at different phases and then the question is could they have them all at the same time in middleaged let's say I don't know I mean it's so remote from my own experience I don't know what to say and nobody has done much with these concepts of mind um there haven't been people attacking and defending Me Maybe was just a bright idea of mind there wasn't any good but um maybe I don't know what to say I mean you've got to work that out for yourself what do you think um a lot of people when they have their a lot of people when they have their first sexual experience kind of end up falling in love with that person yeah because the first experience can be so powerful for well particularly since the time when when you usually have your first experience is not when you're a middle-aged man or woman but rather when you're at the point where your hormones are at their peak in the case of men the testosterone which is the crucial male hormone is at a Peak at the age of about 16 and then it declines a little and sort of levels off at around 20 23 and then uh it continues on a plateau but then it sort of goes down right so it a if you have your first experience when you're a teenager which is probably not uncommon in in America at least it could be tremendous unless you're so blade because of everybody every what everybody is saying I actually brought in an example of like I guess um issue of science which kind of backs up this idea of that it is innate in us to want to be with another person based on I guess our hormones and our uh bodily the way we've been made as humans uh actually promotes the wanting to be with just one other person at least one well one at a time maybe I mean no no I think no the reason I'm saying that is because in love or sex it may be that you really want to be at one person person with one person but you wouldn't want to be in a society where there's nobody else you finally get bored with each other well I think it more has to do with the idea that you would like to be able to be with one person and be able to have a role as taking care of the family and doing those types of things that that's actually the falling in love is actually a part of who we are as humans that's something different about that I read that um I forget where it was but it was kind of trying to characterize and in like a biological way why men are so promiscuous and women aren't and it was kind of like you know the whole like animalistic thing where the women would be raising the children at home so they'd be more inclined to just stick with one person oras the man was trying to spread his seeds so we'd want many different uh the the invention of the pill altered that a great deal because before the pill um there were hardly any contraceptions that really worked um Casanova the famous writer who had lots of love affairs so he his name has become synonymous with a Don Juan kind of character right a Casanova he wrote uh Memoirs and in one volume of these Memoirs this is the end of the 18th century he talks about this terrific um technological Discovery the technological invention um I think he calls it the the Dutch slip well it's a condom that the point is Until then people didn't have condoms after then U the condoms weren't well enough constructed so they weren't very reliable um and the men often wouldn't use and because of sensuous reasons they wanted to feel the body of the woman instead of having put putting on a a glove so to speak um so that the woman was at the mercy of um her uh physiology that if she had sex she would probably have a baby sooner or later the what was used to be called in a generation before mine uh the inevitable happens the inevitable will happen uh and so she'd pay the price and if the man uh didn't have a marry her and have a to think of her as a legitimate spouse she would be ostracized she would have either kill the baby or and the abortion was very very dangerous until recently um uh or she would have to support it on her own in a miserable condition so for that reason the male attitude would be very different to the woman from the woman's but the pill changes all that because with the pill there's greater Security even more than a diaphragm had been um and uh women might expect to be able to emulate the male desire for trial to trial experimentation with a sex sex uh partner without being becoming prostitutes who are are a different order have a different kind of problem entirely so that generalization about the biology of male and females May to some extent be a function of the society whether or not it's before the pill or after the pill and what the attitude toward techn technological devices like that is in different societies um men are rendered very aggressive by the testosterone that also makes them sexual that's a f biological fact about men that the testosterone makes them both lidly eager and very aggressive women depending more on estrogen and proes are not like that and so that would be one reason another additional reason why the men would be eager for sex and the woman uh would be more reluctant COI and not ready simply to be available um and worried about the future because they would be the ones who would have the babies and they're more nurturing because they're less aggressive they for they're more suitable for bringing up babies but men can learn how to do that too it's just that in the state of nature that's how the biology would seem to fall out you want to go Ahad yes um I wanted to talk about and that's the sensuous and the passionate and staying in