Summary of Phenomenology of Love

1. Summary of Phenomenology of Love
by Manuel Dy. For Classroom Purposes only.
Phenomenology of Love
Phenomenology is the study of experience and how we experience. It studies structures of conscious
experience as experienced from a subjective or first-person point of view, along with its "intentionality"
(the way an experience is directed toward a certain object in the world). It then leads to analyses of
conditions of the possibility of intentionality, conditions involving motor skills and habits, background
social practices and, often, language.
Experience, in a phenomenological sense, includes everything that we live through or perform. What
makes an experience conscious is a certain awareness one has of the experience while living through or
performing it.
What is love?
Foundational Premise: A philosophy of Man without a philosophy of Love is incomplete.
“Without love, you are nothing at all”
What is love? The notion of love has been asked since the time of Plato. Yet the reality of love has not
been exhausted. Love is a part and parcel of man’s life.
A. Misconceptions of Love:
1. Love is equated with romance.
-“Love is a many splendored thing.” – grandeur
- “Love hurts”
2. Love is pictured as an act of possessing and on being possessed by another person.
- “You are mine. I am yours and you can do whatever you want to me.”
-“You are who I want you to be’
3. Love is synonymous with sex.
- Being physically attracted to him/her and going to bed with him/her. Leads to the idea that
friendship is not love and when to people break up, they would still down for friendship, as if friendship
were inferior to love
4. Love is blind and lovers do not see
- Love has been equated with admiration.
Erich Fromm, “The art of Loving” – popular notion of love at present is “falling in love"
1. Emphasis on being loved rather than loving
2. Emphasis on the object loved rather than on the faculty of loving
3. Confusion between the initial state of falling in love and the permanent standing-in-love.
*people mistake the initial feeling of infatuation as love.
B. Loneliness and Love
- Experience of love begins from the experience of loneliness.
- Man as man is gifted is with self-consciousness, there comes a point in the stage of man’s life
that he comes to an awareness of his unique self and the possibilities open to him.
- His natural tendency is to seek out his fellow adolescents for understanding and acceptance.

2. C. Equality in Love
- Uniformity, sameness in actuality.
- Until this will mean oneness in difference, the person will remain lonely amidst a crowd.
Loneliness is possible even if one is immersed in the crowd. In an attempt to conform to the group and
hides one’s individuality, his loneliness eventually expresses itself as an experience of boredom.
Resorts to:
1. Drinks and Drugs or any form of heightened sensation.
Effect: to involve one’s total being in some kind of a trance reminiscent of the primitive
man’s ritual and dance.
2. Being busy with creative activity
Keeping on self-occupied with all sorts of activity to divert one’s attention from oneself,
but this is only for some time. One will eventually tire himself out.
Answer to the problem of loneliness: LOVE
 The reaching out to the other person as an other.
 Love is the answer to the problem of loneliness because it is only in love that I find at-
onement and still remain myself.
*Love is the union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality, love is an act of
power in man, a power which breaks to the walls which separate man from his fellowmen, which unites
him with others.
*Love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separatedness, yet, it permits him to be himself,
to retain his integrity.
D. Loving Encounter:
* Loneliness ends when one finds or is found by another in what we will call a loving encounter.
* Meeting of persons
* Happens when two persons or more who are free to be themselves choose to share themselves.
* Presupposes an I-thou communication
* Necessitates an appeal => the appeal of the other addressing my subjectivity
- appeal of the other = to be able to see the other’s appeal, I need more than eyes; more than mind – I
need an attitude, a heart that has broken away from self-preoccupation
- What is the appeal of the other?
1. Not his corporeal or spiritual attractive qualities since they can only gave rise to enamoredness, a
desire to be with the other.
* Once the qualities cease to be attractive, love also ceases.
* Love is more than mere infatuation, more than mere liking such and such qualities of the
other.
*The other person is more than his qualities, more than what I can conceptualize of him and
love is the experience of this depth and mystery of the other and the firm will to be for him.
2. Not an explicit request coming from the other.
*The appeal of the other is himself. The other in his otherness is himself the request. The appeal
of the other is the call to participate in his subjectivity, to be with and for him.
*The appeal of the other which is himself enable me to liberate myself from my narrow self.

