M. Now we see that the loves of all these writers were entirely libidinous. There have arisen also some among us philosophers (and Plato is at the head of them, whom Dicaearchus blames not without reason) who have countenanced love.
The Stoics, in truth, say, not only that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty.
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire, without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free from all lust: but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which I am now speaking. But should there be any love—as there certainly is—which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such as his is in the Leucadia—
“Should there be any God whose care I am—"
it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous pleasure.
“Wretch that I am!”
Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,
“What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?”
He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses: then how tragical he becomes!
“Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat’ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!”
He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love: he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.
“Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?”
He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to anything else, as if he himself had not said and committed these shameful things from lust.
The Stoics, in truth, say, not only that their wise man may be a lover, but they even define love itself as an endeavor to originate friendship out of the appearance of beauty.
Now, provided there is any one in the nature of things without desire, without care, without a sigh, such a one may be a lover; for he is free from all lust: but I have nothing to say to him, as it is lust of which I am now speaking. But should there be any love—as there certainly is—which is but little, or perhaps not at all, short of madness, such as his is in the Leucadia—
“Should there be any God whose care I am—"
it is incumbent on all the Gods to see that he enjoys his amorous pleasure.
“Wretch that I am!”
Nothing is more true, and he says very appropriately,
“What, are you sane, who at this rate lament?”
He seems even to his friends to be out of his senses: then how tragical he becomes!
“Thy aid, divine Apollo, I implore,
And thine, dread ruler of the wat’ry store!
Oh! all ye winds, assist me!”
He thinks that the whole world ought to apply itself to help his love: he excludes Venus alone, as unkind to him.
“Thy aid, O Venus, why should I invoke?”
He thinks Venus too much employed in her own lust to have regard to anything else, as if he himself had not said and committed these shameful things from lust.
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.34
When I am not making cheap excuses for myself, I have to admit how almost all the problems of my life revolve around extreme passions derived from disordered judgments, and why the most cringeworthy of these anxieties are ultimately about the selfish entanglements of romantic love.
I try to defend this, of course, by insisting that love is a noble and glorious thing, but I know on the inside how I am really just talking about various forms of lust, whether for physical or emotional gratification. As soon as I say that it can’t be helped, and I elevate my suffering to the status of some honorable burden, I must bow to the deeper truth of what Cicero, and the Stoics, are trying to teach me.
Once again, it is a shame that I use the term “love” so broadly and lazily, confusing a dazed feeling that “comes over me” with a deliberate act of the will: “falling” in love has brought me despair, while choosing to love has been my redemption. If professional definitions can be so precise, why do our moral distinctions lag so far behind? The difficulty is in our thinking, not in any complexities of the subject matter.
Songs, films, poems, and novels about the power of the love, along with the grief from the broken hearts that follow, surely have their place, yet they will only rub salt in the wound when my soul is already in disarray. Self-pity is hardly the right medicine for the illusion of irreparable loss.
Be a lover, but don’t be lecherous. Once we bicker about the technicalities, we are forgetting how the purity of the intent is the deciding factor, and I can finally understand something of why Justice Potter Stewart didn’t wish to get caught up in defining pornography, even as he clearly knew it when he saw it.
I, too, have found myself blaming God for cursing me with love, quite oblivious to the fact that God also gave me the power of reason to determine my own actions. I, too, have begged for some sort of magical intervention, only to learn the hard way that relying on the fickle nature of the passions, and the inconstancy of fortune, is a sure path to misery.
No, Apollo won’t be bothered to satisfy my lusts, because he is occupied with something greater, and Venus won’t quench my desires, because she is too busy tending to her own. I have made my own bed, and now I have to lie in it.
When I am not making cheap excuses for myself, I have to admit how almost all the problems of my life revolve around extreme passions derived from disordered judgments, and why the most cringeworthy of these anxieties are ultimately about the selfish entanglements of romantic love.
I try to defend this, of course, by insisting that love is a noble and glorious thing, but I know on the inside how I am really just talking about various forms of lust, whether for physical or emotional gratification. As soon as I say that it can’t be helped, and I elevate my suffering to the status of some honorable burden, I must bow to the deeper truth of what Cicero, and the Stoics, are trying to teach me.
Once again, it is a shame that I use the term “love” so broadly and lazily, confusing a dazed feeling that “comes over me” with a deliberate act of the will: “falling” in love has brought me despair, while choosing to love has been my redemption. If professional definitions can be so precise, why do our moral distinctions lag so far behind? The difficulty is in our thinking, not in any complexities of the subject matter.
Songs, films, poems, and novels about the power of the love, along with the grief from the broken hearts that follow, surely have their place, yet they will only rub salt in the wound when my soul is already in disarray. Self-pity is hardly the right medicine for the illusion of irreparable loss.
Be a lover, but don’t be lecherous. Once we bicker about the technicalities, we are forgetting how the purity of the intent is the deciding factor, and I can finally understand something of why Justice Potter Stewart didn’t wish to get caught up in defining pornography, even as he clearly knew it when he saw it.
I, too, have found myself blaming God for cursing me with love, quite oblivious to the fact that God also gave me the power of reason to determine my own actions. I, too, have begged for some sort of magical intervention, only to learn the hard way that relying on the fickle nature of the passions, and the inconstancy of fortune, is a sure path to misery.
No, Apollo won’t be bothered to satisfy my lusts, because he is occupied with something greater, and Venus won’t quench my desires, because she is too busy tending to her own. I have made my own bed, and now I have to lie in it.
—Reflection written in 1/1999
IMAGE: Giulio Romano, The Lovers (c. 1525)
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