Romantic love is a struggle over who gets to define the other’s freedom.
Evidence
Judging by the discussion of sexuality in Being and Nothingness, a Sartrean love affair was an epic struggle over perspectives, and thus over freedom. If I love you, I don’t want to control your thoughts directly, but I want you to love and desire me and to freely give up your freedom to me. Moreover, I want you to see me, not as a contingent and flawed person like any other, but as a ‘necessary’ being in your world. That is, you are not to coolly assess my flaws and irritating habits, but to welcome every detail of me as though no jot or tittle could possibly be different. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 679
Categorization
- XREF: Iris Murdoch’s ‘battle between two hypnotists’ line anticipates this reader’s interest in how two freedoms negotiate control. — connects to: Willing to be loved alienates the lover’s freedom into the body-for-others.; Love is not physical possession because the beloved’s consciousness always escapes us.; The ideal of involuntary love serves society’s domination as its alibi. (+7 more)
- SHARE: Good for a friend into continental philosophy — the counterintuitive reading of love as a freedom-struggle rather than affection.
Broader Connections
- Authentic love requires reciprocal recognition of both partners’ freedoms
#expands(0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883 - Love is the surface where domination logic punishes the lover who loves too much
#expands(0.78) - The ideal of loving unity with the Other is structurally unrealizable and breeds conflict
#qualifies(0.76) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 941 - Woman’s love-religion seeks possession while paradoxically preserving the lover’s freedom.
#expands(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1882 - Men demand unconditional love while refusing what that devotion reciprocally requires
#exemplifies(0.73) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1885 - One person’s freedom often requires another person’s freedom to be curtailed.
#exemplifies(0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 132