“I Sometimes Think That If Love Didn’t Exist, What Would People Talk About Otherwise? Love Is One

“I sometimes think that if love didn’t exist, what would people talk about otherwise? Love is one of the strongest subjective feelings that exists. Everyone’s always known that - it’s why in books, in plays and tragedies, you have love as the driving force. You must take an interest in all that appears as the great passions of humanity - which means the big commitments of human subjects which, for whatever reason, go beyond man’s immediate concerns. It’s in these great passions that mankind creates its future, and it’s there that it can get out of its present state and create something new. So, it’s something that deserves to ask that simple question: where are we today with this question of love? Today, it’s necessary to defend love. Love is the most powerful way known to humanity to have an intimate relationship with another. It places you in a state of dependence on another. Which is something that is fundamentally against modern individualism. If the sole motivation for human action is to satisfy one’s wishes and interests, which is after all the dominant idea of the modern world. If that is humanity, then love can indeed be seen as a danger. We should be wary of love, and in particular, what happens on dating sites, where we try to guarantee a romantic encounter in advance by ensuring that anyone you meet is just like you; they have the same tastes, the same wishes and the same determination. I think that goes against the very definition of love. Because it means there’s no element of adventure, no risks are taken - mutual satisfaction has to be guaranteed, like some kind of business contract - and that I think is a serious threat to love. You need to defend love as a real, risky adventure against this individualistic, even egotistical vision. Because the truth is that love can’t be reduced to individualistic egoism. Love is, in a way, a lesson in courage. In arranged marriages there is no risk. The same with dating sites. You try to avoid risk. Avoiding risk by calculating how to maximise a relationship with another. I think that all creation, all truth with any real significance, is always linked to an event. Anything else is just a normal consequence of the everyday world. It’s neither a creation nor an invention, just a continuation. What does it mean to start something? If you want to consider something beginning, you have to consider there is an element of chance. If there isn’t chance involved, then it’s not a start because it’s something that already exists and is pre-determined. So when I focus on risk, I focus on the fact that love, as a creation, as an invention, is closely linked to a meeting. A meeting which is risky. And can be a meeting with people from completely different worlds. It’s precisely because of the role that chance plays that love can have a creative dimension that is really interesting and universal. True love, intense love, makes possible what was previously impossible. The modern individualist world is a world which presents humanity as a collection of single entities. Each is ‘one’. In its purest sense love is this passage from one to two in the experience of life itself. Love creates a perspective and an existence in the world which is not from the point of view of ‘one’ because it is the perspective of ‘two’. The passing from one to two is a revolution. A great revolution. It’s as if we are putting things in perspective, as if suddenly the world has an extra dimension. And it’s an absolutely fundamental experience because it shows us, makes us realise, that the truth of the world is in fact sustained by the multitudes, not by the atom that is you personally. Many people give up love. People don’t understand clearly enough that love is a creation. A modern tendency, when there’s an obstacle is to let go and move on to something else. If we settle on the idea that as soon as something is hard we have to give it up, we will settle for an uninteresting life. I don’t deny the existence of love’s sadness. Abandonment or disappointment can be terrible emotions. But if, because of this pain, you renounce love, then you reject the greatest experience of another that you can have in your existence. 'All that is true is rare and difficult’ Unfortunately, that is true.”

— French philosopher Alain Badiou on love