What is LOVE?

Misconceptions of Love:
1. Romance.
2. An act of possessing and on being possessed by another
person.
3. Synonymous with sex
4. Love is blind and lovers do not see
Erich Fromm, “The art of Loving”

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.
Loneliness and Love

• Experience of love begins from

the experience of loneliness.

• Man’s natural tendency is to

seek out his fellow adolescents
for understanding and
acceptance.

• It is in the barkada that an

individual finds EQUALITY
Resorts:
1. Drinks and Drugs or any form of heightened
sensation.

2. Being busy with creative activity

Answer to the problem of loneliness:

LOVE
The reaching out to the other person as an other.
 WHAT IS THE APPEAL OF 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.
Response to the Appeal of the other
If the appeal of the other is himself, the appropriate
response to that appeal is MYSELF.

• 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.
• Love necessitates a personal knowledge of the other.
• Love presupposes respect
Reciprocity of Love

 In love I renounce the motive of promoting

myself.
 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.
What if I get rejected?
• 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.”
Creativity in Love:

 When love is reciprocated, it becomes fruitful.

 What is created in love is a being-togetherness,
a “we”
 A creation of a new world –
OUR WORLD
Union of Love

 The we that is created in love is the union of persons

and their worlds.
 The union of love 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
The Gift of Self

Love is essentially a gift of self.

OVERALL, LOVE IS SHARING

MYSELF TO THE OTHER.
The Gift of Self

WHY DID I CHOOSE YOU AND NOT

SOME PARTICULAR OTHER?
Love is essentially a gift of self.
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.
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.
Equality in Love

 If love is essentially between persons,

then it follows that love can only thrive
and grow in freedom.

 There exist an equality of persons in

love, the equality in what they are, as
subjects, as freedom, and not in what
they have.
Love is total, eternal and sacred

LOVE 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 IS TO BE PRACTICED
LOVE IS SACRED, the persons involved in love are unique, irreplaceable
RATHER THAN TALKED
beings and as such are valuable in themselves.

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