love being in love and uh falling in love so are we going beyond that now uh yeah I wanted to talk about the first myth we haven't gotten today go ahead um on page 20 I don't know if everybody has the same book but um you bring up a point about I'm not sure how to say this person's name La ruk um den no wa L rash Fuko yes oh I know there's D roual who wrote a book called love in the western world no uh this uh is the Duke de L FCO who wrote in the 17th century uh about um life and sex and love and was very witty and one of the things I quote there uh yes what he says is that some people would never have fallen in love if they had not heard about it yeah and you say that in a sense you think this is true of everyone yeah love is a concept that we conru and then try to fix fix it to experience and if you didn't have the concept that might be you might never have that kind of experience I kind of I feel like that it also plays in a different way and because of you do talk about how we are systematically mislabeled by the fables that present love is Magic and I think almost by being fed all of this magic and all of this oh love is such a grand explosion that you're going to feel all these amazing things and you're just going to automatically be you know attracted to this person and all of this stuff that that actually could prevent some people from falling in love because everyone's always waiting for this stuff to happen that never actually does and so in a way maybe we don't experience love because of that as well the point point in the history of ideas and for this you really would have to slog your way through the 14400 pages um there is a literary poetic also um novelistic in novels tradition in which they talk about falling in love falling in love falling in love and um people sometimes say I'm thinking now a 12th century um sort of novel in verse um called um a aaas it's a story of Da and anas and the young girl saying um um what is this thing called love everybody talks about it and I've never experiencing anything like that and it's true in the Poo stage young kids for instance call you know mush you have no tolerance with the idea of people falling in love right because they haven't experienced it their hormones haven't brought them to that stage of development but um the girl says that and the mother says well um you won't know what it is until it hits you when it hits you you will be surprised and then she describes all of the changes that take take place when you do fall in love now first of all notice that this already presupposes a biological firmament foundation for it but it becomes the basis of literature and people in an intermediary stage young girls for instance who may be slow to develop or young boys like me who I was very slow to develop uh sexually um you read about this and you think you know what what is it this I'm missing I wonder you know but I feel like what you know what it is why am I somehow or or or something wrong with me and this they they talk about love so much what is it and then finally you you carry out the myth in yourself but I feel like that idea of Love is such a cultural thing and kind of just a result of our society that idea that love is this General thing but I think think without if that didn't exist we would still all feel some sense of love we all have we all have some sort of innateness to love and to be loved but that doesn't necessarily mean that we would feel it in the way that society says oh well you hold hands with the person and you you know those are like those things are result of what we know that love is supposed to be do any you know who darthy parker was she uh wrote in the 1920s and 30s and was one of the wittiest people who ever lived she had her own column in the New Yorker and all sorts of places she's was a very very witty very very witty writer um and and daring and this is one of one example that comes to mind um um um you can you can take a you can take um you can take a hortic culture but you can't make her drink you know you can take a w you can take a horse to culture but you can't take a horse to water but you can't make a drink this way of fooling you because you think she's talking about horiculture but she's talking about a word with that was a little taboo then right uh that's typical I there's a poem of hers there's a poem of hers uh many I wish I could think of some other witty things Wittier even than that um um that I wish I could remember but it's about love is Love Is a thing that is always wonderful love is a beautiful experience I'm just inventing the the lines she writes it as a short poem uh love is uh a constant Joy uh and finally love is a a joyous form of mania and I am Maria of Romania R Marie do you ever heard Maria of Romania was the queen of Romania at that time right in other words only a crazy person would talk this way about love right the idea that everyone experiences it is what she's ridiculing and I think it probably is not true that just without having read anything or heard anything about it that everyone is going to have this loving experience of Love or falling in love I'm think there must be millions of peasants in the world who illiterate people who never fell in love with anybody um they married they had families they had sex but they wouldn't wouldn't have fallen in love I think that's my point exactly is that they don't fall in love in the sense of love as we know it just because that doesn't mean that the love of oh I love you so much because you know you do all sorts of great