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Nationalists make better lovers Our toxic political culture needs more Eros

Eros has become a secular sin (Photo by KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Eros has become a secular sin (Photo by KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)


June 25, 2021   4 mins

“Should I hang out with someone whose political views I hate?” So asked a New York Times reader to the paper’s Ethical Columnist this week. But it could have been written from Britain, where public life has become dominated by political hatred. The Left loathes the Right, an organisation called Stop Funding Hate dominates the headlines and, five years after the EU referendum, ardent Remainers continue to hate Brexiteers, and vice versa.

Hatred, it seems, is the new currency of politics. So it might sound deliberately perverse to argue that love is at the heart of the problem. But there is a strong case to be made that the root cause of today’s toxic culture is love — and our two opposing understandings of it.

Back in 1930, the protestant Swedish theologian Anders Nygren wrote his highly influential Agape and Eros, proposing that these two terms represented contrasting and even contradictory expressions. Nygren suggested that Eros was an ego-centric and acquisitive kind of love, a love that puts the needs of the lover at the centre of the picture. Eros, he contended, is a spiritualised form of self-interest.

Agape, by contrast, is a love that shows no partiality. It is a love of humanity in general; irrespective of where people come from, what skin colour they have, how they make love, what religion they are. It is disinterested and impartial.

So what’s wrong with this? A strong theological contrast to the view of Nygren can be found in the work of the Jewish theologian and philosopher Michael Wyschogrod — not someone at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist perhaps, but bear with me. For Wyschogrod, all love, properly speaking, is the concrete love of one person for another. There is, he contends, no such thing as love in general. All love is partial and specific — it is Eros. (This, for instance, is why he thinks it is perfectly justifiable that the God of the Bible has a very special — indeed preferential — love for the Jewish people.)

Undifferentiated love, he writes, “does not meet the individual in his individuality, but sees him as a member of a species, whether that species be the working class, the poor, those created in the image of God, or whatnot… In the name of these abstractions men have committed the most heinous crimes against real, concrete, existing human beings.” Love, then, is intrinsically partial. For Agape lovers, love makes us all equal. For Eros lovers, it really doesn’t.

What does this mean in practice? Well, I have a very partial love of my children. I have their photo on my phone, rather than one of some random human. The love I have for them is highly specific. They are not avatars for some generalised love of humanity. They are absolutely not fungible, just as one dollar bill is exchangeable for any other.

So here is the opposition between Agape and Eros: Agape love believes that love proceeds from the general to the specific; Eros love believes that it proceeds from the specific to the general. Joy Division had it right: love will tear us apart.

Certainly both forms of love may struggle to reach out too far from their original expression: Agape loves the general category of human beings, but often finds it difficult to express its love of the singular, individual human life, worrying that too much investment in one specific person distorts its universal mission. It can be nervous of the passionate intensity generated by specific bonds.

By contrast, Eros can all too easily become trapped in a domestic or nationalistic frame, failing to reach out beyond the narrowly specific. “Flag shaggers” is the derogatory phrase de jour; a recognition that love of country can have overly erotic, and thus overly partial, connotations. What us nationalists see as love, they see as hate.

But this charge of not being able to properly love is also what us Eros lovers think of Agape lovers: their love is not carnal enough, too abstract, lacking in passion. We are deeply divided by what we think of as love. It is Romanticism vs the Enlightenment endlessly replayed.

Consider, for example, the extreme Agapeism of someone like the philosopher Peter Singer and his argument about the moral claims that animals have over us:

“… the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race. Similarly, the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case.”

Singer believes that our moral lives should be guided by a generosity to life in general. In his utilitarian calculus, the interests of all human life — and indeed non-human — life has to be weighed on the basis of an equal consideration of interests, broadly determined as the capacity to feel pain and appreciate happiness. And Singer is interesting because he seeks to live his life quite rigorously by these standards.

 

I once, rather facetiously, asked Singer how he could justify buying Christmas presents for his children, given that such gifts are obviously an expression of his partiality. His answer, in effect, was that we are all fallen creatures. For the extreme Agapeist, Eros love is a kind of secular sin, albeit an understandable one. We seemed to exist on entirely different moral planets.

But while many of us instinctively fall into one of these categories, I wonder whether this way of describing contrasting approaches to our moral and political lives isn’t just the cause of so much hatred, but also contains the basis for a kind of natural sympathy. After all, the Eros lover knows that they must reach out further than their partiality; hence the oft-mentioned dictum that charity begins at home but doesn’t end there.

Likewise, even extreme Agapeists like Singer appreciate the call to love in the singular, even if they don’t quite know how to square it with their wider philosophy. Few would now subscribe to the Marxist desire to abolish the family — not because they believe in allegedly right-wing family values, but because the family, in all its Eros partiality, is still the place where many of us learn what love means.

We are, after all, more invested in other expressions of love than those which define our core political commitments. Radicals who want to love the whole world can still say “forsaking all others” at their marriages, without a feeling of contradiction. Similarly, when I shout En-ger-land enthusiastically at the telly, I can be expressing partiality without the presumption of absolute superiority.