3. +Compatibility is not necessarily love. Neither is submission necessarily love.
+Sometimes, refusing the request of the other may be the only way of loving the person in a
situation, if satisfying it would bring harm to the person.
E. Response to the Appeal of the other:
* If the appeal of the other is himself, the appropriate response to that appeal is myself.
* As a subjectivity, the other person is free to give meaning to his life. His appeal then to me
means an invitation to will his subjectivity, to consent, accept, support, and share his freedom.
* His appeal then to me means an invitation to will his subjectivity, to consent, accept, support
and share his freedom. Love means willing the other’s free self-realization, his destiny, his happiness. At
times it may mean refusing whatever could impede or destroy the other’s possibility for self-realization.
When I love the other, I am saying “I want you to become what you want to be, I want you to realize
your happiness freely.”
* Love is not only saying it but also doing it. It is effective, it takes actions.
* To love him implies that I will his bodily being, and consequently his world.
* Love is inseparable from care, from labor. To love the other is to labor for that love, to care for
his body, his world and his total well-being.
* Willing the happiness of the other also implies that I have an awareness although vague, of the
other’s destiny.
* Love necessitates a personal knowledge of the other.
* If love is not to become domination, it must be balanced by a certain respect, respect for the
uniqueness and otherness of the other. Respect does not mean idolizing the person; it simply
means accepting the person as he is, different from myself.
* Accepting the other is not to be taken in a static sense.
* In such a case, respect also means being patient. Patience is harmonizing my rhythm with his.
It requires a lot of waiting and catching-up, a waiting that is active, ever-ready to answer to the needs of
the other, and a catching up that is spontaneous and natural.
F. Reciprocity of Love
It seems that love is wholly concerned with the other.
G. What is the relationship between love of the other and love of myself?
* In love I offer myself to the other by placing a limitless trust in the other.
* This opening of myself to the other is in the form of defenselessness.
* There is an element of sacrifice in loving the other which is often understood by many as a loss
of self. In love I renounce the motive of promoting myself.
* The pain lies in abandoning my egoism, my self-centeredness.
* But this does not mean loss of myself, on the contrary, in loving the other, I need to love
myself, and in loving the other, I come to fulfill and love myself.
* In loving the other I have to be concerned about myself in order for my love to become
authentic. Since in the loving encounter I am offering myself to the other, the gift of myself must be first
of all valuable to myself.
* Yet this value of myself remains unconfirmed, the joy of being myself a hidden joy.
* In giving myself to the other, I discover my available self.
* There exist in loving the other the desire to be loved in return.

4. * The primary motive for loving the other is the other himself, the “You”.
* The motive in love is the “you” that is seen not only by the eyes or the mind but more by the
heart”.
* Since the “you” is another subjectivity, he is free to reject or accept my offer. This is the risk in
loving, that the other may reject or betray the self I have offered to him.
H. What happens in unreciprocated love?
@ Once cannot erase the possibility that the rejection of the beloved could be a test of
authentic love.
@ But granted that the rejection is final, no doubt that the experience is painful, and it will take
time for the lover to recover himself from the said experience.
@ Nevertheless the experience can provide him an opportunity to examine himself.
@ It can be an opportunity for self-reparation.
@ The experience of being rejected can be an emptying of oneself which would allow room in
oneself for development. Unreciprocated love can still be an enriching experience.
@ Indeed the risk and reality of love being unreciprocated proves that “there is no shop in the
world that sells love”
I. Creativity in Love:
@ When love is reciprocated, it becomes fruitful.
@ There is a distinction between loving the other and knowing him as he is.
@ Loving the other is willing the other’s free self-realization, and willing demands a making of
the other.
@ What is created in love is a being-togetherness, a “we” .
@ Concomitant to the creation of the we is the creation of a new world – our world.
J. Union of Love
@ The we that is created in love is the union of persons and their worlds.
@ The union of persons is not an objective union: when two things are united what results is a
composition or an assimilation: the two elements are no longer distinguishable from each other – they
have each lost their identities.
@ The union of love however does not involve the loss of identities. We become more of
ourselves by loving each other. This is the paradox of love, the many in one. The one in many.
K. The Gift of Self
@ Love is essentially a gift of self.
@ Love is a disinterested giving of myself for the other as other.
@ The giving is not a giving up.
@ Not the giving of the marketing character
@ Not of a virtuous character
@ To give myself is to give my will, my ideas, my feelings, my experiences to the other – in short,
all that is alive in me.
@ love is sharing myself to the other.

5. L. Why did I choose you and not some particular other?
Because you are lovable. You are lovable because you are you. I see certain value in you and I want to
enhance and be a part of that value.
M. Love is Historical
@ Love is historical because the other who is the point at issue in love is a concrete particular
person. Love is not love if it is simply love of humanity in the abstract.
@ The concrete other is not an ideal person but a unique being with all his strength and
weaknesses.
@ To love the other does not mean improving him, although in the course of the relationship it
does happen that the other becomes more of his authentic self.
@ To love is to love the other historically.
@ Love involves no abstraction. Everything in love is concrete. In contrast, loneliness, the
absence of love, lives among shadows, involves that nothing is real.
N. Equality in Love
@ If love is essentially between persons, then it follows that love can only thrive and grow in
freedom. In loving, I do not surrender my liberty and become a slave to the beloved. Love is not a
bondage but a liberation.
@ There exist an equality of persons in love, the equality in what they are, as subjects, as
freedom, and not in what they have.
O. Love is total, eternal and sacred
@ Man as a person is not a bundle of qualities and functions. As a person, he is indivisible
through time and space.
@ Love is a gift of self to the other as self cannot be total.
@ The “you” in love is indivisible and thus love is an undivided commitment to the other. It is
offered from the totality of my being to the totality of the other’s being.
@ Love is eternal. The gift of myself for the other is not for a limited period of time only. True
friendship can be broken, yet people do not become friends on the understanding that they will be
friends only for a limited time.
@ Love implies immortality. In love, we catch a glimpse of eternity. It even conquers death.
@ Love is sacred, the persons involved in love are unique, irreplaceable beings and as such are
valuable in themselves.
@ The greatest tragedy that could happen to a lover is when his trust is betrayed, when the self
that is entrusted in confidence to the other is disclosed or thrown to the public. When a confidence is
betrayed, something fine and beautiful dies.
@ Love is to be practiced rather than talked about.