Is Love a Feeling, a Rational Action, or Both?

When one has a strong, single-minded feeling of love, it is easy to bear all kinds of trouble for the sake of love. In fact, the strength of the feeling is proved by how much trouble one is willing to undergo for the beloved. We find a good example of this in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

“This swift business,” says Prospero about Ferdinand and Miranda having fallen in love, “I must uneasy make, lest too light winning make the prize light.” But no matter how great the burden that Prospero heaves on Ferdinand, it all stays light for him: “My father’s loss, the weakness which I feel, the wreck of all my friends, nor this man’s threats, to whom I am subdued, are but light to me, might I but through my prison once a day behold this maid: all corners else o’ the earth let liberty make use of; space enough have I in such a prison.”

Ferdinand is willing to give up all other freedom and to bear all manner of trouble, if only he is allowed to behold his object of love. “There be some sports are painful,” he pronounces while bearing a log, “and their labour delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone and most poor matters point to rich ends. This my mean task would be as heavy to me as odious, but the mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead and makes my labours pleasures.”

Indeed, “these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours, most busy lest, when I do it.” Without the overpowering feeling of love, he “would no more endure this wooden slavery than to suffer the flesh-fly blow [his] mouth.” Only for Miranda’s sake is he “this patient log-man.” Miranda, in turn, being equally overpowered by feelings of love, would heartily throw herself into being a log-woman: “It would become me as well as it does you: and I should do it with much more ease; for my good will is to it.”

Shakespeare does not tell us what Miranda and Ferdinand feel for each other a few weeks or years into their marriage, but we can surmise that even wonderful Ferdinand will sometimes tire of being a patient log-man, and even flawless Miranda will find her good will falter on occasion. In other words, the overpowering feeling of love will not always be as strong as it is now. In fact, it will probably never be as strong again as in the first hours of infatuation.

Now what will Ferdinand do when he wakes up one morning and notices to his own astonishment that he finds Miranda’s morning breath unpleasant? What will Miranda do when she feels mad at him because he neglects her in favor of his political life as Prince and later, we may suppose, King of Naples? What will they do when they are no longer being carried along by amorous feelings?

The answer is that they will need to learn to walk on their own two feet. They will need to learn that feelings can only get you so far, and that at some point Reason has to take over once more. Reason would tell Ferdinand, “I don’t have an overpowering sense of love for Miranda today, but I still want her best and will do my best today to make her best happen.”

Can I Turn My “Have to’s” into “Want to’s”?

So far, this blog hasn’t exactly been my greatest priority this year, mostly due to economic challenges. But to pick up where I left off about a gazillion years ago …

Last time I said that the real “me” isn’t so much defined by my desires as by my decisions.

Obviously, one can take this too far. It would be self-destructive of me to completely deny my inclinations. I need food and water and sleep; I am a sexual being. And I like Shakespeare. No use denying that. But freedom does not just consist in being free to follow these inclinations; it also means being free to decide against them when they clash with what I perceive to be good or useful.

In an ideal world, my natural inclinations would always coincide with the good and useful. There would be no dichotomy between Aristotle’s three categories of joy, moral duty, and utility. They would be one and the same thing. And it is certainly a worthy goal to learn to “love my fate,” that is, to enjoy doing my duty and being useful.

To achieve this, I might tell myself that I really do not have to do anything. I do not have to spend time with my family, for instance. In fact, I could ditch them right now. But do I really want to? No, because I want them to have a good life. Hence I need to decide that I want to spend time with them, not merely give in because I feel that I have to spend time with them.

On that view, nothing in this life is a compulsion, because I always have the option not to do it. There is always another option, and, last of all, the option of opting out of life completely. If all else fails, I can commit suicide. But if I want to live, then I also want to do certain things that affirm life. I do not have to live. Therefore, I do not have to do anything. I want to live, and therefore I want my particular life. I love my fate.

Like the Romantic ideal of self-realization, I find the ideal of loving your fate appealing. However, it ignores the fact that I am a complex psychological being who will always have a certain ambivalence to it. That is to say, until I have reached perfect moral character (probably not in this life!), I will always have conflicting desires and will never achieve being this single-minded entity that completely loves its fate because it manages to embrace necessity and blocks out all contrary desires.

