On a criticism of union theories of love

On some union models of love, like Robert Nozick’s, our well-being extends to include our beloved: good and bad things happening to our beloved count as happening to us.

A standard criticism of the union models (I first saw it in Jennifer Whiting’s criticism of Aristotle) is that we end up pursuing the other’s good not for their sake but for our own, since their good is a part of our well-being.

This criticism seems to me to only apply if one adds to such a union model the thesis that our actions are always solely in pursuit of our own good. But such a thesis leads to the problem that we don’t pursue other people’s good for their own sake independently of the union of love. The criticism, thus, is not a criticism of the union model of love, but of an egoistic theory of motivation.

The fact that the other’s good is a part of my good does not entail that I pursue the other’s good because it is my good. After all, we sometimes do things that we know benefit us but do them for reasons other than the benefit to ourselves. If after adding up the scores, I see that I am the winner of a game, my announcing the scores benefits me. However, I do not announce them because this benefits me, but because it’s the truth.

It is true that if I were omnirational, and if my own good were not excluded by a higher-order reason, then whenever an action benefited me, that benefit would be a part of my reasons for the action. But that is not objectionable: on the contrary, it is a part of the charm of love that the lover acts not just for the sake of the beloved but also for their own sake. That fact helps make the lover’s generosity not be a demeaning condescension.

Perhaps the criticism comes from a deeper mistake about love, the mistake of thinking that when we act lovingly, then typically the love is itself a part of the reasons for the action. For if the love is constituted by the other’s good being included in mine, and if the love is a reason for the action, then it does seem that when I act because of the love, I act because of the other’s good being included in mine. However, typically when we act lovingly, we do not act because we love. If my friend needs help, helping them is loving, but to reason “I love, so I should help” is to think a thought too many. Instead, one should just reason: “They need help.” My antecedent love makes it more likely that I will act on that reason, and my acting on that reason is partially constitutive of the continuation of the love, but the love is not itself the reason. After all, imagine that five minutes before finding out that my friend needed something, I stopped loving them. That would be no excuse not to help!

In fact, it seems to me that the best kind of union model would say something like this: What makes it be the case that my beloved’s good is a part of my good, what makes my beloved be “another me”, is the fact that I am pursuing my beloved’s good for their own sake. In other words, one could hold that love is constituted by union, but the union is constituted by pursuit of the beloved’s good.

Love and deontology

Sometimes it wrongs a person to intentionally do them what is known to be in their own best interest. If by torturing you for 60 minutes I can prevent you from being tortured in the same way for 70 minutes by someone else, it may be in your best interest that I torture you. But it is still wrong for me to torture you. Cases of this sort can be multiplied, though of course only deontologists will find any of them plausible.

(One can also analyze these cases as ones where the action is wrong because it is a violation of the agent’s own human dignity. I think the actions are violations of the agent’s own dignity, but they are violations of the agent’s dignity because they wrong the other party.)

These are cases where your action wrongs someone but causes them on balance benefit. This means that to be wronged does not entail being on balance harmed.

Here is how I think we should think of these cases. The true ethics is an ethics of love: I should love everyone. But benevolence is only one of the three fundamental aspects of love, with the other two being union and appreciation. To wrong someone is to violate one or more of the three aspects of love. If I intentionally do something that is known to be in your best interest, I do not violate the benevolence aspect of love. But I may violate one of the other two aspects. In the cases I am thinking of, like torture, the act is an affront to your human dignity, and by affronting your human dignity I am directly acting against the appropriate kind of unitive relationship between human beings—hence, I violate the unitive aspect of love.

It may seem, however, that these are cases where I have a real moral dilemma. For if I refuse to do the act, then it seems I am violating the benevolence of love. But this is mistaken. To fail to be benevolent is not to oppose benevolence. Some cases are obvious. If I fail to be benevolent to you because someone just as close to me has a greater need, I may have done something not in your best interest, but I have not violated the benevolence of love. Now, if I intentionally did to you what was not in your best interest because it was not in your best interest, then I have violated love.