Many Remainers can and do love their country. Leavers can and do love people beyond it. The human heart is often the root of political division. But it might also be the place where we best understand each other too.


Giles Fraser is a journalist, broadcaster and Vicar of St Anne’s, Kew.

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Michael James
Michael James
3 years ago

Aren’t we morally obliged to give priority to people we have special relationships with and who have special expectations of us: our spouses, children, parents? Singer’s world of pure moral impartiality would be a hell of cold, impersonal, bureaucratic benevolence leaving us emotionally crippled.

Last edited 3 years ago by Michael James
Kristof K
Kristof K
3 years ago
Reply to  Michael James

I think (hope) there are more nuances than even you are suggesting. For instance I would argue, in a vague sort of way, that all children automatically deserve more (both kinds in general) of my love than any adult. Also my personal philosophy is, insofar as I can be aware of it, that I would substitute empathy for the agape kind of love.

If a terrible accident were to befall, say, a politician I despise, then I hope I could still feel empathy with any genuine pain/grief experienced by that politician or their family. But I’m not sure I could extend this to absolutely every other human being whom I had reason to despise. I’m naming no names.

But then . . . suppose I found myself confronting a hungry leopard on the point of attacking a couple of children. Suppose one of those children were mine but was farther away from the tiger, and suppose the nearer child’s carer were too far away to do anything. Should I try to prevent the tiger attacking the nearer child or should I rush to protect my child and allow the leopard to dine on the nearer one? Of course there are many other variables to set before this scenario could be sensibly discussed. For instance the precise distances involved might allow for me to defend the more immediately endangered child thus giving enough time for the other child’s carer to rush to the protection of mine. Or even suppose I knew the parents of the more endangered child to be staunch Brexiters? How fortunate am I not to be likely ever to face such a dilemma!

Alyona Song
Alyona Song
3 years ago
Reply to  Kristof K

Your question, Kristof, is right on. I do think we are (i am) wired to love our own children unconditionally. In a situation with a tiger, all my actions would be driven by the overwhelming instinct to remove own child from the harm’s way.

Jacob Mason
Jacob Mason
3 years ago

This is a tension in Christianity which has existed since the revelation of a Trinitarian God. Is our religion about pursuit of the one, the simple, the eternal truth or is it about being in relationship with Divine Persons whose own personhood is established by their intimate relations?
It seems to me that the answer should be “yes” to both.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

there is a strong case to be made that the root cause of today’s toxic culture is love

Which unfortunately was not made here.

Arild Brock
Arild Brock
3 years ago

We should not forget the dark forces. Love is not only about loving, but also about identifying and subduing impediments to love. 
I don’t trust people who say they love all humans. My hypothesis (in the individual case) would be that he/she uses this idea to justify his/her lack of love. Love is risky and thus takes courage. Those who do not know that love is risky, never loved a new person as an adult. 
Worst of all is the impersonal “love” that floats through public systems of financial and other support. This “love”, which is a replacement for love at best, penetrates and cuts up the natural bonds of solidarity, community and love that humans otherwise build. 
Paul was right. Without love, everything is hollow. Would that also go for this posting? Honestly, I am not sure. I guess I hate the impersonal systems criticised above. Perhaps love sometimes takes the form of hate.

David Uzzaman
David Uzzaman
3 years ago
Reply to  Arild Brock

Well put. The state spends millions of our money on supporting children whose parents for one reason or another can’t do the job. However altruistic this may appear the prognosis for such children is poor. The state is a bad parent not because it doesn’t try to be successful but because it has no skin in the game.

Kristof K
Kristof K
3 years ago
Reply to  David Uzzaman

The state does have skin in the game, I would argue. Better cared-for children surely make for a better tax base eventually (my assumption).

But perhaps not all the people the state employs to help in parenting the ill-parented have that much skin in the game (again my question/assumption)? Or, maybe they’re just not paid enough?

Judy Englander
Judy Englander
3 years ago

Excellent piece which has clarified my thinking. I nearly missed it – it appears to have slipped onto the site late on Saturday.

Mick Gee
Mick Gee
3 years ago

A bit late in the discussion as I’ve not had time due to pressing family commitments. This in combination with the article has made me think of those who may pursue wider ‘Agape-like’ activity at the expense of their family and loved ones. If that person is pursuing humanitarian causes, and bestowing benefit to those in a wider context, then an area of specific ‘Eros-like’ love may be neglected. We all know historical and famous examples of such people. Often that person’s children, for example, may feel hurt and neglected. Does the wider humanitarian benefit bestowed by that person ‘trump’ the the neglect of the specific? This can be confusing when such persons may be working for the benefit of their own ‘species’ eg a political activist spending most of their time in activity, say, for their own socio-economic group. There are similarly others who in their pursuit of creative careers and a love of their art, eg musicians, actors, etc. neglect their loved ones. Are such contradictions (and sometimes dilemmas for the individual) resolvable?

Last edited 3 years ago by Mick Gee
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton
3 years ago

A pretty shallow piece from a minister of the church supposedly called on to practice and preach the deeply challenging call to love one’s enemies!