The Ethics of Love, the Etiquette of Love

Andisheh Pouya Monthly – Mostafa Malekian: What is meant by love, and what do we call love? Is it the love of a human being for God, or the love of a human being for another human being? If the love of a human being for another human being is intended, is it a meaning of love in which sexual and biological needs play a part, or that meaning of love in which the sexual instinct has no role at all—such as when you say you have fallen in love with your professor? Or is what is meant by love the love of ideals?

Love is an equivocal term with different meanings. Not only love in Persian, but also hubb in Arabic, Love in English, and amour in French are each applied to several different phenomena. Therefore, all these words in their respective languages are equivocal, and it is our responsibility, using contextual clues, to make clear to our audience what we mean by love.

It would be good if this equivocation did not exist and there were a separate, distinct word for each of these concepts; but since this is not the case, we must distinguish between the various meanings. Sometimes, what is meant by love is God's love for all else besides Himself, and according to the view of those who adhere to mystical theology, God loves all else besides Himself.

Sometimes we are in love with an ideal such as justice, and we love a person because they are for us a model of justice. Another kind of love is love for natural phenomena; I might love a spring morning or an autumn sunset. Or perhaps we speak of love for one's homeland.

If we set aside these meanings of love and say that our intended meaning is the love of a human being for another human being, at this level too we are faced with love in different senses. For instance, love for one's kin is one type of human-to-human love. In this loving, there is no element of choice whatsoever; you have not decided to love your parents and children, and this love seems to exist genetically in human beings.

But another type of human-to-human love is the love we have for another human being not by the rule of blood and genetics, but by the rule of the sexual instinct. In this love, the sexual instinct plays a serious part. However, it also happens that a person loves another human being without the sexual instinct playing a part in this loving; rather, another characteristic of the beloved plays a part in this love. This love, too, has various types.

Sometimes I like to associate with and be a companion to you—without the sexual instinct playing a part in this relationship—because from associating with you I derive not pleasure but benefit; for example, your teaching style is not pleasurable to me, but I benefit from the lesson you have taught me. At other times, companionship with you gives me neither pleasure nor benefit, but because I see a virtue in you, I love you; like the love we have for Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS). In other words, in this kind of love, we first love a virtue, and then wherever that virtue finds an instance, we fall in love with it.

Another kind of human-to-human love is loving those who strive alongside you on the path to achieving a common ideal. An example of this is the love that exists among members of political parties. To the extent that a person loves an ideal, they also love those who help realize that ideal.

Therefore, love has different instances. It might seem to us that in describing some of these degrees, the word friendship or the word affection conveys the meaning better than the word love. Given that love has a wide-ranging equivocation, scrutinizing the etiquette of love and the ethics of love entails scrutinizing what we mean by love. For this purpose, we will specify from the outset that what we mean by love is the love accompanied by the sexual instinct of one human being for another; erotic love.

Our predecessors, and even some who still view matters with the old perspective and mentality, under the influence of Hippocrates and Galen, considered such love a disease. In the books of Avicenna, Muhammad Zakariya al-Razi, and other physicians of Islamic culture, love is classified among the diseases. They considered love an illness that afflicts an individual due to an excess of black bile. But in modern culture, love gradually became valuable and even turned into a somewhat sacred phenomenon. Yet even today, when love has lost that pathological definition, some still believe that loves containing passionate infatuation are a sign of the lover's ill health. However, I do not believe that passionate and infatuated loves can be considered an illness.

Erotic love has three components. Its first component is passion and infatuation. Its second component is commitment, or as I call it, obligation, meaning that I consider all the positives of the beloved's life as positives of my own life, and all the negatives of their life as negatives of my own life. The third component is intimacy; that is, I can make my mind and psyche transparent and crystalline before the one I love, and not censor even an iota of myself in facing them. In this case, one can speak of a love. Contrary to those who oppose passionate loves, I believe that passion and infatuation in love draw us out of egoism, narcissism, and self-infatuation.

In the following, we want to speak of the "ethics of loving" and the "etiquette of loving." But when we speak of the "ethics of loving" and the "etiquette of loving," what do we mean? Explaining the difference between ethics and etiquette is the second preliminary to the discussion of the ethics and etiquette of loving. The etiquette of any matter pertains to the success of that matter, and the meaning of the etiquette of loving is what the lover must observe and commit to in practice so as not to harm the success of the loving process and not to lead this process to failure. The ethics of loving, however, has nothing to do with success or failure; its concern is that the lover loves in such a way that they have fulfilled their moral duty and have not trampled upon moral virtues. In the following, we will address the ethics of loving and the etiquette of loving in love accompanied by the sexual instinct of one human being for another.

If we want to be a virtuous lover in erotic love and not violate moral principles in the process of loving, what principles must we observe? Ethics always pertains to voluntary matters, and therefore, falling in love itself, because it is an involuntary matter, has no ethics. In erotic love, there are two domains that have ethics. The first domain relates to the grounds for the formation of this love.

Love arises when an encounter has taken place, and considering that creating the grounds for arranging an encounter with another human being is a voluntary matter, we can speak of ethics here. A strict ethical system might say that you have a moral duty not to create the grounds in which an encounter takes place and as a result of which a love might arise.