A Trinitarian structure in love

On my view, love has a three-fold structure:

• benevolence
• appreciation
• union.

This three-fold structure has certain Trinitarian parallels. The Father is the benefactor: he gives being to the Son and thereby to the Holy Spirit. The Son admires the Father, is the Logos that reflects upon the Father’s goodness. The Holy Spirit unites the Father and the Son.

Contraception, liturgy and self-giving

Alice has a paper due the day after Thanksgiving. She’s already gotten all the extensions she can, and she can’t get it done except by working through Thanksgiving. She is thinking of not going to the big Thanksgiving dinner that her grandfather organizes every year, even though it brings together relatives she hasn’t heard from for a long time, has much warm family fellowship, and great food. But then she has an idea: “It’s better to attend distractedly than not at all. The table is big and my laptop is small, so I can easily put my laptop beside a plate, and then I can write all the way through dinner and finish my paper. And I’m good at multitasking, so I can still have an ear out for interesting bits of conversation, and occasionally I can put a forkful of food in my mouth or make a friendly remark to someone. It would be permissible for me to skip the dinner completely, and this is better than skipping it.”

Bob has a major exam on Wednesday. It is his habit to attend Mass daily, both for the spiritual benefits and because there is an incredible organist. He could skip Tuesday Mass, but reasons much as Alice does: “If I skip Mass, I get none of the spiritual and musical benefits. I’ll just bring my tablet, sit in the back pew so the bright screen doesn’t disturb anybody, study hard and I’ll at least get some of the benefits of Mass. After all, there is nothing wrong with my skipping Tuesday Mass, and this is better.”

Alice is being obtuse about human relationships and Bob doesn’t understand the kind of participation the Mass requires. There are some activities that one should give oneself pretty completely to—or not do them at all.

What if Bob says something like this? “But I go to Mass on many days when I’ve already spent hours working hard, and I’m really exhausted, and barely able to pay any attention to what the priest says. There is nothing morally wrong with attending Mass on days like that. But today I’m still fresh, and multitasking today I can participate at least as well as singletasking on a bad day.” And Alice can say something very similar—after all, very tired people can go to Thanksgiving dinner, too.

But that’s still not an excuse. For when one goes to Thanksgiving dinner or Mass, one should give oneself to it as much as one can (within some reasonable limit of what counts as “enough”). Both Alice and Bob are going to be deliberately withholding themselves from participation. But on the days when they attended while really tired, they weren’t doing that—they were giving what they could (it would be different if Bob ran a marathon in order to be too tired to follow the Gospel reading!).

Now, consider a common response to John Paul II’s argument that contraception is wrong because it deliberately blocks the total self-giving in sex. “Granted, contraception blocks an aspect of the union as one body. But a partial union is better than no union at all, and a couple is morally permitted to refrain from union for good reasons.” But that’s like Alice’s and Bob’s initial argument. And there is a case that can be made that sex is a liturgical kind of act, akin to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass, and that in these kinds of liturgical acts one can’t participate while blocking an aspect of one’s participation—one needs to give one’s all, or not at all. It is better not to have sex at all than to have it while blocking one’s participation.

And then there is the riposte: “But the Catholic Church says it’s permissible to have sex while infertile. And contracepted sex has in it everything that infertile sex does.” But that riposte is just like Bob’s suggestion that studying at Mass with his tablet still leaves him as much (or more!) function as attending Mass on the days when he is really tired. Yes, that’s true, but it misses the liturgical meaning of deliberately distracting oneself with the tablet.

If it is objected that sex isn’t analogous to Thanksgiving dinner or the Mass (though I think it is), we could think about the case of Carl who is a professional movie reviewer. His wife would like to have sex with him, but he needs to watch and review a boring movie by tomorrow. So he sets up a laptop by the bed, and unites with his wife while watching the movie. Ugh! It would be better not to have sex at all.

