{"id":6605,"date":"2016-03-10T16:51:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T16:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/10\/can-love-be-commanded\/"},"modified":"2016-03-10T16:51:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T16:51:25","slug":"can-love-be-commanded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/10\/can-love-be-commanded\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Love be Commanded?"},"content":{"rendered":"

And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Can love be reasonably commanded?  Love is an emotion or feeling.  As such it is not under the control of the will. And yet we are commanded to love God and neighbor.  How is this possible?  An action can be commanded, but love is not an action. Love is an emotional response.  So how can love be commanded?<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of loving God, there is not only the problem of how love can be commanded, but also the problem of how one can love what one doesn't know.  Some people are such that to know them is to love them.  Their lovableness naturally elicits a loving response. But apart from the  mystical glimpses vouchsafed only to some and even to them only rarely and fitfully, God is not known but believed in.  He is an object of faith, not of knowledge.  (If you say that God is known by description via theistic 'proofs,' my response will be that such knowledge is not knowledge of<\/em> God but knowledge that<\/em> something or other satisfies the description in question.)  How can we love God if we are not acquainted with God?  Genuine love of God is love de re<\/em>, not de dicto<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I won't be discussing the second problem in this entry, that of how one can love what one doesn't know, but only the first, namely: How can love be commanded, whether it be the love of God or the love of neighbor?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is quick little modus tollens<\/em>.  If love can be commanded, then love is an action, something I can will myself to do;  love is not an action, not something I can will myself to do, but an emotional response; ergo, love cannot be commanded.<\/span><\/p>\n

One way around the difficulty is by reinterpreting what is meant by 'love.'  While I cannot will myself to love you, I can will to act benevolently toward you.  And while it makes no sense to command love, it does make sense to command benevolent behavior. "You ought to love her" makes no sense; but "You ought to act as if you love her" does make sense.  There cannot be a duty to love, but there might be a duty to do the sorts of things to and for a person that one would do without a sense of duty if one were to love her.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea, then, is to construe "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" as "Thou shalt act towards everyone as one acts toward those few whom one loves" or perhaps "Thou shalt act toward one's neighbor as if one loved him."<\/span><\/p>\n

The above is essentially Kant's view as reported by William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality<\/em>, pp.236 ff.  It makes sense.  But how does it apply to love of God? <\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps like this.  To love God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul is to to act as if one loves God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul.  But how does one do that<\/em>?  One way is by acting as if one loves one's neighbor as oneself.  Another way, and this is my suggestion, is by living the quest for God via prayer, meditation, and philosophy. <\/span><\/p>\n

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And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and … Continue reading “Can Love be Commanded?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,166,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-new-testament","category-sex-love-lust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}