Phenomenology of Love

1. A Phenomenology of Love
By Manuel B. Dy Jr.

2. What is
“L VE”?

3. Preconceptions of L ve:
♥ Love = ROMANCE
♥ Love an ACT OF
POSSESSING
♥“I love you” has come to
mean “You are mine”
♥ Love synonymous to sex

4. Book: The Art of Loving
by Erich Fromm
♥ Mentions love in the present as “falling
in love”
3 Reasons: Emphasis on
1.Being loved rather than on loving
2.The object loved rather than on faculty of
loving
3.Confusion between Initial State of falling
in love & Permanent Standing in love.

5. The ORIGINAL“experience”of LOVE.
• Loneliness and Love
• The Loving Encounter
• Reciprocity of Love
• Creativity of Love
• Union of Love
• The Gift of Self
• Love is Historical
• Equality in Love
• Love is Total, Eternal and Sacred
>> LOVE, a four-letter word that is not easy to
define broadly. Yet let u try to define it through
the following concepts.

6. 1. Loneliness and Love
• The experience of love begins from the
experience of loneliness.
• The experience of loneliness is basically a
human experience.
• There comes a point to a human person’s
life when toys and food are no longer
interesting. This is the time when one
becomes conscious of oneself and begins
to ask the question about his identity.

7. 1. Loneliness and Love
• Along with this experience is also the
tendency of a person to seek out to other
persons with the same identity as his.
They became his barkada.
• Very often, however, this barkada does
not fill in all the empty spaces of a
person’s life.
• Very seldom does he find himself in a
group who will take him for all that he is,
different from the group.

8. 1. Loneliness and Love
• Until this equality will mean oneness
in difference, the person will remain
lonely amidst a crowd.
• In an attempt to conform to the group
and hide one’s individuality, his
loneliness eventually expresses itself
as an experience of boredom.

9. 1. Loneliness and Love
• To overcome this boredom and
loneliness, the person may resort to
drinks and drugs or any form of
heightened sensation as a temporary
escape from reality.
• Another resort to overcome the
experience of loneliness is to keep
oneself busy with creative activity.
• Eventually, however, the person will tire
himself out and boredom continues to

10. 1. Loneliness and Love
• The answer to the problem of loneliness is
the reaching out to the other person. Love
is the answer to the problem of loneliness
because it is only in love that I
find oneness with the other and still
remain myself.
• Loneliness ends when one finds or is
found by another in what we call a loving
encounter.

11. 2. The Loving Encounter
• The loving encounter is a meeting of
persons. This meeting is not simply like a
bumping into each other or an exchange of
pleasant remarks. I can bump into any
person without having a loving encounter.
• Loving encounter rather means an
encounter that happens between two
persons or more who are free to be
themselves and choose to share
themselves. It presupposes an I-Thou
communication.

12. 2. The Loving Encounter
• The loving encounter requires an appeal,
an appeal of the other addressing my
subjectivity. This appeal may be a
gesture, glance, etc. – all these can be
signs of an invitation for me to go outside
of myself toward the other.
• Often times, I ignore these signs. To be
able to see the appeal of the other, I need
an attitude, a heart that has broken away
from self-preoccupation.

13. 2. The Loving Encounter
• What is this appeal?
• This appeal of the other is not his
corporeal or spiritual attractive
qualities. The appeal of the other
is himself/herself. It is a call to
participate in his subjectivity, to be
with and for him/her.

14. 2. The Loving Encounter
• While it is true that I need an attitude that
would enable me to go outside of myself
and see the appeal of the other, it is also
true that the appeal of the other enables
me to go outside of myself.
• If the appeal of the other is himself, it
follows that the appropriate response from
me is also Myself.
• The phenomenon of love, hence, is
an intersubjective experience.

15. 2. The Loving Encounter
• Thus, if this appeal of the other is his own
subjectivity, presented and given to me,
my response and acceptance of this
subjectivity is very crucial.
• If I do not respect this subjectivity by
attempting to change it according to my
own preference, I have already violated
against the person.

16. 2. The Loving Encounter
• Love means willing the other’s free self-
realization and happiness. In love, the
other does not give me his freedom.
Rather, the other becomes freer because
of me.
• Willingness to the other’s subjectivity
implies a personal knowledge about the
other. I must know what makes him/her
happy and what is good for him/her.

17. 2. The Loving Encounter
• Other than personal knowledge,
willingness to the other’s subjectivity
also implies willingness for him to
grow.
• Growth takes time; hence, in love I
must learn to wait.

18. 3. Reciprocity of Love
• It seems that in the loving encounter the
focus is always toward the other. What
about me?
• As a response to the other’s offering of
subjectivity, I also give to the other my
own subjectivity.
• Giving to the other my self requires his
acceptance.