Value-of versus value-for

Some people distinguish the (non-instrumental) value of an individual's feature from the (non-instrumental) value for the individual of that feature. Ockham's razor, on the other hand, suggests we identify them. There is an interesting kind of argument from the nature of love for such an identification. Love has at least three aspects: benevolence, appreciation and pursuit of union. (For more on this, see One Body.) Love isn’t merely a conjunction of these aspects. The aspects are tightly intertwined, with each furthering the others. And the identification of (non-instrumental) value-of with value-for gives us a particularly elegant account of part of this intertwining. Appreciation is appreciation of what is valuable. When I appreciate the value of an individual, I seek to preserve and promote that value. Now when I act benevolently for an individual, I seek to preserve and promote what is of value for the individual. If the value-of and value-for are the same, then this appreciation motivates the benevolence and the benevolence is an expression of the appreciation. And a benevolence that is an expression of appreciation is a benevolence that escapes the danger of being patronizing and condescending.

On the other hand, if value-of and value-for were different, then not only would we lack this elegant intertwining, but there could be a real conflict between appreciation and benevolence. For appreciation would naturally lead me to promote the value of the beloved, which would take time away from the benevolent promotion of the value for the beloved, and conversely. The identity of value-of and value-for makes it possible for love to have an intrinsic unity between the appreciative and benevolent aspects. And union can then flows from these, since through benevolence one unites oneself to the beloved in will and through appreciation one unites in intellect.

Aquinas on why the incarnation is fitting

I find it striking and interesting that in the article where Aquinas officially addresses whether the Incarnation is fitting, his argument in favor of the fittingness of the Incarnation makes no mention of salvation. In other words, it's clear that the Incarnation would be fitting whether or not we sinned, though Aquinas is inclined to think that had we not sinned, the Incarnation would not have occurred. The focus on epistemic benefits is particularly interesting:

On the contrary, It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known; for to this end was the whole world made, as is clear from the word of the Apostle (Romans 1:20): "For the invisible things of God . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." But, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 1), by the mystery of Incarnation are made known at once the goodness, the wisdom, the justice, and the power or might of God--"His goodness, for He did not despise the weakness of His own handiwork; His justice, since, on man's defeat, He caused the tyrant to be overcome by none other than man, and yet He did not snatch men forcibly from death; His wisdom, for He found a suitable discharge for a most heavy debt; His power, or infinite might, for there is nothing greater than for God to become incarnate . . ."
I answer that, To each things, that is befitting which belongs to it by reason of its very nature; thus, to reason befits man, since this belongs to him because he is of a rational nature. But the very nature of God is goodness, as is clear from Dionysius (Div. Nom. i). Hence, what belongs to the essence of goodness befits God. But it belongs to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others, as is plain from Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv). Hence it belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and this is brought about chiefly by "His so joining created nature to Himself that one Person is made up of these three--the Word, a soul and flesh," as Augustine says (De Trin. xiii). Hence it is manifest that it was fitting that God should become incarnate.

Of course, in the next article, Aquinas does talk of the need for the Incarnation for our redemption. It's not an absolute need, but it is necessary for our redemption to be worked in a better and more fitting way (Aquinas compares it to the necessity of a horse for a journey--presumably, one could always walk, but a horse is better). In that article, Aquinas gives ten benefits for the sake of which the Incarnation was fitting in respect of our redemption. It is interesting that penal satisfaction is only one of the ten.

And then Aquinas adds: "And there are very many other advantages which accrued, above man's apprehension." How does he know? Is it just a confidence that God does many, many good things for us? Could one argue that the Incarnation of an infinite being must somehow bring infinitely many benefits, of which only finitely many will be understandable to us?

Universal love

Love contains three aspects: appreciation, benevolence and a striving for union. Suppose that we are supposed to love all human beings. In a secular context, each of the three aspects of love threatens to make the love in many cases rather anemic. It is only in a context like that of Judaeo-Christian theology that one can have a love that is both rich and universal. For let's consider the aspects severally.