What Defines the Real “Me”: My Desires or My Decisions?

I ended my last post by saying that the desire for novelty and unfulfilled dreams can rob us of the joy of what we actually have and experience. Our desires can lead us to forsake our duties and throw usefulness to the wind.

Of course, some Romantics would say that it is better to live that way. By all means, they assert, throw your life to the wind. As long as your heart is in, it does not matter how enjoyable or morally praiseworthy or useful your life is. What counts is that you feel your life is truly yours; that you are being true to yourself. Authentic.

I must confess, I find this Romantic notion highly appealing. In the past, one feeling I’ve repeatedly had when spending time with my family was that the family man was not the real “me.” The real me, I sometimes told myself, was the artist, the intellectual, the traveller, the explorer. I tended to feel more at home sitting in an airplane 30,000 feet over the ocean than at the kitchen table with my family.

Why do I have a tendency to feel this way? Why did I sometimes feel that I left the real me at the airport when I walked through the door to my home? It certainly was not because my family was horrible. Quite the contrary, my wife and children were and still are wonderful human beings, more than worthy of my love. But I think I sometimes felt that the real me sat in an airplane rather than at the kitchen table because the one came naturally to me and the other did not.

I did not have to work at wanting to see new places. I did not have to work at being interested in literature, philosophy, history, science, art, and religion. I did not have to work at getting new ideas of what I could write, paint, or sing. Granted, not everything I wrote (and still write) was worthwhile reading, and my singing voice was (and is) definitely not worthwhile listening to, but still, my inclination toward creativity felt natural to me, no matter what the quality of the outcome might have been. And because it felt natural, it felt like it was the real me.

In contrast, sitting down to eat dinner with my family or going camping with them required a conscious effort to put the books or the crayons or the guitar aside and pay attention to those human beings who were closest to me. It was this conscious effort, this decision to say no to my natural inclinations and yes to my family, that produced the feeling of the family man not being the real me.

One could say, however, that it is precisely in those cases of a conscious decision that the real me comes forth. Sure, like any other animal, I have certain drives and dispositions. On the most basic level, I have the desire to eat and sleep and copulate, and on a more refined level, I might have the desire to read Shakespeare. But it is not my desires that make up my sense of having a self; it is my decisions that do so. Through them, I have the feeling of being a person that can act into the world. My “I,” my ego, is that part of me that decides between different options and says, “I will go this way, not that way; I will do this, not that.” If I always went with my natural inclinations, no decision would be needed. I would not need an “I,” a self, to steer my life; my life would be steered for me by my natural inclinations. I would be driven; I would not drive myself.

If I always went with my inclination to do something else rather than spend time with my family, no self would be needed to make this decision. If, in contrast, I decide against my natural inclination that it is a good thing to spend time with my family, a conscious self is needed to make this decision. In that sense, I am being more “myself” when I do something against my natural inclinations than when I simply follow them.

Loving Solitude and Being Married–A Few Reflections

In my series of posts on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I remarked last time how love willingly gives up certain freedoms, and I ended by saying that focusing too much on the freedom I have to give up for my family diminishes my love for them.

Let me make this more concrete. I have an intense drive to create things, whether books or pictures or music. Additionally, I am an avid learner who loves to soak in information, grapple with concepts, and philosophize. If only I had time, I would read all the books in the world, see half the artwork in the world, and watch every good movie in the world. Not to mention stage productions. I love culture. Much, much more than small talk. I am an introvert who would choose solitude over company most of the time. But not solitude in a single place for a prolonged period of time. Traveling and exploring new places are some of my favorite activities, as long as I can do them alone (usually at least). I am hungry for experiences. I get a thrill out of physical activities. That moment when the sweat starts pouring fills me with energy. I embrace my physical reality as much as my inner reality. I want to taste and see this world as much as I would love to taste and see a world yonder.

Now, all of these activities and dispositions have two things in common: (1) They either generate no money worth speaking of or even cost money. (2) They take a lot of time and do not involve my family.

As a husband of a stay-at-home mom and father of homeschooled children, however, I mostly need to do two things: (1) Make money to provide for them. (2) Spend time with them.

