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but is based instead on the individual identity of the loved one. But it fol–
lows that the second commonplace, according to which love is one
expression of sexuality, is equally to be rejected: as Fromm says, "sexual
desire" is actually "one manifestation of the need for love and union." The
feeling of love may be experienced through the body and the spirit, and
may be directed at either lover or friend, parent or child; for all that, it is
nonetheless love.
Fromm is right to see love in this way, though he is himself prone to
the opposi te excess in making the concept too broadly inclusive. Human
beings, he says, need contact with others. "The deepest need of man ... is
the need to overcome his separateness,
to
leave the prison of his aloneness."
In this scheme, love would be the most complete satisfaction of such a
need. This view does not recognize a specific need for love, but only asserts
that the recognition provided by the attention of others allows us to fill in,
at least temporarily, our incompleteness; love provides the same recogni–
tion, but in this regard it is similar to other human ties. Likewise, Fromm
enlarges the notion of love to include the love of oneself, the love of one's
neighbor ("fraternal love"), and the love of God, but here he extends
beyond the area of interpersonal relationshi ps, excessively altering the sense
of the word; I for my part wish to stay within this area.
One might here object that love of one's neighbor, addressed as it is to
other humans, therefore merits the name of love. Furthermore, the Greek
term for this,
agape,
indicates a kind of love (though nowadays the fashion–
able translation is more like "charity"). But any comparison of the usual
sense of "love" with the term
agape
brings into relief one of love's consti–
tutive aspects. Brotherly love involves all individuals around us, even
strangers and enemies. It is a universal love for which the characteristics of
the loved one-his qualities or failings-are unimportant. Ideally, I have no
need to seek to know the name or face of the one toward whom my char–
ity is addressed, the reason being that, through my neighbor-through any
other human being-my love is directed at God. Without this love, I
would be guilty, in the Christian view, of the sin of idolatry; we must be
led
to
the Creator, not only to His creations. On the other hand, what we
know as love, whether directed at the lover, a friend, or a child, does not
allow the substitution of one individual for another; its object is unique
and irreplaceable. Here one can see the importance acquired by fidelity, a
reformulation of the essential element of love: the unique character of the
being that inspires it. To love, at least in principle, is to reserve for this per–
son attitudes and actions that will not be shared with any other-in other
words, to love is to be faithful.
By this point, we have outlined a coherent field, corresponding more
or less to what everyone understands by the term "love." But we have not