Someone who believes that love is morally reprehensible might say that the grounds for the formation of this encounter should also not be created. When I attend a birthday party, or do not attend, I have increased or decreased my possibility of falling in love. Encounter is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition, for loving, and one can judge the ethics of this encounter.

The second domain in which one can speak of the ethics of loving is after a love involuntarily arises in one's heart. How should the lover formulate their external behavior, which consists of speech and action? The mystics attribute a hadith to the Prophet (PBUH) that says, "Man 'ashiqa fa' affa thumma mata, mata shahidan" (Whoever loves and remains chaste, then dies, dies a martyr).

In this hadith attributed to the Prophet, it is said that if someone falls in love but maintains chastity, and their speech and actions remain chaste, and they even conceal this love from the beloved and die in this state, they have died a martyr. This hadith does not say that falling in love itself is good or bad; rather, it emphasizes the behavior after falling in love. But it is only and solely the initial feeling of falling in love that is involuntary; our behavior and speech cannot be involuntary. (The only doubt I have is about body language, and whether body language is also voluntary or not? I have not yet been able to understand, psychologically, to what extent body language is voluntary.)

With this explanation, four ethical characteristics concerning the lover's behavior can be pointed out. If I fall in love and observe four ethical matters in my amorous behavior, I am in no way morally reprehensible. In other words, behavior in an erotic love relationship has no more than these four conditions; and if we observe these four conditions in amorous behavior, we have observed the ethics of love.

1. One condition for amorous behavior to be ethical is that I have not engaged in deception to create this amorous relationship or to maintain and continue it. If I deceive to create the relationship or to maintain and continue it, I have committed an unethical act. Deception is not merely telling lies; rather, most of our deceptions are behavioral. For example, I know that a girl I love enters into a friendly relationship with someone who knows philosophy, and every time I have a date with her, I carry a philosophy book. Here, my speech says nothing, but my action creates a false impression about me. I have not told a verbal lie, but my behavior has been deceptive and therefore unethical. We often deceive others with our behavior.

2. The second condition for amorous behavior to be ethical is that I do not behave in a way that, if this amorous relationship ends tomorrow, the other party suffers harm from this amorous relationship. Harm or lack of harm is also related to the network of social relations and the place, time, and social circumstances in which we live. If you enter into an amorous relationship with someone in France, and that girl, who is the other party in your amorous relationship, loses her virginity in this relationship, the harm inflicted upon her is different from a similar occurrence in another social context.

In an amorous relationship, you must not, ethically, destroy the possibility of a good and happy future life for your beloved. Because there is no guarantee that the love two people have for each other will last forever. The lover must always consider that there is a possibility this relationship will one day be dissolved.

3. The third condition for amorous behavior to be ethical is that we fully preserve and recognize the personhood of the other party (I do not say personality, to avoid confusion). If we want to use an easier but imprecise word instead of personhood, we can say that in loving, we must fully consider the humanity of the other party. But what does the humanity of the beloved consist of? Since the time of Kant, we have believed that I have a theoretical and practical commitment to your humanity if I fully respect your rationality in the realm of theory and your freedom in the realm of practice.

If I do not respect your rationality in the realm of theory or your freedom in the realm of practice, I have not treated you as a person but have treated you as a thing; that is, I have not considered you a person, but rather a thing. If I tell you that I love you on the condition that you do not hold a certain belief, or on the condition that you do not desire a certain freedom in your behavior, I have turned you into a thing. Becoming a thing is philosophically equivalent to becoming a tool. In philosophical terms, thingness and being a tool are two concepts but have one referent. Saying that the greatest poet of Shiraz in the seventh century or the author of Bustan and Golestan is Sa'di are two different matters but have one referent. Wherever being a thing finds a referent, being a tool also finds a referent.

4. Another condition for the ethicality of romantic behavior is that my romantic behavior, in and of itself, does not constitute a breach of a contract I had previously made with another person. If I fall in love with a girl, and I had no prior commitment to another girl before her, and she also had no commitment to a boy before me, the first condition is fulfilled.

But if I fall in love with a girl, and my romantic behavior with her entails the violation of a behavior I had previously engaged in according to a contract with another girl—for instance, my wife or my girlfriend—then entering into a new contract means trampling upon the contract I had with my wife or girlfriend. Likewise, if the other party's entering into a relationship with me means she is violating her contract with her own husband or her boyfriend, her action is not ethical.

If the lover had a prior contract, the ethicality of their action depends on altering or dissolving that prior contract. Dissolving a contract—in the sense that now that I have fallen in love with a new person, I dissolve my contract with the previous person—is ethical under a series of conditions, but breaching a contract is in no way ethical. If I do not dissolve the prior contract and my first wife or girlfriend still thinks I am living under the terms of the contract with her, but I practically enter into a relationship with another person, I have certainly committed an unethical act. Therefore, my entering into a new contract and a new behavioral romantic relationship must not mean that I have breached a contract I have with another person.

