Schopenhauer contends that love is the individual human involvement of a universal human impulse to reproduce, and further that reproduction should ideally be between a man and woman who are compliments of one another. According to him therefore, love concerns normative ethics of procreation. So, one chooses a partner with a main aim of satisfying their instinct of sex. Love is perceived as both the woe and weal of species. According to ethics, people are only allowed to be sexually attracted towards people of the opposite sex. Schopenhauer perception of love ideally concurs with this.
He states that the relationship or attraction should be between a man and a woman. However, he also ascertains that this is not always especially in the contemporary world where things such as gay marriages and lesbianism are common. He states that human beings are biologically driven to seek out inappropriate partners. He further proceeds and states that, “if you are unlucky in love, don’t take it to heart – happiness was never part of the bigger plan” (Walker, 229). To him, the utmost intent of sinking into a loving relationship is to survive the romantic passion and ensure the continuity of our race through our offspring. His writings greatly illustrate his cynic towards love. Many philosophers have devoted their time and effort towards defining love on a factual basis. However, this has proved to be an aspect that can actually not be proved or measured. Most have ended up defining love subjectively and claimed that love is basically subject to personal interpretation and it is therefore relative. Love can therefore be compared to a ghost as it is something that cannot be seen although people talk about it daily. The reality and importance of love is something that Schopenhauer doubts.
On the other hand, Christine Whelan holds a divergent view. He conducted research among undergraduates and concluded that male seeks a dependable woman who is highly skilled in the kitchen. They look for chastity which they rank higher than intelligence. They are more likely to be attracted to women who are highly educated and financially stable. Women sought men who are ambitious, emotionally stable and with a dependable character. They also prefer, a man who has a pleasing disposition. To him, the main reason for upholding a relationship is not to sire but to live a comfortable life even though reproduction was also a good reason for being attracted to the opposite sex, start a relationship and possibly end up in marriage. Considering the time that the research was done (1930s), the findings of the research may not hold in the current world where both sexes rank love and attraction as the highest characteristics. Whoever, it is still in line with the increasing career and educational opportunities. Men are currently attracted to partners whom they feel that they would willingly share the financial burden with. In a way, the findings of the research seem to coincide with Schopenhauer reasoning.
Other psychologists do not seem to recognize the illusionary nature of love that Schopenhauer is talking about. Rather, they associate love, lust and hormones to the unhappiness that is witnessed in many relationships. People think they are in love while in real sense they are in lust; they just want to have sex and it is this crazy desire for sex that makes many people to fall into relationships. The however back Schopenhauer’s theory as far as love and attraction are concerned. They classify the desire to reproduce and desire for redemption as the two main forces that causes people to be attracted to the opposite gender. They theorize that people are strongly attracted to the negative characteristics of their primary caretakers and this attraction feels like love.
So, what people recognize to be love or attraction is actually the irresistible desire to go back to their infancy days and fix the relationship they had with their parents. Our subconscious recognizes the other person to be having characteristics that are similar to our parents and the belief that they are so important to our life develops. That is why one becomes attracted and obsessed to a person they hardly know. However, this kind of reasoning may hold some waters to a certain extent. It therefore seems that people are attracted to people of the same gender simply because their caretakers were of that gender. If this is taken to be perfectly true, then the current lesbians and gays can blame their caretakers for their conditions: going against what the large society considers to be moral.
Despite his romantic triumph, Schopenhauer is so cynical about love, he concurs with other philosophers that without love the world and human life would not have been in existence. Love holds people together and contributes to a happy, better life. He theorized that people consider themselves to be incomplete and need someone from a different gender to make them complete. People therefore tend to be attracted to people whom they share certain interests and tastes. Above all, the will-to-live which manifests itself in species play a great role in attraction towards opposite gender and people will try as much as they can to live the kind of life that is desirable.
Additionally, Schopenhauer believes love and passion to be of an illusionary nature. He seemingly stands for the idea that one can force themselves to fall in love even though in real sense they do not love the person they are claiming to love. However, it is human beings who are incapable of resisting the strong urge to fall in love with an unsuitable partner. He ascertains that there is one right person that god created for each of us. If one happens to have been attracted to that one true mate, the two will be very compatible and the relationship is bound to last. People must continuously call into question the kind of mates they would like to have. Decisions must be made with a lot of care and keenness to avert common misunderstandings that drives happiness out of a relationship. He further states that the relationship with that specific mate is full of delusive ecstasy and illusion. This specific illusion propels people into reproduction a process that ensures that certain favorable genes are passed on to the next generation while others are left behind. Since people are after quality or favorable offspring, intellect is quite necessary when choosing a mate.
Schopenhauer’s view is disgusting when reasoning and logic are called into the matter of love and attraction. He assumes that the offspring shall be neutral. The two persons in the relationship may not necessarily neutralize each other like an acid and a base for the new individual produced to be neutral. If the desire to reproduce is the main factor responsible for attraction to the opposite gender, love would not exist in the contemporary society where people have ensued non-biological procreation. Today, plastic babies are a reality that many people have started accepting. Though it is clearly against the ethics of procreation, non-biological means of reproducing are continuously gaining prevalence and many nations are supporting it as it is viewed as a technological advancement.
Apparently, everyone infinitely prefers and ardently desires those who are most beautiful. The character of the species must be well defined and the other individual must have perfections or imperfections which one lacks are considered as a major factor that attracts an individual to one another. It is simply the sense of the species that makes a man feel a sense of ecstasy upon seeing a beautiful woman and it makes them feel that union with her will bring about the greatest happiness.
The conclusion that Schopenhauer makes about attraction to the opposite sex is so bleak. He says that a person who is highly suitable for our future children is never virtually certainly not very suitable for us but we may not realize it since we are so blindfolded by the will to life. He perceives happiness and production of healthy children as two factors that are contrasting. Unfortunately, love maliciously confuses us to the extent that we do not realize the difference. This might be very confusing to people who are about to marry as they will be assure that the partners that their marriage will either guarantee them happiness or healthy children. In reality couples are in need of both and such a conclusion might compromise the importance of the marriage institution. As such it might lead to breakage of marriages that are not well established as one may start perceiving their partners as unsuitable and may possibly opt to leave and look for a suitable mate. If this happens, one thing is certain: there will be an increase in moral degeneration and the quality of life will wane rather than improve.
Factors such as masculinity, femininity, tallness and shortness are not fixed and changes with time. If this were explicitly the factors that one considered when choosing a mate, it therefore follows that many marriages or relationships would have been temporary since if any of this factors change, a person will walk out of the romantic relationship because the bond that used to hold them is no more. This might possibly be the reason why love perceptively decreases after a certain period of time. However, the real facts behind such a scenario must clearly be established and the remedial actions taken to save the society from the factors that are threatening to engrave the contemporary society.
Looking at the turmoil of life, people are occupied with wants and misery. They exert strength in order to circumvent their manifold suffering and fulfill their endless needs. Amid all this turmoil, attraction and love still exists yet so timidly, clandestinely and stealthily. Lovers are traitors who are out to fulfill their own selfish desires. Though Schopenhauer’s view of love and attraction are relatively peculiar, it truly represents an undisputable reality.
Works Cited
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