1/ Extension of the Domain of Love

What is love? To begin, we might define it simply as a feeling of pleasure experienced either at the thought of or in the presence of the beloved. This prompts the question: what is the nature of the ‘beloved’ we refer to? Or, put differently, what can be loved?

For Kant, things cannot be loved; as mere means, they lack the dignity required to be the object of such a feeling. By contrast, persons, as ends in themselves, are capable of being loved.

The idea I propose, however, is that things can indeed be loved and that, ultimately, any content of meaning=X can serve as a potential object of love. For instance, nature, though not a person, can be loved: it is loved by the walker gazing in wonder at the forest, by the ecologist taking action to protect it, and so on. Similarly, music can be loved—by the child squeaking a bow on the violin with clumsy hands, by the virtuoso pianist interpreting Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and by the audience.
This phenomenon is commonplace: countless things appear to be loved by us, as previously noted ¹. Everything, including the absurd and even the immoral, seems to be loved by at least some individuals.

Thus, we may propose that love is not solely a relationship between two human beings, or even two minds, but rather between a mind and any content of meaning=X.

What is the nature of this relationship? At first glance, it appears to be a feeling of pleasure, seemingly aligning love closely with desire. Can these two concepts be equated? I do not believe so, and I will endeavour to explain why.

2/ The Reduction of Love to Desire

Hobbes explicitly equates love with desire: Pleasure, love, and appetite, which is also called desire, are divers names for divers considerations of the same thing. Nevertheless, he introduces a subtle distinction between the two concepts: That which men desire they are said to love, and to hate those things for which they have aversion. So that desire and love are the same thing; save that by desire, we signify the absence of the object; by love, most commonly the presence of the same ².

We might summarise this notion by suggesting that love is merely desire fulfilled. However, it becomes evident that Hobbes’ subtle distinction is insufficient to differentiate the two concepts, as he explicitly states he perceives only one. Furthermore, Hobbes’ definition of love fails to distinguish it from desire: Of love, by which is understood the joy man takes in the fruition of any present good ³.

It may be a feature of subjectivism, as we have defined it ⁴, to emphasise desire while reducing love to desire.

Indeed, Spinoza regards desire as the actual essence of man ⁵. Yet he explicitly associates desire with appetite rather than with love. He defines love, for its part, as follows: Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an external cause ⁶.
This does, however, equate desire with love if we consider that joy arises from advancing towards greater perfection and that what I desire is what I call good, evil, or perfection.
Thus, love seems to be nothing more than desire, albeit desire with a particular focus on the desired object.

1. Book II, I, B
2. Human Nature, Ch. VII
3. Leviathan, I, VI
4. Human Nature, Ch IX
5. Ethics, III, « Definitions of the emotions », 1
6. Ethics, III, prop. XIII, note