Hey, Peter. Haven’t seen you around for a while.
Just needed a break to organize my thoughts. Nice to know I was missed.
The love I’m talking about is the feeling that two people have for one another that makes them want to commit to each other for a lifetime.
So it is your firm belief that feelings provide solid (and best) grounds for decision making, especially where lifelong commitments are involved?
Personally, I prefer the notion that humans are rational beings, meaning that emotions generally should not be the determiners where important decisions and serious future consequences are at stake.
The point being that sound judgement is a far better method for arriving at critical decisions than mere feelings. I’ve always operated under the considered opinion that “what is best” does not equate to “what I feel like.” Call it the benefit of hindsight, but it is pretty clear to me that doing what I feel like has more often than not led to far less than optimal outcomes – well, at least until I became the thoughtful creature that I am
It is also pretty clear that love (in the robust sense of the word) is more than a mere “feeling” about another person. What love essentially means is willing the good for the beloved, and that good may, in fact, be in conflict with feelings that might or might not be present.
It always strikes me as odd that people such as Z would prefer it was removed from the equation (they’re not like us!) even to the point where Z insists it isn’t a consideration. When it is, in fact, the prime consideration.
I think you are misrepresenting Z here. I suspect her point is that feelings may or may not be helpful in arriving at the best possible decision when the lives and futures of others are on the line. Feelings do not necessarily provide the benchmark for accurately and seriously assessing what the good for others is. Certainly, what we “want” for them could very well be tainted by feelings which may to a greater or lesser degree amount to self-concern.
Relying on the presence of feelings alone, without a means by which to assess the feelings in terms of appropriateness and alignment to the REAL good for the beloved, leaves no gauge except the strength of the feelings alone as the metric for determining whether the feelings really are about the good for the beloved. It would appear that what is good for the beloved is quite a different matter than the mere feelings which might arise with respect to them.
On this point, I am firmly of an Aristotelian mindset. Feelings are like wild animals and need to be properly and consistently trained by reason and good judgement over a lifetime otherwise they can become quite unruly, chew on the wiring, knock over the lampstand and, generally, make interior life quite intolerable.
Try getting her to admit that she loved her husband deeply when they were first married (and hopefully still does) should be so easy but she thinks it detracts from her argument so you get the ridiculous situation of, if not denying it, then not acceding to it.
If you can’t be honest about your own relationships, or the basis for everyone else’s, then I don’t think you’re in a position to expect that your arguments in this regard are going to carry any weight.
Oh, I don’t know. I think, again, that you are not quite getting her point. She wouldn’t - likely - deny that she “loved her husband deeply when they were first married,” but more likely that she loved him all the more deeply because her feelings were in line with and supported by her careful and considered judgement. To ignore good judgement for the sake of feelings alone would be a grave error, no?
Again, as an Aristotelian, I would back her position. Relying on feelings alone as the uiltimate determiners for our decisions and actions – in particular where the well-being of others is involved – is a recipe for heartbreak.
You can’t seriously be proposing that feelings should take precedence over sound judgement where things like lifelong commitment and the well-being of others is at stake, are you?