It is not surprising, then, that I sometimes feel a conflict between the freedom I desire in following my natural drive and the desire to make sure that my wife and children have a good life. What do you do about two such conflicting desires?

Some people say that you ought to arrange your life in such a way that as few conflicting desires as possible arise, meaning that someone like me, who enjoys having a large portion of solitude and a life of contemplation, maybe should not get married or have children in the first place. But while there is undoubtedly wisdom in thinking ahead and avoiding unnecessary inner conflicts, we all—for whatever reason—get into situations where we notice conflicting desires without being able to easily change the situation. In that case, it does not help to say, “You should have thought of that earlier.”

Besides, only focusing on how one may avoid conflicting desires ignores the ethical dimension of the problem. Not all my desires are good desires, and even those that are not bad in themselves (a number of thinkers have considered the love of solitude a virtue) may turn bad if taken to an extreme. Even though I may not always like getting my solitude disturbed by the presence of others, it might actually do me good. Unless, of course, I am a hedonist and do not care about moral goodness or developing my character. But as long as I affirm that there is such a thing as moral goodness and positive or negative character development, I need to be willing to hedge in some of my desires.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) said that everything I do should be either (1) something I enjoy, (2) something that is morally good or (3) something that is useful. In three words, I should construct my life around fun, duty, and practicality. If something is neither of these three, why do it? Why should I do something simply because it is in fashion, or is generally expected in my culture, or to impress others—or, for that matter, because it is some random goal I have set myself and feel compelled to fulfill, even though it is neither good nor useful nor enjoyable?

Hence, my drive toward experience and knowledge can actually be an enemy of Aristotle’s wisdom. Do I really have to read every book that pricks my curiosity? Do I really have to travel to every place that strikes my interest? No. The desire for novelty can be the undoing of joy, goodness, and usefulness. I had better accept that I cannot know everything I want, see everything I want, experience everything I want. Otherwise my desires will rob me of the joy of what I do know and see and experience. They will lead me to forsake my duties and throw usefulness to the wind.

The Fool Says in His Heart, “There is No God”–What Did the Psalmist Mean?

In Psalm 14:1, we find the statement, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Thomas Aquinas and many others have used this verse to talk about atheism versus theism. But what did the Psalmist really have in mind? I doubt it was an intellectual, highly theoretical and abstract disputation about the existence or non-existence of a transcendent Absolute Entity we call “God.”

First of all, the Hebrew word translated as "fool" is not primarily someone who lacks intelligence but who is morally deficient. Second, and in line with that, the whole Psalm is about "evildoers" who "devour" God’s people and oppress the poor. Therefore, the statement about the fool saying in his heart that there is no God is meant to convey: People who suppress their conscience and mistreat other people say to themselves, "There is no one who will take me to account. There is no ultimate justice. I will get away with my crimes."

But neither does the Psalm assert that atheists are necessarily morally deficient. In my understanding, the Psalmist does not say, "All those who deny God’s existence are morally deficient." Rather, he means to say, "All those who blatantly mistreat other people cannot, in their heart of hearts, really believe that there is a God who will hold them accountable."

He does not say, "He who does not believe in God is a fool," but, "The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’" Note the phrase, "The fool says in his heart …" The "fool" may outwardly proclaim quite loudly allegiance to God. But if he acts in such a way that it shows utter disregard to others, his outward confession of faith belies what is in his heart.

Of course, by interpreting Psalm 14 in this way I do not deny that there is a long Western tradition about atheists not being morally upright—a tradition that several morally upright atheists of the past few centuries have tried to dispel.

Shakespeare: A Slave to Love

In a previous post, I started talking about Shakespeare’s The Tempest and how one of the main themes of the play is the desire for freedom. I noted that the desire for freedom is closely related to the desire for power, and that such a desire can be a dangerous thing.

