The Languages of Love: Philosophical Approach

I thought I would begin a philosophical analysis of the five love languages by presenting a simple introduction to what has interested me already about them.  One of the remarkably interesting things about the five love languages is that there are quite simply five of them.  Gary Chapman will indeed explain that there are different "dialects" of the five languages, but that does not eliminate the foundational nature of the five.  We also have five senses, and this is perhaps one of the first things I thought of when I was inspired to approach the five love languages philosophically.  What is so interesting about us having five senses and there being five love languages?  Well, if you think about it, language is taken here to signify the means of communication.  Communication can be visual as well as audible, and you can communicate by gestures as well as by words - and gestures communicate love much more adequately than words.  Love is communicated by both word and gesture, and we have, as it were, five "built in receptors."  Five different ways to experience reality, five fundamentally different ways to experience love.  It might be a stretch for some of us to think that way, but this is perhaps the best way to begin a properly philosophical approach to the love languages.

There are different kinds of knowledge, and (as I am taking a realistic approach to knowledge) all knowledge is based on a fundamental contact with reality.  When you say that a dish is hot as you pass it to your neighbor at the dinner table, you got to know it was hot by picking it up with your hands.  That physical contact causes the transfer of qualities from one body (the dish) to another body (your hand).  So that, if you've been holding it long enough, your hands themselves become hot to the touch. But your hand becoming hot, and your feeling the hotness of the dish are not the same.  One is a physical quality (the hot dish), the other is a sensation (you feel the hotness of the dish).  The sensation is in you, and it was caused by the hot dish.  Sensation is the first degree of knowledge, it is the first degree of interiority, it is the first non-destructive assimilation of reality.  "Knowing" is a vital operation which enables the knower to "meld" with the world around him without destroying either himself or the reality he is knowing.  And this first level of knowledge is born in us through our senses.  After that, we could talk about affective knowledge and intellectual knowledge.  We could make further precisions about the kinds of affective knowledge: emotions, passions, friendship-love (which contains a kind of knowledge of the other person which we call "the secret" - not to be confused with Oprah's stuff)  We could also make further precisions about the kinds of intellectual knowledge: equivocal, analogical, conceptual, artistic, etc.

Since we are focusing on knowledge as it has to do with love, as indeed different experiences of love have to do with different ways in which we have known love, our investigation is situated at the level of affective knowledge.  Gary Chapman also situates himself more specifically at the level of emotional love.  Love is not just an emotion, because even when we don't feel love, we do not necessarily cease to love or to be loved.  So love is a choice as well, and even most importantly and fundamentally.  But if we opt for a strictly platonic and spiritual exercise of our capacity to love another person, we are being unrealistic - unless we (or they) happen to be an angel, or other purely spiritual being.  So Gary Chapman has decoded, in his study of the languages of emotional love, a useful psychological tool for diagnosing problems that are situated at the emotional level.  However, if our choice of another person depends upon our emotional fulfillment - a sort of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - our choice will be too weak to stand the test of time.

What interests me as a philosopher is to look at the connection between our experience of emotional love and our primary knowledge of reality.  Love is the attraction to a good reality.  When I love something, or someone, I am drawn to them because they are good.  And this attraction is stronger or weaker depending on both the kind of good it is, and the knowledge I have of that good thing/person. I can be attracted to persons that I do not know very well, and I can be attracted to persons I have known for years.  The attraction tends to be more passionate (or emotional) in the first case, and less so (or at least differently so) in the second case.  But this attraction, which is an affective knowledge of reality, can be awoken by different sensible experiences of reality.  Goodness is mediated to us at the very basic level of sensation.  And depending on the extent to which one is alert to their various senses (intelligently alert, not just hypersensitive), their ability to experience the good will be conditioned accordingly.

Some people learn better by hearing, some people learn better by seeing, some have a keener sense of smell or taste or touch.  What this means is that everyone has a sense among their five senses that is "closer" to their intellect.  Similarly, when it comes to the will, which is a capacity to be attracted as well as to respond to an attraction, one sense is "closer to our heart" if you will.  Some people are "touched" more by what they hear, some are more "touched" by what they see, others by odors, by flavors, or by something more directly tactile (like a caress).  So I will be looking at each of the five senses, asking myself which love language they correspond to most directly.  Here are my basic intuitions that I will be developing in the coming weeks:

1. Physical Touch - Sense of Touch
2. Affirmation - Sense of Hearing
3. Quality Time - Sense of Sight
4. Gift Giving - Sense of Smell
5. Service - Sense of Taste