Lest We Lose Love

Subtitled ‘rediscovering the core of Western culture,’ this book is absolutely essential reading at this time when the predominant interests on the planet seem to be intent on pursuing a path based on very different values – individualism, competition, power and wealth - and underpinned by a capitalism that has annexed what was left of the democratic process so that we have an oligarchic system informed by a mechanistic mentality that structurally alienates, dehumanises and instrumentalises us in the process. It also tries to persuade us that the pursuit of materialistic wealth is the means to the good life and well-being (p. 210). Scherto is Professor of Research and Director of Global Humanity for Peace Institute at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace. Along with David Cadman, whose books I have been reviewing in these pages, she has been working on developing a narrative of love as an ethical underpinning to co-creating a flourishing future.

I have been arguing for some time that we need to take love more seriously, partly from my background commitment to the Bulgarian sage Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov, 1864-1944) whose teaching is dedicated to a future culture of love, wisdom, truth, justice and goodness as principles to be understood, embodied and applied. The work of the Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin is also central, especially his book The Ways and Power of Love, which I reviewed here 20 years ago. Douno’s philosophy of love has four levels: aspiration in the heart (personal emotion), feeling in the soul (brotherly/sisterly concern), power in the mind (manifestation of divine qualities), and principle in the spirit (supreme harmony resolving contradictions). It is these third and fourth levels that now need to be understood and enacted. All this corresponds to our deepest yearnings as humans, but we find ourselves hemmed in by a fundamentally inhumane, instrumental and impersonal system. Our aspiration corresponds to the Christian Kingdom of God as a kingdom of Love that brings life, of wisdom that brings light and knowledge, and of truth that brings freedom. Douno explains that in the new conception of life, people see that what is good for themselves is good for everybody; in this respect, to love is to serve the whole.

Given the fundamental crisis in which we find ourselves, we need a new orientation in terms of values, well-being and flourishing. Scherto states that ‘at this point in history it is love that matters. How we understand love matters. How we embrace love in our ways of being matters even more.’ She elaborates this on the basis of a triadic framework: love as valuing; love as relating or relationing; and love as caring. The book opens with an argument that it is time for a new narrative, moving on to explain in more detail her threefold framework for understanding love. Then there are detailed historical chapters on love as valuing, love as relating or relationing, love as caring, and love in practice. The final chapter outlines steps towards a paradigm of love.

Scherto’s treatment follows a historical timeline beginning with classical Greek thought, then Christian theology and philosophy, modernist thought, and postmodern and contemporary conceptions. This means that some key thinkers reappear in different chapters focusing on distinctive aspects of their work: Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Augustine, Aquinas, Montaigne, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, and Erich Fromm. She also brings in the work of many lesser-known thinkers such as Diotima of Mantinea (c 440 BC), Tullia D’Aragona (1510-1556), Emma Goldman (1869–1940), Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977), Harry Frankfurt (1929-), and Luce Iragaray (1930-). Scherto’s analysis is incredibly rich, detailed, interdisciplinary, and multi-perspectival as the reader looks through the different and yet related lenses of valuing, relating and caring.

Historically, accounts of the good life have evolved. In classical Greek philosophy, we find a cosmological or cosmocentric principle where we are to achieve reconciliation and harmony within this cosmic order. The Christian vision is theological or theocentric where the good life is rooted in virtues and the human as the image of God; both of these models are transcendent. Modernist thinkers advance a human-centric (Immanent) principle pursuing emancipation from theological and political authority, and where the highest human value is individual freedom. The final post-modernist individual-centric principle is suspicious of any universal accounts and grand narratives, taking into account the unconscious, the anthropological, the economic, the socio-cultural, the historical and ‘the multifaceted relational processes within which humans pursue the good life.’ (p. 4) The evolving ethic and narrative of love ‘postulates that the good life precisely lies in living a richer and fuller life as humans, in communing with other beings in the cosmos. Indeed, it is by living an enlivened, enriched, enriching and even enchanted life that we can achieve life’s fullest meanings.’ (p. 6)

There is a growing realisation that we are part of a greater whole, cosmologically, ecologically, and humanly; and that we are mutually entangled and entwined, opening us up to deeper reciprocity, empathy, compassion and mutual caring. Scherto argues that only love can integrate transcendence and immanence, ‘whereby the spiritual is grounded in the material and the embodied.’ (p. 8) And crucially, ‘Love rejects any form of structural dehumanisation (and traumatisation)’ – we as humans are bearers of intrinsic and non-instrumental values. This means that we have no right to treat other people as means towards our own ends – especially economic, political and military (p.19). A conspicuous current example is how the foreign policy establishment in Washington is using the lives of young Ukrainians to achieve its geopolitical objective of weakening Russia through a proxy war. I quote below a recent post from Glenn Diesen (see my review of his book below):

‘Senator Mitt Romney argued that financing the war was “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done” as “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money” and “we’re losing no lives in Ukraine”. US Congressman Dan Crenshaw also celebrated the proxy war as “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.”’ (Note: US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has recently suggested that Ukraine lowers the age of conscription from 25 to 18)

Scherto gives work as an illustration of the mutually constitutive aspects of living the good life. First, doing work should be integral to our well-being, ideally as an intrinsically and non-instrumentally valuable form of activity that is fulfilling, meaningful and enjoyable. Second, work is part of human becoming, learning and personal development. Third, work gives us a chance to take part in relational processes in terms of caring, collaboration, creation, and dialogue. Finally, work should consist in the ways by which we care for ourselves and each other, serve others and contribute to the betterment of the world – this is values-generating and values-inspiring. She sums up these four facets as being and becoming, relating, serving, and contributing. (pp. 20-21) Love can be construed as the essence of a meaningful and ethical life.

At the beginning of the chapter on love in practice, Scherto quotes Erich Fromm (whose book The Art of Loving will be familiar to many readers) as stating that ‘love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence’ – at both individual and collective levels. Mastering the art of loving must therefore be a matter of ultimate concern, even if in our own society it is regarded as less significant than money, power, status or prestige. (p. 214) This chapter outlines what might be possible in terms of a politics of love, an economy of love, a community of love, education of love, and ecology of love. It is brimming with profound and constructive ideas and proposals, especially for me in terms of education in becoming fully human.

In the final chapter, Scherto returns to the starting point of her enquiry, ‘that the world urgently needs a new narrative concerning who we are, what we ought to value and what sort of lives we should live together on Earth.’ (p. 233) It is clear that ‘the prevailing narrative of growth and development is incapable of informing and guiding us in our pursuit of being well, living well and becoming well together.’ On the contrary, we see around us decline, division, disintegration, disconnection and looming dystopia. She highlights three paths for love’s evolution and revolution: ascension, including the value of beauty; love of persons; and the centrality of emotions, here drawing on the work of Martha Nussbaum, who argues that ‘loving emotions must incorporate three key criteria: individuality, compassion, and reciprocity.’ In her final pages responding to objections, she notes that in the sphere of scholarship, love has received little systematic investigation of the kind she undertakes here. For this very reason, this historical and comparative study is required reading for anyone wishing to take love more seriously, and she ends her seminal book in this way: ‘An epic of love urges us not only to understand love but, more significantly, it motivates us to engage in acts of valuing, relationing and caring and to take an active responsibility for safeguarding all that is sacrosanct.’