Appreciation: Unless we have some picture of the human being as in the image and likeness of God, it is difficult to see that much to appreciate in a Mengele. This can perhaps be overcome if one has a robust enough notion of human nature, though perhaps that is just bringing in the image and likeness of God in a hidden way.

Benevolence: It is possible to will the good to all, as this involves a merely dispositional property. But a merely dispositional beneficence is an anemic sort of benevolence. In a religious context, however, the benevolence can act as a genuine beneficence through prayer and something like the communion of the saints.

Unitiveness: While appreciation and benevolence by themselves imply a kind of union, love's striving for union goes beyond these. But in a secular context one can't really go much beyond these in many cases. First, there is the problem of those who appear completely morally corrupt, with whom a further union would be morally problematic. In a religious context, however, the striving for union connects with eschatology. Every individual human on earth is someone with whom we can strive for eternal union in heaven (even if we believe that we won't achieve this union in every case). Second, and even more seriously, there is the problem of the billions of people with whom we simply cannot have a deeper union, because life is too short and their lives do not intersect our lives enough (for a more radical case, one might cite people in the distant past or distant future!) Again, this is overcome in a religious context, often by a potential for liturgical union—in liturgy, we are importantly united with people all over the world participating in the same liturgy—and always by a striving for a union in heaven that is prefigured by the liturgical union.

An interesting question is how the unitiveness will be realized in heaven between those who are in heaven and those who are in hell. I think here there is a kind of liturgical union, in that both those who are in heaven and those who are in hell are united in praise of God: those in heaven deliberately and explicitly so, while those in hell praise God by the value of their existence and the divine justice they exemplify. This is probably a hard saying.

---

If the above is right, then the duty of universal love can only fully come into its own in a religious context.

Evangelization, love and union

One important reason for evangelization is the beneficence aspect of love: Christians would like everyone to share in Christ's gift of new life. But a second reason for evangelization is love's striving for union. Christians would like to be united with neighbor, and thus would like to be members of the body of Christ together with the neighbor. The second reason presupposes the first. For, sometimes, the beneficence aspect of love holds us back from a union that would be harmful to the other—thus, if our company is noxious to someone we are in love with, we should sacrifice ourselves and stay away. However, the union in the body of Christ is beneficial for our neighbor, and hence the beneficence aspect of love does not hold us back here.

Is this paternalistic? Could be. But there is nothing wrong with a proper paternalism.

Care and Union

I've just posted a paper on "Care and Union" I'm presenting today at a workshop at Baylor on Nicholas Wolterstorff. A brief summary: Love minus unitive tendencies isn't agape.

Divine love and union

Is agapê just a benevolence, as on Nygren's view, or does it involve a seeking for unity? I think one way to an answer is to look at God's love as presented in the New Testament.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16) Now, the damned live forever, too, and it is not this kind of life that the text is talking about. Rather, it is an eternal life of knowing God, of living in the Father and the Son (cf. John 17:21).

God;s love is manifested in his acting that we might be reconciled and united with God. Now we can understand God.s intentions in two ways, which can be conveniently expressed by imagining God telling us of his intention:

1. I intend your reconciliation and union with God.
2. I intend your reconciliation and union with me.

Of course, "me" and "God" in these imagined speeches has the same referent, but there is a crucial difference.

On the first version, we can understand this as follows. God, being omniscient, knows that Patricia's highest good is union with God. And being loving, he intends that Patricia achieve that highest good. In this, God has an intention we can all have in the same way. We can all seek Patricia.s highest good, and we can all pursue Patricia's reconciliation and union with God. As it happens, God is the one who can pursue it most effectively. But that does not imply a difference in intention.

On the second version, however, what God pursues is Patricia's union with him, best indicated by Castaneda's quasi-indicator "him*". When we pursue Patricia's union with God, we are pursuing something essentially different from what God is pursuing.

The distinction is easy to see in other contexts. There is a world of difference between drill sergeant who wants to train the soldiers to obey him, and the drill sergeant who wants to train the soldiers to obey their superior, which in this case happens to be the drill sergeant. (The distinction would remain even if the drill sergeant necessarily was their superior.) In the case of the drill sergeant, what is preferable is that he train soldiers to obey their superior.

