Love Languages: Presence and the Sense of Smell

To begin a reflection on the gestures that engage specifically the sense of smell to communicate love, it seems clear to me that we must take a fresh look at our experience.  Love is attraction, and we are attracted to what is good.  What is our experience of goodness when it comes to smells?

Before I try to tackle the question, I think a brief divergence is important.  Attraction must be clearly distinguished from seduction.  Attraction is a natural movement towards a good.  Seduction is already a different kind of movement.  When I am attracted, I remain free to respond to the attraction or turn away.  When I am seduced, on the other hand, my judgment is focused on appearances.  Seduction involves the formal cause, whereas the source of attraction is the final cause.  We are attracted to what is goo, we are seduced by what is beautiful, by what is perfect.  The qualities of a person are kinds of perfections - these qualities may seduce us, but they cannot attract us as such.  Attraction requires a personal knowledge of someone, and so an experience not only of their qualities and defects, but a knowledge of their person.

Beauty, talents, and temperament are all superficial aspects of a human person.  you can describe a human person, but that description is not a personal knowledge, nor does it necessarily come from a personal knowledge.  Personal knowledge implies attraction.  The other's person is what causes an attraction.  Beyond all the qualities that could cause me to like them, there is the source of these qualities - the person himself.  Whereas all the qualities of a human person can seduce me, it is the other person as such who is a source of attraction.  Certainly we can talk about "attractive qualities" - insofar as they lead to a knowledge of the person.  When we stop at the qualities themselves however, the knowledge we have to the other person is amputated from its source and loses its personal quality.  When you say that you know someone  personally, it implies that you have penetrated beneath  the surface - that you have access to waht is hidden - to what cannot be described or explained abstractly.  In France, people like to write books about other people, about what they think, and about why they think what they think, without even having met the people they have written about.  Though some people may find books like that interesting, the conclusions of these authors are simply rationalized opinions dressed up to look like personal knowledge.  You don't know someone personally if you don't love them, you don't love someone truly until you are attracted to them for who they are.

Philosophically, I think we are obliged to say that so long as we do not love someone, we do not know them personally.  If we do not like someone, it is never for personal reasons, it is always for impersonal reasons.  We know that we have discovered, or at least have begun to discover a human person as a person when we are attracted to them.  Personal knowledge is the knowledge of a good, a spiritual good, which must be discovered "in person," because it is a knowledge of the whole reality.

The gestures we use to communicate love often resemble gesture s of seduction - even though teh intention is completely different.  Smells, or odors can be used with the intention to seduce, they can also be used to render one's presence pleasant.  The quantity, quality, and areas of application of perfume is a gesture of smell.  The intention of the gesture could be seduction or attracting attention to oneself, it could also be to subtly render one's presence pleasant.  A gesture has an objective element though, because it acts directly on the senses.  The area of application, kind, and amount of perfume a woman puts on can be unintentionally seductive.  Just like certain embraces, smiles, and compliments or words can be unintentionally seductive.  Modesty is the virtue that governs our gestures so that they correspond to an ethical intention.  Modesty takes into account the objective effect of our gestures on the people around us, and renders those gestures as unequivocal as possible.

Lets look again at our experience of gestures that communicate through odor.  And to do that, lets just simply start by looking at our experience of smell.  We have the experience of good smells, bad smells, the smell of fresh air, the smell of stale air.  Something can smell pretty, something can smell rotten.  Smells help us recognize the presence of a reality.  We can know when someone was in a room by the scent they leave behind.  We can know when someone has arrived by their smell as well.  Smells can mask other smells, and smells can enhance certain experiences.  So if we are to look at the different ethical levels of odor, what could we say?

Is a clean smell basic respect?  This certainly varies between cultures (I can testify to this first-hand, as I live in a community composed of brothers from around the world.)  Those who use products to mask or perfume their bodies the most are the African brothers, and those who pay the least attention in general are the European brothers.  We can all agree, however, that without posing a judgment on personal hygine habits, the most basic level of respect is having a fairly neutral odor associated with one's presence.  One step beyond that, which would be a gesture of openness to friendship, is that of smelling fresh or clean.  Something that smells fresh or clean does not yet imply perfumes or strong smelling shampoo, etc.  Strong odors, even when they are nice, tend to draw more attention than appropriate.

Flowers and potpourri (which in French literally - ironically - means "rot-pot") can be used to create an ambiance that is favorable to the exercise of friendship.  These, along with perfumes, enter the third category of gestures of love that have to do with the sense of smell.  They make a place even more inviting, they add a little something extra to the presence of the person who wears them.  We could talk about cooking here too, the smells of a kitchen can be quite important for the exercise of friendship.  If you are a good cook, the simple act of preparing a meal for a friend is a wonderful gesture of love that is communicated by the sense of smell.  It isn't just the act of service that communicates love, it is the smell of food well prepared also.