Love and its Discontents

This is a transcript created from the video “Jaques Derrida on Love and Being”, which I believe comes from the 2002 documentary of the master himself, though I can’t confirm it.

You can find the video here.

Interviewer: Just whatever you want to say about love…
J Derrida: About what?
Interviewer: Love.
J Derrida: Love or death?
Interviewer: Love, tell me more on love.
J Derrida: I have nothing to say about love. At least pose a question. I can’t examine “love” just like that. You need to pose a question. I’m not capable of talking in generalities about love. I’m not capable… Maybe that’s what you want me to say in front of the camera. That I have nothing to say about love in general.
Interviewer: (Laughs)
Interviewer: Okay, could you explain why this topic has concerned philosophers for centuries? It’s an important philosophical subject, isn’t it?
J Derrida: You can’t ask this of me Amy. Why have philosophers always spoken of love? That’s how philosophy started- No, no. It’s not possible. I have an empty head on love in general. And as for the reason philosophy has often spoken of love, I either have nothing to say or I’d just be reciting clichés.
Interviewer: Plato often spoke of this maybe you could just talk about that.
J Derrida: One of the first questions one could pose, I’m searching a bit… is the question of the difference between the “who” and the “what”. Is love of someone or love of something? Okay supposed I loved someone, do I love someone for the absolute singularity of who they are? I love you because you are you. Or do I love your qualities, your beauty, your intelligence? Does one love someone, or does one love something about someone? The difference between the “who” and the “what” at the heart of love separates the heart. It is often said that love is the movement of the heart. Does my heart move because I love someone who is an absolute singularity, or because I love the way that someone is? Often, love starts with some type of seduction. One is attracted because the other is like this or like that. Inversely, love is disappointed and dies when one comes to realize the other person doesn’t merit our love. The other person isn’t like this or that. So at the death of love, it appears that one stops loving another not because of who they are, but because they are such and such. This is to say, the history of love, the heart of love, is divided between the “who” and “what”. The question of “Being” to return to philosophy- because the first question of philosophy is: what is it “to Be?” What is being? The question of Being is itself always already divided between the who and the what. Is being someone or something? I speak of it abstractly, but I think that whoever starts to love, is in love, or stops loving, is caught between this division of the “who” and the “what”. One wants to be true to someone- singularly, irreplaceably- and one perceives that this someone isn’t X or Y. They didn’t have the qualities, properties, the images, that I thought I’d loved. So fidelity is threatened by the difference between the “who” and the “what”.

What is impressive about Derrida is his refusal to talk in generalities, or in other words “blanket terms” or “transcendental signified”, he doesn’t open up until the question is framed under the discourse. Though it may seem as a mere lack of specifics on the part of the interviewer, or one might even think that he is stalling, I find his approach on most interviews similar. In the second part of this blog I would like to go in to Simmel and his short paragraph on Love, and maybe then I will have more time to share my thoughts of the two.