However, love differs here from obedience. For there is something incomplete about a husband's love if he desires merely that his wife love her spouse, reasoning, perhaps, that it is a good thing for a married person to love the spouse, and his wife is a married person, hence it is good for her to love her spouse. Granted, that is a good, and so he should desire this good for his wife. But he should, over and beyond that, desire that his wife love him*. And if his wife does not love him, it is a sign of something deeply lacking in his love for her if he is merely saddened that his wife is not a spouse-loving person.

Our reconciliation and union with God is a good thing, and being good, it is something that God pursues. But he does not pursue it impersonally. God pursues it in love, in the way that a husband loves his wife, as Scripture emphasizes. He desires our reconciliation and union with him*. I do not have a proof text for this claim. But think what would happen if in all the texts in which God lovingly, often sadly, uses the phrase "my people". Now replace this with "God's people". For instance, in Zechariah, God says: "they shall be my people and I will be their God, in faithfulness and righteousness" (8:8). Consider the replacement: "they shall be God's people, and God (or haShem) will be their God, in faithfulness and righteousness." That would still be happy news, but the lover essentially speaks in the first person, except perhaps as a joke.

Pleasure and same-sex sexual activity

1. Each kind of deeply humanly significant pleasure is a way of affectively relating to an independent deeply humanly significant kind of good in which the pleasure is taken. (Premise)
2. There is no deeply humanly significant good in same-sex sexual activity when the couple takes no pleasure in the activity. (Premise)
3. Climactic sexual pleasure is deeply humanly significant. (Premise)
4. Climactic sexual pleasure is a pleasure taken in sexual activity. (Premise)
5. If a kind P of pleasure is a way of affectively relating to an independent kind G of good, and an instance of P fails in this way to relate to an existent instance of G, then that instance is empty. (Definition)
6. It is wrong to deliberately induce an instance of a deeply humanly significant kind of pleasure when that instance is empty. (Premise)
7. If there would be no deeply humanly significant good in an activity were the activity done pleasurelessly, then the activity fails to realize an instance of an independently deeply humanly significant kind of good. (Premise)
8. Therefore, same-sex sexual activity fails to realize an instance of an independently deeply humanly significant kind of good. (By 2 and 7)
9. Therefore, taking climactic sexual pleasure in sexual activity is empty when the partners are of the same sex. (By 1, 5 and 8)
10. Therefore, climactic sexual pleasure between partners of the same sex is empty. (By 4 and 9)
11. It is wrong to deliberately induce climactic sexual pleasure between partners of the same sex. (By 3, 6 and 10)

If this argument is sound, then heterosexual sexual relations intended to induce climactic sexual pleasure are wrong when they fail to realize a deeply humanly significant independent good. What could be that independent good? Well, if it's a deliberate attempt at reproduction, then sex is wrong whenever a couple isn't trying to reproduce. But I think the the pleasure in sex is not affectively associated with a voluntary and deliberate attempt to reproduce—there is too much of the animal in the pleasure. Likewise, the couple is not simply taking pleasure in their loving relationship—they are taking pleasure in sex. (If they were taking pleasure in their loving relationship, the sexual nature of the pleasure would be unexplained, since one can have just as deeply loving non-sexual relationships, or at best explained circularly.) Rather, it is that, I think, there is a completing of a biological whole in uncontracepted heterosexual intercourse, and that is deeply humanly significant. If this completing of a biological whole is what is deeply humanly significant about heterosexual sex, then oral sex, masturbation, and the like are ruled out. Contraception may not be immediately ruled out, but is still wrong since it is contrary to integrity: the couple is acting against the biological union which constitutes the deeply humanly significant good in which the climactic pleasure is being taken.

Latin trinitarianism and the perfection of love

Oddly enough, some social trinitarians have argued that perfect being theology supports their view (see Dale's discussion). I shall argue that perfect being theology supports Latin trinitarianism very nicely.