things to me that doesn't mean that that's the only thing that love is all right so falling in love is not Universal right but there may be other kinds I don't know that there do you think everyone has a finds love lots of people don't you might say that's sad um I see people in the street all the time and think uh this one or that one looks as if it's never been a moment of love in his or her life we may all be capable of it but it doesn't mean that in every society everyone is going to realize that life has no meaning without love would be a very sad thing to say because but there are many sad people in the world exactly because you can exist without loving you can still have your life and many things that you do that are important and could affect others but that doesn't mean you have to love psychiatrists regularly get patients who have been so abused and maltreated when they were young and maybe afterwards or different patients who were abused and Mal treated by their society by the world and maybe people who have been abused Mal Tre by both and who don't have any fire of inspiration who are just ordinary people without terrible terribly exceptional cortical ability who have never experienced love they don't agree with your example there though cuz you find like I don't agree with the example there you can always find some like abnormal psychology person you know doesn't experience something because of their past but I mean I think people on a whole are I don't think you need to introduce the concept of love in order for when you say abnormal psychology mean you mean it's a tiny minority making such an exception I think he's trying to say that you're just making such an exception right now it's not true of almost everybody yes I think well we don't I don't know I mean that would take some research which you can do because what I think what I'm trying to say overall is that in most people should are capable of of feeling love in any in some sort of sense regardless if they had known about it or if they had you know been shown with it they don't want nobody wants the capacity who want the realization but even if maybe your circumstances don't allow you to be in the position to where you can fall in love or when you love a thing or love you know anything but I think that as humans that is one of the things that distinguishes us oh I'm not denying that it exists among human beings and that we have the capability of loving oh I believe no but who can deny that that's it seems to me to be a trism but it seems to me that just because you know that and if you include one kind or another yes this is a common phenomenon and it'll be different with us from it is from what it is with animals um animals I'm sure love as much as we do but they do it in such a different way that we don't recognize it um there is um that term that I mentioned last time instead of sympathy I ought to get I picked it up in an article by somebody and I liked it and so I developed it made a big thing out of it in one of my books uh instead of a a mother cat doesn't feel sympathy for her kitten but doesn't mean that she doesn't love it she shows her feeling through bodily contact she doesn't sympathy means having feelings you know oh poor thing or that you got a boo boo or your the mother shows love to the human child through language and through Concepts and through these uh very complicated system of feelings like what we call sympathy which are also need of analysis and which I give analysis to in my most recent books so I don't think I or maybe I get into sympathy here I'm not sure uh in any event it continued over a period of many years with me uh that's something human uh cats don't go around moaning and they don't have language they don't have Concepts but uh they make contact and show their love for the for their baby by making it accessible to them uh looking at them touching them feeling them um uh the word let's see instead of sympathy this person whose term I picked up uh was uh syphy Sy Sy I I'll try to remember look it up for you next time it's um it's a bodily equipment making contact through the body rather than through words or feelings so it's not just human beings who love but the other animals do in different ways that we hardly understand and we do it in a great panoramic way remember I'm a pluralist so there isn't any one definition for the word love I never give a definition for love is not it isn't just one thing it's a gamut that's very important in life as we know it and so my job as a humanist pluralist um non-reductive philosopher is to see the different aspects the different ways in which something could be called a phenomenon of love and then to make sense out of that I'll give you an example people in fact This was um it came out in that Symposium there was a very nice Jesuit priest who wrote a paper about about me oh no well there were there were nice Jesuit P priests but I think this woman is not a Jesuit actually I forget what his order was maybe he was a polist in any event he criticized me because he said um I talk very fervently and with great appreciation of what I call the love of things that will come into your reading if it hasn't already um and he said that isn't love um only God can be loved and we love God because uh God is a person and we love other persons because they are created in the image of God so the only true love has to be a love of persons you can't have a love of things and I and we argued and it comes out in what you'll be reading based on my commentary my the uh um