But in a situation where, during a contract with my wife or girlfriend, I fall in love with another person: under what circumstances is dissolving the prior contract ethical? Let us assume that, because of your entry into a new relationship, you want to dissolve your prior contract, but the other party does not want this dissolution to take place. There are two points here. First, by dissolving this contract, you inflict damages upon the other party that are compensable and that you can pay to the other party.

Suppose the other party, during the years they lived with you, incurred a specific amount of financial expense in the life, and you can pay this expense to them. You have a duty to pay these expenses. But there is also a series of damages, such as the other party's lost youth, that cannot be compensated. Here, it must be left to the injured party to decide which of these two they prefer: whether they want the relationship to be severed, even if the non-compensable costs remain, or whether they want the relationship to be preserved.

If the other party wants this contract to be preserved, ethically, there is no way to dissolve it. But the other party, who opposes the dissolution of the contract, must know that in the heart of the other party, there exists a love for someone else that no longer exists for them. They must accept that the other party's heart is no longer at their disposal as before and has turned toward another person. They must accept this reality, and this reality is, in fact, an incurable calamity and one of the tragic aspects of life. This is one of those cases where ethics has nothing to do. That is why I say the tragic aspect of life, and not a calamity. Because not every calamity is a tragedy; this calamity is a calamity from which there is no escape or avoidance. Can we, for the sake of expediency, resort to concealment so that the other party does not find themselves in a tragic choice situation? Concealing the truth, although it guarantees the happiness of your life, almost destroys the goodness of your life. We are not moral saints. But from an ethical perspective, deception is the greatest injustice one can inflict upon someone. In fact, here one must commit one of two injustices against the other party: either the injustice of telling them the truth, even if they suffer from hearing the truth; that is, to state the truth but, instead of reducing its bitterness, pain, and suffering, to multiply it.

Another way is to wrong them and not tell the truth, so as to seemingly lessen their bitterness, pain, and suffering. In my view, when the declaration of truth conflicts with the reduction of suffering, the declaration of truth is more important than the reduction of suffering. Therefore, here, even if telling the truth to the other person increases their pain and suffering, it is better than concealing the truth so that their pain and suffering does not increase.

My "ruling" here is based on the virtue-ethics perspective I hold in ethics. No reason has ever been established that whenever a person faces a conflict between the declaration of truth (the open expression of truth) and the reduction of suffering (the lessening of pain and suffering), one side is to be preferred. My psychological disposition is that the declaration of truth is more ethical, and I believe that concealment may not increase the other person's pain and suffering, but the declaration of truth takes precedence over the reduction of suffering. I say that if we enter into a new love contract, we must frankly tell our spouse or friend that we no longer love them as before.

Simply put, we express the truth because it is our moral duty. But whether the other person suffers is the responsibility of a world in which some truths are this bitter for human beings. The fact that the world is made in such a way that some truths are so crushing and increase human pain and suffering so much is not our responsibility. We must always express the truth because we are responsible for our own actions.

Of course, I should add that as long as inner love has not manifested in outward relations, there is no necessity to inform the other party of this reality. Because falling in love is not in our control, and we ourselves may well suffer from concealing it. The other person suffers when they see that I, in a direction that was within my control, have acted against the contract, have entered into amorous behavior with another person, and have concealed the truth. If the dissolution of the contract leads to a tragic event such as the other person's suicide, am I morally condemned? The other person's suicide due to the dissolution of the contract does not strip the dissolution of the contract of its ethicality. I can even say that if someone comes to me and says they have fallen in love and are torn between telling their spouse the truth or not, and are almost certain that their spouse will commit suicide upon learning of this, I would tell that person to go and tell the truth.

That the other person commits suicide arises from the tragic aspect of life. But when the matter is between concealing the truth or expressing the truth, expressing the truth takes precedence over concealing the truth. But does the individual who dissolved their contract here bear no responsibility whatsoever for this suicide? Of course they do.

The responsibility for prior actions is always with me. Here, I am certainly at fault for not observing the first realm, for neglecting the grounds of love, for having previously provided the means to encounter another person, and after the encounter, for not letting the love remain within me and allowing that love to spill over into my behavior. Is the other party morally permitted to breach the contract in response to a breach of contract? Dissolving a contract is not necessarily an unethical act, but breaching it is always an unethical act. If it is established that one party has breached the contract, the other party has the right to dissolve it, not the duty to dissolve it. The other party has the right to dissolve the contract, not that they have a duty to dissolve it. However, apart from the right to dissolve, the other party does not have the right to a reciprocal breach. Because no one ever has the right to breach a contract, and multiplying a wrong does not turn a wrong into a right. If the other party commits a wrong, and that wrong is called a breach of contract, I cannot say that I have therefore also gained the right to breach. At most, I have the right to dissolve and cut off the relationship. Can we agree to breach our contract at will? Perhaps two people might agree that since one of them has breached the contract, from then on each can breach the contract in turn. But is this contract itself even ethical? Pre-contract ethics differs from post-contract ethics. In love, the discussion concerns post-contract ethics and the fact that both parties must adhere to whatever contract they have made, but pre-contract ethics also says that not every contract is ethical.