Love and the Human Person

Erich Fromm and Alain Badiou

Erich Fromm on Love

Things to learn about love
1. Many people see the problem of love as that of being loved, rather than that of loving – one’s
capacity to love.
2. Many people see the problem of love, as the problem of an object and not the problem of
faculty.
Object = Being Attractive = Exchange of Commodities
3. Many people are confused between the initial falling in love and being in love or standing in
love.
Erich Fromm proposes that Love is an Art.
“If we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we
want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry or the art of medicine or engineering.”
- The Art of Loving
Love is an activity, not a passive effect. It is a “standing in” not a “falling for”
The active character of love is primarily giving, not receiving.
“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that
our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little
faith is also of little love.” - The Art of Loving

Alain Badiou on Love

Love is under threat
1. The safety-first concept of love
2. When love is being denied as important
Following Lacan, Badiou believes that
there is no such thing as sexual relationship
Love fills the absence of sexual relationship.
Sex separates, doesn’t unite.
Unlike Fromm’s perspective that lovers should be One, for Badiou maintains that lovers should
be in the scene of TWO.
Construction of Love
1. Love contains an initial element that separates, dislocates and differentiates.
Love always starts with an encounter (event).
“We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally
so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first quarrel, is only to distort love.
Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time,
space and the world.” - In Praise of Love