“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. The more the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them friends.”
Shakespeare (Bottom, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Lovers can be notoriously irrational. But is true love irrational?
In our age, as in all ages, what passes for love is not always true. It is not true inasmuch as it exceeds—or perhaps rather it falls short of—the right measure of love as determined by reason. For without measure, a thing cannot be itself.
This is a very difficult point inasmuch as love would seem to be precisely what draws us beyond the merely rational. Isn’t it love that frees us from the bonds of the mundane, the every-day? Isn’t it love that lifts a person above what seemed the limits of what he can rationally grasp and do? Isn’t it love that can finally bring out the inner self of the repressed or the painfully rational man?
Can one experience the great power and passion of love—including an aspect that simply ‘comes’ to us, and can sweep us off our feet, opening whole new horizons before us—and at the same time find and abide in the truth or the measure that gives love its real nature?
This is a central issue in life. It is a question that must be answered—at least by the integrity of our actions and relationships, even if not by full intellectual comprehension.
There is a way to love well, and there is a way to love badly, in loving others and self. True measure in love requires discipline and self-denial. Consistently. It is this that the romantic or the great proponent of free love proverbially misses or denies. Indeed, it is what we all can miss in various ways, to our detriment and that of those we love.
To impose, or rather to discover and enact the rational measure, is not to destroy the wild and free by imprisoning it in artificial bounds. Respecting rational measure makes for love that can really be itself, though this is mysterious and perhaps beyond full rational comprehension. This is how we receive the incomparable gift of love, which is a response from deep within us to the almost overwhelming beauty and goodness of persons and the life we can share with them. For at the end of the day, love is always about the persons loved and the persons loving, according to the truth of who they are and who they can be.
We can yet become, in Shakespeare’s words, the honest neighbors that show in our own lives, whatever our state in life might be, how love and reason actually are the best of friends.
Image: detail of Romeo and Juliet by Sir Francis Dicksee (English, 1853-1928)
Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.
God is love and God is truth. The unity of Love and Truth that you perceive is quite simply a revelation of God’s nature.
Thank you Nathan.
Thank you for your insight, Dr. Cuddeback. As theology major, I’m wondering how the insight, that true love is according to the measure of reason, fits with the understanding of charity in Catholic theology. Thomas himself says that charity calls us to actions which by the measure of reason seem irrational. Therefore, it would seem that for a baptized Christian, i.e. one who possesses charity, that their love, in order to be true, would accord to the measure of charity, not merely reason. How would one resolve this?
Mary Rita,
Thank you for an excellent question. I would say this: in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas the measure of charity transcends what can be known by unaided reason. At the same time, the measure of charity is not ‘irrational’—rather it is in reality a greater fulfillment of what reason itself can see and seek. Key to understanding the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, as I’m sure you know, is how the supernatural is a fulfillment of the natural, and that it transcends without overturning the natural.
I think we can say that the Christian still strives to love according to the order of reason, being aware that the order of reason itself is now lifted up and fulfilled by the order of charity, which gives a more ultimate perspective. Again, I think a Christian bears in mind that the order of reason is not contradicted by charity, but it is raised up and given a wider horizon by its now higher root and end.
Here are a couple of quotations from the Summa theologiae that might be helpful on this:
“An affection, whose object is subject to reason’s judgment, should be measured by reason. But the object of the Divine love which is God surpasses the judgment of reason, wherefore it is not measured by reason but transcends it.” II II Q. 27, art. 6, reply to 3
“To one thing there are not several proximate measures; but there can be several measures if one is subordinate to the other.” I II Q. 19, art. 4, reply to 1
“For the affection of charity, which is the inclination of grace, is not less orderly than the natural appetite, which is the inclination of nature, for both inclinations flow from Divine wisdom.” II II Q. 26, art. 6
Mr.Cuddeback, I was wondering if you might consider doing a piece on the overuse of language that causes its meaning and the sincerity behind that meaning to dwindle. Robert Browning spoke often of how certain terms, especially to express feelings of love, have become so overused and worn that there is little that remains of the power or spirit in the word as it might be used in a moment of truth or free expression of thoughts
Anyhow thank you for your posts,
Sebastos
Sebastos, Thank you for this great request. I am going to think a bit about this, and I will plan to do so, though it might take a little time of percolation… Thanks for asking!
I can’t tell you what virtue is, but I know it when I see it. Even more so for a theological virtue.
“Pity the gods, / no longer divine. / Pity the night / the stars lose their shine.” Dana Gioia “Pity the Beautiful”