A word that has drifted away from its original meaning, becoming completely banalized, is “love”. Even though “love” is ever present in our vocabulary and deeply rooted in all cultures, what the word originally means has shifted a lot. We can find “love” in common expressions like, “I love kombucha” or “I love SpongeBob”, but here these locutions mean little more than “I like it a lot”. However, “Love” is at the center of most spiritual schools, and is regarded as the primordial element for world transformation. Nowadays, our cynical and nihilistic society scoffs at statements about “the love of Jesus”, or ignores the egregorial aspects of social gatherings, like raves. It’s time to clarify what Love is, and see how it relates to contemporary meaning-making structures because, ultimately, yes, love might be “the key” to finding sense in our current predicament.
It’s Not All About Eros
When people talk about love, they often think of erotic love and tie the word to the act of copulation. At first glance, the interpretation is correct: Eros comes obviously from the Greek god of love and sex. But erotic love has other etymological meanings. Eros evokes becoming one with the object of love, consuming it and experiencing the binding of oneness. You may “love” your Kombucha so much that you want to consume it all, and you may want to bind in oneness with your sexual partner. But this is not the only type of love you can experience: you don’t “love” your dog because you want to eat it or become one with it. For our purpose, let’s say Eros represents a movement exclusively from the loved object to the lover: the lover absorbs the loved.
A Reciprocal Love, or Philia
However, the Greeks identify other instances of “Love”, as those occurring around the word philia. Here, we’re talking about a reciprocal relationship between lover and object: there is a mutual completion, exchange and reciprocity. The word evokes here instances of fellowship or friendship, where the lover is in relation to the loved, but also an integral part of it. Friendships have to be shared: you cannot be friends if there is no reciprocity. So think of philia as a reciprocal movement between lover and loved object: they both participate and complement each other.
Agape, or Love of Others
The third notion advanced by the Greeks was agape, a concept central to the Christian doctrine which will impose itself on the world, later. Now, agape is a tricky one: it’s not eros or consumption and oneness with the loved; and it’s not philia or reciprocal love as in companionship. Agape refers to complete devotion to the other, an erasure of the subject in favor of the loved object. In Christianity, this movement is presented as “charity”, but it’s not our contemporary idea of charity, where a rich, fat capitalist deigns to help the groveling poor and cuts them a check for Christmas. Agape means being charitable before there is any demand for it; it means sacrificing yourself for others, living solely for them. The Christ pardoning his torturers even though they’re still laughing at him: that’s agape. We’re talking, then, of a movement that erases the lover and goes towards the object of love unconditionally.
It's the Power of Love
Christianity’s most important contribution to social and spiritual development is the use of agape to transform people's being, in the Heideggerian sense. There is no other requisite to be “close to God” than being unconditionally charitable. By erasing yourself in favor of pure agape, loving others, the person experiences liberation. Christianity was so revolutionary because it subverted traditional systems and hierarchies. Under the new religion, there is no caste system, no Priests, no Rich people: everyone is equal under God. All you have to do is “love thy neighbor” to become a Christian. Therefore, all the dispossessed, the oppressed, the minorities, migrants, beggars: they all go from being invisible and powerless, to being the center of the Christian doctrine. No wonder it caught like wildfire and took over the world!
All we need is Love
Let's add a last idea: the necessary transformation of our society’s values must revolve around agape and philia. We need to start by rejecting any reactionary, neo-Christian revival: the Church as an organization has been corrupted beyond the pale, making the institution unsavable (we talked about an example, here). So I am not, at all, endorsing some right-wing Christian-narionalist idea. However, we've also talked about contemporary Man’s anguish in the Burnout Society, and how all transcendental values have been destroyed (“God is dead”), leaving Man with productivity and capitalism as the only meaning and value system left. Everything must be reified and sold in the agora. The public square is just a glorified marketplace, and we are all brands.
In order to escape this nihilistic death spiral, we must reconnect with transcendental values, as we've been arguing. Ecstatic and awakening experiences, phenomenological purity in contact with Real reality, living Kant's ontological categories (Beauty, Good and Truth) ; these phenomenons, at the root of what it means to be truly human, are the key to lifting us out of our current meaning-lacking (not meaningless) existence.