INTRODUCTION: NEIGHBOURLY LOVE

In the foregoing chapters, we have analysed three views on the nature of love in which love is conceived primarily as romantic love, i.e. the sort of attitude which a lover adopts toward his or her beloved. Characteristic of romantic love in this general sense, is on the one hand its exclusiveness and on the other hand the fact that it is in some way or other associated with sexuality. The precise way in which romantic love is related to sexuality varies, as we have seen, in accordance with cultural changes and with changes in the institutional structures of society. It therefore becomes possible for us to attend to these attitudes as such, quite apart from their varying relations to sexuality. The question then becomes: what kind of attitude is this attitude called love? Is it exclusive attention to the beloved, as Ortega argues? Or is it an urge to become united with the beloved, as in mysticism? Or is it an experience of passionate suffering on account of the distance which separates the lover from the beloved, as in courtly love? Or should these rather be interpreted as complementary aspects of love as such? And could these also be complementary aspects of the love of God? We shall return to these questions again in part IV.