“The Four Loves” - 2 - Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human
Two kinds of pleasures:
- Need-pleasures
- Appreciative-pleasures
| Need-pleasures | Appreciative-pleasures |
|---|---|
| Preceded by need/desire | Intrinsic, needs no preparation |
| Past Lack - “I wanted that” | Present Content - “It is good” |
| So natural, so necessary | Can be luxurious and vice |
| Gone after obtaining | Valued, even without obtaining |
Water is needed and pleasing — but no one drinks water for fun.
Beauty of nature, was unsolicited, content before it. But super-added bonus.
Some complications
- not mutually exclusive — e.g. thirsty and getting beer
- addiction of Appreciatives (e.g. beer) become “Needs”
When thirsty, the water is so attractive in the past — but six seconds after, we are completely disinterested. But Appreciatives have a right: even on deathbed, we shouldn’t want precious wine spilled — even if we can’t tell good and bad wines apart.
Needs have a transitory nature
We’d feel pity. We somehow owe it to them to savor. Not so for Need-pleasures.
Need-loves, like Need-pleasures, will not last longer than the need.
Our creaturely need for the Divine, won’t end, but the awareness of it can.
Appreciative-loves are selfless
Appreciative-pleasures and beauty, blur the line between “sensual” and “aesthetic”.
But in the Appreciative-pleasures, [even at their lowest, and up to their highest], we find love and disinterest. As the last man alive on his deathbed, we are unwilling to deface great paintings, glad of unspoiled forests we shall never see, anxious of bean-field continuing to exist.
We pronounce them, in a momentarily God-like sense, “very good”.
Love has this evaluation judgement that an object is very good and deserves a debt of attention.
“Need-”: “I cannot live without her” “Gift-”: “I must provide for her”
“Appreciative love”… [beholds her], rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never toh ave seen her at all.
Natural appreciative-loves are just the stepping-stone to the divine
The love of nature proper, is not just: the love of beauty in general. The artistic painter, is a poorer nature-walk companion, than the plain botanist.
Nature never taught me that there exists a God [of …] but nature gave the word “glory” a meaning for me.
Warning that religion cannot sufficiently be validated by experience nature.
Nature cannot cannot satisfy the desires she arouses, nor answer theological questions, nor sanctify us. Our real journey to God involves constantly turning our backs on her […]. But the love of her has been a valuable […] indispensible initiation.
Retain the love for natural appreciatives. But don’t set them as religion, or they begin to be a god — therefore, a demon.
But just because they can become a demon, does not mean that they always were demons. Love for country, caring for dolls, are good — if they one day transcend into loving others.
Should love be extrinsic or intrinsic?
- Patriotism is distinct
- Patriotism is conservative/traditional (even of the bad stuffs)
- Patriotism is superior
- (Superior) Patriotism becomes dutiful
Do we love our country because it is great, or because it is ours? If it ceases to be great, would we drop her? And, would that invalidate our claim of patriotic love?
I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it is just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but [I can’t pretend that] I blacked his eye on moral grounds — [as if I was] wholly indifferent to the fact that [the house] was mine.
If our country’s cause is the cause of God, then wars must be wars of annihilation A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world.
Our (merely natural) patriotism towards [earthly societies] can very easily borrow the transcendent claims of [Heaven] and use them to justify the most abominable actions.