What is Love?

What is love? And what am I going to do when I know?

1. Love is a kind of desire, which is to say that it is always love of something.
2. This something which love desires is something which it lacks.
3. This something which love desires is something which it wants to have, or (if it already has it) to continue to have.
4. It follows that if Love loves beauty, then Love lacks beauty, and is not beautiful, and wants to possess beauty.
5. But in fact what people always love is goodness, not beauty exactly – which is to say they long to be happy and fulfilled. This is the universal human condition.
6. This love which has to do with beauty is actually, then, only a fraction of what love is. Love in general is for goodness; ‘love’ as the word is commonly used has something to do with beauty, but must actually be for goodness and happiness.
7. No one wants goodness temporarily; they want it for ever.
8. To want something for ever is in a covert form to want immortality.
9. Immortality is more or less impossible for a person qua the particular person he is. We all change from moment to moment; we merely give the impression of identity by replacing one generation of traits, features, and so on, with another generation, which resembles the preceding one.
10. Relative immortality can only be achieved through procreation of some kind – for instance, by perpetuating oneself through one’s children or through producing long-lasting works of art.
11. Procreation is impossible for a person in a medium which he finds repellant.
12. Procreation can only take place in a beautiful medium. 

The connection between love and beauty is therefore that the desire for immortality – for goodness for ever – requires a beautiful medium.

Hmmm…

P.S. US or Canada? Or neither?

Less than one month to decide. Or more?