Kant & Love

Ivan lyer has a beautiful Kantian understanding of love.

- Ivan Iyer 

There are many ideas around love, and much has been said on the subject. What I wish us to briefly meditate upon here, is the idea of love as something inexplicable or unreasonable.

I suggested to a friend a while back that he didn’t need to be somebody else in order to be loved by the girl whom he adored, because the reasons why he loves her, and the reasons why she may (or may not) love him, are equally inexplicable. Sure, one can list the things that one likes (or loves) about someone: her intelligent eyebrows, a lonesome grey tooth, a piercing intellect, a lightning-like voice… But, is this why I love my beloved; or am I simply describing things I love about my beloved, with the reason why I love her still being unexplained? Accordingly, I argued that there is nothing one can do to be loved by a specific person. One is who one is, and one hopes for the best – that one is loved inexplicably, without reason, simply for who one is (which may not always be reducible to what one is).

But is this correct? Or, do I definitively recognize why I love the one whom I love? And what is it to love for no reason at all; what sense can be made of that philosophically?

Let me offer a suggestion by way of Immanuel Kant’s theory of pure aesthetic judgment.

Kant’s idea of the Pure Aesthetic Judgment