In the case of Miranda, however, her desire for more freedom from the dominion of her father is not very pronounced. She is certainly not a rebellious child, and she really only wants to be free to love, not free to dominate. And herein lies a paradox. Loving always entails giving up my freedom and binding myself to someone else. Being free to love, therefore, means being free to surrender my freedom to someone else. When Miranda falls in love with one of the shipwrecked sailors, a young prince called Ferdinand, the freedom she desires from her father is merely his permission to give herself to another. Like desiring money to buy a gift, love only desires freedom to be able to give it away. “The very instant that I saw you,” says Ferdinand to Miranda, “did my heart fly to your service; there resides, to make me slave to it.”

He is a slave, but a slave of his own volition, for love relishes being in the power of another. “They are both in either’s power,” remarks Prospero fittingly about the two lovers. “You may deny me,” pleads Miranda with Ferdinand, “but I’ll be your servant, whether you will or no.” – “My mistress, dearest; and I thus humble ever,” replies he. “My husband, then?” asks she. “Ay, with a heart as willing as bondage e’er of freedom: here’s my hand.” – “And mine, with my heart in’t.”

They both willingly give up their freedom in order to celebrate a “contract of true love.” They choose bondage to each other over freedom without the other.

It might be worth taking a moment to personally reflect on this relationship between freedom, love, and bondage. I often notice that my desire for freedom and my love for other people are pulling me into opposite directions. On the one hand, I want the best for my wife and children, and what else is love than wanting the best for someone? On the other hand, my bond to them prevents me from doing many things that I would otherwise love to do. If I focus too much on the things that I cannot do because of my wife and children, it produces resentment, and resentment diminishes love. If, in contrast, I steer my thoughts more to what is best for them, the resentment about my lack of freedom diminishes.

Are the Harry Potter Books Children’s Literature?

In this post, I talked about the Golden Rule of Criticism: that we shouldn’t criticize something that we have no taste for or simply can’t stand. If I want to say something critical about Harry Potter, for instance,  I have to turn to my palate before I turn to my subject. Do I have a taste for the genre that my object of examination is a part of? Or am I a blind man criticizing art?

In order to find that out, I first have to see what genre I am dealing with. What genre is Harry Potter? Some people might suggest “Children’s Books,” but I doubt that they are right. Certainly, the Harry Potter books appeal to many children. But is “Children’s Books” really a genre of literature—apart from pre-school picture books, that is?

C.S. Lewis pointed out that there are children’s encyclopedias, children’s detective stories, children’s handicraft books, children’s adventure stories and children’s fantasy books, just like there are encyclopedias, detective stories, handicraft books, adventure stories, and fantasy books for adults; and many are suitable for both age groups. But are the age groups the genres? Aren’t they only different levels within a genre?

Perhaps a detective story for children is not as complicated as one for adults, but it is still a detective story; and it is likely that the child who loves such stories will grow into an adult who loves the same, only on a higher level. Therefore I would not classify Harry Potter primarily as Children’s Books but as Fantasy Literature, perchance on a “lower” level than other works of its kind, but still part of the same genre.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Fantasy as “imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting (such as other worlds or times) and of characters (such as supernatural or unnatural beings).” This definition includes books which we usually call Science-Fiction, such as The Time Machine by H.G. Wells; traditional fairy-tales of Anderson and German Märchen preserved by the Brothers Grimm; fantastical poetry in the vein of The Faerie Queene; animal stories in the tradition of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and the books of Beatrix Potter; fantastical satires like Gulliver’s Travels and Animal Farm; allegories such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; myths and legends in the league of King Arthur and the Round Table; of course books like The Lord of the Rings that are typically called Fantasy; and also Harry Potter. After all, the setting of the Harry Potter books is a rather strange school that is teeming with even stranger characters.

The question is whether I have a taste for Fantasy besides, or in spite of, Harry Potter. And the answer is, yes! I am a great believer in fairyland. This, in itself, does not make me a connoisseur on the topic. My judgment on Harry Potter might still be wrong. But at least it does not disqualify me from commenting on Harry. I have kept the critic’s Golden Rule.

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This post was a slightly altered excerpt from the book Seven Years at Hogwarts: A Christian’s Conversion to Harry Potter.

Return to Innocence: Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”

I started the new year on a cheerful note with Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, the queer novel about the allied bombings of Dresden during WWII. Here’s a hauntingly beautiful passage from the book, imagining what it would be like to roll the events of the bombings backward, expressing the desire to undo the evil in the world and return to innocence:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work.