19. 3. Reciprocity of Love
• In love, I am showing my own
vulnerability. There is indeed an element
of sacrifice in loving the other which is
often understood by many as a loss of
self.
• However, love does not mean a loss of
self. In loving the other I do not lose
myself. Rather, I fulfill and complete it.

20. 3. Reciprocity of Love
• If my love is to be authentic, the gift of
my self must be something valuable to
me. I cannot give to the other something
which I consider as a trash. The other is not
a trashcan but seen more as a treasure
chest.
• There exist in loving the other the desire to
be loved in return. The desire is essential
but it should not become the motive of
loving. I do not love because I expect to be
loved in return.

21. 3. Reciprocity of Love
• The primary motive in loving the other
is the other himself, the “You”.
• The “You” in love is discovered by the
lover himself.
• Since the “you” is another subjectivity,
he is free to accept or reject my offer.
Rejection or unreciprocated love is no
doubt a painful experience.

22. 3. Reciprocity of Love
• Reciprocity is a mutual granting of equal
rights and benefits. If we would apply to
love is being mutual, love means to give-
and take.
• There is indeed an element of sacrifice in
loving the other which is often understood
by many as a loss of self.
• To be able to love, one must be able to
love oneself first.

23. 4. Creativity of Love
• When love is reciprocated, love
becomes fruitful; it becomes
creative.
• What is created in love is growth
and self-realization and fulfilment.

24. 5. Union of Love
• The “we” that is created in love is the
union of persons and their worlds.
• The union of love, however, does not
involve the loss of identities. On the
contrary, there self-realization. We
become more of ourselves by loving each
other.
• As what poet E.E. Cummings says: “one’s
not half two, it’s two that are halves of
one.”

25. 6. The Gift of Self
• “Love is essentially a gift of
self.
• To give myself in love is not so
much to give what I have as of
what I am and can become.
• To give myself is to give
whatever that is alive in me.

26. 6. The Gift of Self
• I am able to give myself because I
experience a kind of richness. This
richness cannot help but overflow to
the other.
• But why to this particular other? Why
did I choose you and not some other?
Because you are lovable, and you are
lovable because you are you.

27. 7. Love is Historical
• Love is historical because the
other who is the point at issue in
love is a concrete particular
person, not an abstract one.
• The concrete other is not an ideal
person but a unique being with all
his strength and weaknesses.

28. 7. Love is Historical
• To love is to love the other
historically.
• Love, thus, involves no
abstraction. Everything in love
is concrete.

29. 8. Equality in Love
• If love is essentially between
persons, then it follows that love can
only thrive and grow in freedom.
• Love is not bondage but liberation.
• There exists therefore an equality of
persons in love.

30. 8. Equality in Love
• Love is not a bondage but a liberation. In
love there must be no superior/inferior.
Freedom must be practiced w/in love.
Freedom to be your own self, and express
the mutual love shared w/ your loved one.
Ex: Love being demonstrated w/ our Friends
• We accept and respect each other’s
differences including strengths and
weaknesses.

31. 9. Love is Total, Eternal and Sacred
“Love as gift to the other as self cannot be but total”
•A person is indivisible and persists through
time and space.
•We express authentic love without limit and
without periphery.
•As such, love as a gift of self to the other as
self cannot but be total. “I do not give only a
half of me but a total me…”
•Love, then, is total.

32. 9. Love is Total, Eternal and Sacred
• Moreover, the gift of myself to the other is
not given only for a limited period of time.
In love, I cannot say to you “you are my
friend only insofar as you are my
classmate” or “I love you only for two
years”.
• Love implies immortality; it is eternal.
• As Gabriel Marcel would say, “I love you”
means “you shall not die”.

33. 9. Love is Total, Eternal and Sacred
• Love is sacred. The persons
involved in love are unique,
irreplaceable and as such are
valuable in themselves. And since
love is the gift of a person of his own
self to other person, their relationship
is also sacred. It is sealed w/ trust,
intimacy and even share secrets

34. Nevertheless, after all the
discussions about love, it seems
as if love in itself is never
exhausted. Love is a mystery.
To see this mystery is to
experience it, rather than talk
about it. But what can love do to
one’s life. Try it anyway and see if
without love, you can be anything
at all.

35. Matiyaga ang pag-ibig at may kagandahang-
loob. Hindi ito nagseselos, nagmamapuri, o
nagmamataas. Hindi gumagawa ng di tama o
tumitingin sa sarili; hindi nagagalit o nagtatanim
ng sama ng loob; hindi natutuwa sa kasamaan
kundi nagagalak sa katotohanan. Ang pag-ibig
ay nagbabata sa lahat, naniniwala sa lahat,
umaasa sa lahat at nagtitiyaga sa lahat. Ang
pag-ibig ay di kailanman magmamaliw. Taglay
natin ngayon ang tatlong ito: pananampalataya,
pag-asa at pag-ibig; ngunit pinakadakila sa mga
ito ang pag-ibig.
- Corinto 13: 4-8,13