The ontological capacity for personal love and self-transcendence; it finds its most perfect expression in interpersonal love. The capacity for love is an essential characteristic of the person — it belongs necessarily and inalienably to her essence.
The capacity for love grounds the right to community: because the person is by her very essence ordered toward a Thou and is capable of personal love, she has a right to personal community. Care presupposes the capacity for love — without the capacity to love, no personal devotion would be possible (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 155–160).
Love as Self-Transcendence
The capacity for love is the person’s capacity to go beyond herself — to transcend herself toward a Thou. In self-transcendence the person enacts what corresponds to her deepest essence: she leaves behind the narrowness of mere being-for-itself and opens herself toward the other. Self-gift is the highest form of this self-transcendence — in it the person gives herself freely and wholly to the beloved Thou.
Personal love is therefore no mere feeling, no drive, and no satisfaction of need. It is a spiritual act in which the person affirms the other for his own sake — as a person, not as a means. In this affirmation of the other as a person, love shows itself to be the most fitting response to the ontological dignity of the Thou.
Capacity for Love and Interpersonality
The capacity for love refers essentially to the interpersonal relation. The person is not monadically closed in upon herself but is by her essence ordered toward community. The Communio Personarum — the personal community — is the space in which the capacity for love is realized. Here the equal originality of spiritual being and interpersonal relation becomes evident: the person is spiritual substance and related to the Thou — both at once and inseparably.
Capacity for Love and the Other Essential Characteristics
The capacity for love presupposes free will: love that is not freely given is no love. It presupposes the capacity for truth: only one who can cognize the other can truly love him. And it stands in close connection with affectivity: love has an essentially affective dimension — it touches and moves the person in her depths. Yet the capacity for love goes beyond mere affectivity, because it includes the free decision of the will to give oneself to the Thou.
Necessary and Inalienable
The capacity for love, too, is necessary and inalienable as an essential characteristic. A human being who — for instance through severe psychiatric illness — is at present unable to feel or express love nevertheless ontologically possesses the capacity for love. It belongs to his being as a person, not to his present condition.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: Essential Characteristic
Ontological relations:
- grounds: Right to Community
- is presupposed by: Care
- presupposes: Free Will, Capacity for Truth
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood
Page references: Bexten 2017, pp. 262, 265–266 (love and self-transcendence), pp. 278–279 (third dimension of love).
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Wojtyła, Karol: Love and Responsibility (1960), transl. H. T. Willetts. (on personal love and self-gift)
- Seifert, Josef (1989): Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. (German) (on the ontological foundation of personal faculties)
See also
Love, Personal Love, Communio Personarum, Self-Transcendence, Self-Gift, Interpersonal Relation, Person, Affectivity, Free Will, Capacity for Truth, Ontological Dignity, Spiritual Being, Essential Characteristic