uh my reply to my um friendly commentators and my reply to my critics and friendly commentators remember I told you that'll come up in the reading later on so I defend my idea of the love of things but um to me that is that is an authentic love and has to be cultivated if you're a carpenter you love those tools you depend on them you get to understand them there's the kind of love I have for my computer like all love it's based on my self-interest because I I'm dependent on it I need it but also it it's become a kind of collaborator of mine it gives me ideas sitting in the way my teaching with you which one reason I love teaching at MIT because I can have students like you is that it elicits ideas for me it gives me a sense of life and I then I'm able to be sometimes be creative that way well computer is like that you're not things only you're also persons the computer is just a thing I'm not going to say the computer is a person but when I think about human beings they are both persons and things and that was the basis of my reply to the priest uh very lovable man I like lik them very much um my reply was if you're a human being you are a person but there are no persons who are human beings who aren't also things that's what is so special about us we are both things and persons our thingness comes to us through our body and if you don't love your body you can't love yourself and if you don't love yourself you can't love in the way that a person loves so that for us there is an Inseparable love of body and love love of things and and love of persons and that's definitive of human nature and I don't know with other species one might have to say something different but for me the love of persons is a crucial but that can't be separated from a love of bodies and that's why um that's another thing that comes into the analysis at some point the caring love is caring caring for for and caring about and caring for do you know the movie um The Elephant Man or clay it was a terribly def figured person that Anthony Hopkins is a doctor in 19th century England tries to help and he's so hideous that he would never appear in public or covered and at the same time he had a very sensitive refined Soul so was a terrible tragedy that his appearance was so grotesque um in the sense of the variation on Beauty and the Beast he was both simultaneously had a beautiful soul and and a beastly grotesque appearance because of some anatomical abnormality uh in one place in one part of the movie at least he is profected by a couple of U actresses and and who are very much struck by his sensitivity uh and they are Shakespearean actors so he reads Shakespeare and he discusses it with him and at one point he discusses Romeo and Juliet and he says to them in his halting way because of his def defigurates Juliet and they said oh no he was tremendously in love with her he why do you say that and that's the whole point of the play and he said well I know he cared for her but he didn't take care of her he didn't care about her and that and the the actresses are stunned by the wisdom of that comment and it's very profound distinction if you love somebody it isn't merely this personal relation but you take care of that person which means the body you worry about her condition you worry about her needs about her her bodily as a body not just as sex object or the body the uh that's beautiful so that you love her as a beautiful person you love her as a thing the way the carpenter loves his tools and the way that one can love one's computer because there's such wonderful they are things that live in their own domain and have to be taken care of as such you can't love your tools you just throw them around and let them get out in the rain and and Rusty you show your love for your tools by taking care of them and caring about them and you love your body uh not by eating what comes to mind but taking care of your body right and that's love that kind of love is for me very important in understanding love and General and that was my argument against the priest that somehow you you believe in a spiritual love which is pure spirit and I don't think of spirit that way I think of spirit as incorporating all human values including the ones that involve the love of of the body it's not a deep you know de deared one the way God is pure spirit and you experience love only if you have love of God as a pure Spirit otherwise it's a pagan idolatry if you make a Graven image and fall in love with that well if you think of God as that Graven image that I think is is not very commendable but if the reason for not loving Craven images you know Idols is because they are things but God is pure Spirit then we part compy I don't know I've never experienced pure spirit I don't know what I would be like to have pure spirit I know what it's like to be spiritual because people in their body are able to transcend their bodies and even sacrifice them s out of love for another person which means that person has a body who wants to live that's a spiritual wonderment and the value I can understand but pure spirit I can't understand because it makes this separation between the love of persons and the love of things and I want to analyze those and so a good deal of my life goes into that kind of approach rather than any cut and dry defici of definition of what love is uh is this relevant isn't it or have I been carried away I think slightly carried away okay well then you can always stop me okay no it's okay have we had enough for today it's after 5: why don't we stop