The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve.

The Tempest: Shakespeare on Freedom and Power

A couple of years ago, I set out to read or watch / listen to all of Shakespeare’s plays, and I recently finished the last one. To crown it all, I went to the Globe Theatre in London (a faithful replica of Shakespeare’s original), and I have now started to jot down a few reflections on Shakespeare.

Here is the beginning of my reflections on parts of The Tempest (more blog posts will follow in the coming weeks):

Italy during the Renaissance. Prospero, the Duke of Milan, falls victim to a plot by his power-hungry brother Antonio, who deposes him. But rather than raise his own hand and strike the blow to finish him off, Antonio takes a course typical of human nature and sends his brother adrift in a little boat. In that way, it would be the elements that killed Prospero, and not he himself. Also in the little boat is Prospero’s little daughter Miranda, as well as provisions and books, smuggled in by someone sympathetic to Prospero.

“By providence divine” the two land on a deserted island, which is only inhabited by spirits and the son of a deceased witch. Prospero makes use of his skills in magic to subdue the few human and non-human inhabitants, and henceforth he lives with his daughter in “a full poor cell.”

Years later, his enemies happen to pass the island in a ship, and Prospero, once again employing magic, raises a storm to force the sailors unto the island and win back his former position as Duke of Milan.

Thus far the broad outline. Most of the play focuses on the various people on the island after the storm, all of whom either strive for freedom or consciously give up freedom for the sake of other desires. In fact, the very last words of the play are “set me free,” but one hardly needs to wait until the last words to notice this theme. It is weaved into the text throughout.

Freedom—now what exactly is that? Many people feel that freedom is power, namely the power to go where they want, do what they want, and think what they want. “Had I been any god of power, I would have sunk the sea within the earth,” says Miranda right in the beginning of the play, after her father Prospero had raised the storm and caused the shipwreck. What Miranda is saying is that if she had as much power as Prospero, she would use it for the good. Of course, at this stage in the play she does not yet know the background story and so does not understand her father’s actions, but the main point is that she desires more power. “If I had the power, I would do so-and-so”—this is the desire of someone who recognizes that she is not completely free. Miranda is in the hands of her father, her “schoolmaster,” and others are in his hands too, and she is tempted to think that she would be more worthy of the power he holds. She would be kinder to others and not use her power to deprive them of their freedom.

Such are the thoughts of many a powerless person, thoughts as noble as they are foolish, for it is less easy to use power correctly once one is in possession of it than when one is merely desiring it. Indeed, the desire to be a “god of power” is a dangerous thing. As the Graeco-Roman gods demonstrate, gods do not always use their power for the good, and neither might I if I were one of them. The gods were personified forces of nature, and, like these forces, raw power tends not to discriminate. It thunders on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Therefore, it might be for the best that I do not have all the freedom I desire. It might give me more power than I can handle.

Judging Books: The Golden Rule of Criticism

The Golden Rule of a good critic is, “Do not criticize what you have no taste for.” That is at least what literary critic and Christian writer C.S. Lewis believed.

If I had an aversion to alcohol, he said, I would be in no position to tell anyone that a certain kind of wine was of poor quality. Any wine would be poor to my taste, even if it happened to be the finest vintage in the history of the world. A deaf man cannot criticize music nor a blind one examine paintings. Only someone who loves good music will recognize bad music and only someone who has seen many great paintings will detect a meager one.

So with literature: People who do not have a taste for a certain genre had better hold their tongue about any particular book of that genre, because they might not be criticizing it at all but the genre in general. Of course they might have good reasons for disliking the genre, but then they should criticize the whole genre instead of a certain book. Someone might have good reasons for disliking alcohol, and it is understandable if he advocates the benefits of teetotalism, but if he criticizes a certain vintage, he will only betray his ignorance on the subject. Such a person will look quite ridiculous.

Since I am not eager to make a fool of myself, I have to turn to my palate before I turn to my subject. Do I have a taste for the genre that my object of examination is a part of? Or am I a blind man criticizing art?

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This post was an excerpt from the book Seven Years at Hogwarts: A Christian’s Conversion to Harry Potter.