Perfection strongly suggests the presence of perfect interpersonal love.[note 1] Therefore, perfection considerations make it plausible that there is more than one divine person exhibiting perfect interpersonal love. Moreover, love has two kinds of perfections.

The first perfection of love is that of generous giving and receiving—this is the perfection of beneficence. There, the perfection is the greater the greater the gift. The gift of divine existence seems the greatest gift possible. So, at least one divine person has an existence that is a gift of the other, and this person receives this existence gratefully. Note that in generous love, there is no need for any quid pro quo and so the love can be made mutual by gratitude. Moreover, it might be stretching our ability to know about perfection with much confidence, but it is at least plausible that for every pair x and y of divine persons, x and y are related by such giving and receiving, so that either y receives divine existence from x or vice versa (but not both at pain of vicious circularity). Interestingly, this condition is only satisfied by Christian Trinitarianism if the Catholic doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Spirit holds (otherwise, there is no such giving and receiving relation between the the Son and the Holy Spirit).

The second perfection of love is the unitive. All love involves a certain minimal union of mind and will (we try to see things from our beloved's point of view, and we are apt to particularly pursue those goods that our beloved particularly wills), and all love is directed at a union that is more than minimal, a union that is a consummation of the love. The perfection of love will be a consummated love, a love that achieves a perfect union. An absolutely perfect union of love will be one where there is the maximum of unity that still allows for the most perfect kind of love. The most perfect kind of love is interpersonal, so the union of love must maintain a distinction of persons. But, it is plausible (assuming this is at all possible), that everything else but the relations distinguishing the persons, will be in common in the perfect union of love.

In particular, the perfect union of love will, plausibly, involve one mind and one will. Not just in the extended sense in which we talk of two human beings being one mind and one will, but in the literal sense of having in common a mind that is numerically one and a will that is numerically one. (Maybe we can even get the divine simplicity claim that the mind will be identical with the will, but I don't want to insist on that at this point.) This one mind and one will is essentially indivisible, for perfect love will seek an indivisible unity.

We thus get numerically one divine ousia, including numerically one mind and numerically one will, and yet more than one person.

Interestingly, while above I took the route of perfection of union, the route of perfection of generosity can also be used here. Generosity can be perfected in at least two ways. One is with the value of the gift—a better gift is one that perfects generosity more. The other is with the intimacy of the gift-giving—with how close the gift is to the giver. Thus to give money is ceteris paribus less generous than to give an heirloom, and to give an heirloom is ceteris paribus less generous than to give a kidney. The most perfect gift will be one that is both of maximum value and of maximum intimacy on the part of the giver. The divine nature is of maximum value. There are now prima facie two ways for perfect generosity to be exhibited. One way is for the divine giver to make another God, another person with another, qualitatively identical, divine mind and will (or ousia). But this does not exhibit perfect intimacy in the generosity. That intimacy will be perfectly exhibited when the divine mind and will given are the very same divine mind and will that the giver has, when the very same life that the giver has is given to the receiver.

And it is only in a perfectly intimate generosity that reciprocation by gratitude is perfected. For the closer the gift to the heart of the giver, the more the recipient's generosity means to the giver, and when the gift is the giver's own mind and will, the giver's own life to be shared, the generosity can be a deep affirmation of the giver, and indeed is a recognition that one prefers to have one's life as gift than to have it on one's own, and that recognition is a willingness to share that is in principle generous. It is, indeed, a kind of giving back.

Objection: Social trinitarians claim to believe in the unity of God and hence will claim that their doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with everything I said above.

Response: If social trinitarianism is to be distinct as a doctrine from Latin trinitarianism, it, I think, has to claim that Latin trinitarianism posits too much unity in God. But if this claim is made, then the above argument works—for the above account posits the maximum of unity in God apart from the distinction of persons, which is precisely what Latin trinitarianism gives. Of course, if social trinitarianism (which, in general, is kind of hard to define) turns out to be compatible with Latin trinitarianism, then there might be no disagreement here at all.