(October 22, 2019 at 7:20 am)Belacqua Wrote: So here I made a connection I wasn't expecting: my novel-reading group is reading The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch. She was a Platonist, too, and much of her fiction is about irrational passions among people. She argues that, paradoxically, only those who are in love with someone can see that person clearly. This, again, is so against the grain that it seems just crazy at first. Love is blind and smoke gets in your eyes, etc. But it's precisely the irrational valuing of someone -- who to everyone else seems disposable or interchangeable -- which pushes us to see the true worth and character of the person.
I don't know. It cuts both ways. One who is "in love" (in the throes of cathexis) sees an idealistic version of the love object. It is in a sense a virtue in itself to value the beloved as if they weren't in fact objectively no different than a zillion other people of similar character and ability and personality. However ... noble-feeling though it may be, eventually one must give back their projections, take the beloved off their pedestal, and allow them to breathe and be human. And then we're right back where we started.
I think Sartre had it more right with his "hell is other people". By which he meant, in large part, that you can't know yourself fully without the judgments and criticisms and demands of other people, most especially those who know you best. That is not the same as saying people or relationships are a waste of time or that they provide more pain than pleasure ... that's a very individual calculus. But I think it means that relationships cannot be all rainbows and unicorns and pleasure. It is also the pain of standing naked (metaphorically) before another, without masks, and risking finding out that not you're all virtue and nobility and just generally an overlooked diamond of a person. It's a relatively high risk actually, especially after the honeymoon period in any relationship, when you start to grate on other people's nerves.
Real and honest relationships more often than not end up with the parties thereto saying "I know you and I love you ... ANYWAY". Not because you're perfect, or more special, but exactly because you're not. It's an affirmation of the bedrock value and worthiness of a person based not on their exceptional qualities but on their humanity. It is seeing someone as they truly are -- imperfections and all -- and not discarding them in some misguided notion that there is someone out there who is more perfect or worthy of your love. You could choose to see the value in someone else ... but you've chosen to see it and commit to it in THIS particular person, despite that their table manners are lacking or that they snore or fart in their sleep or can sometimes be an inconsiderate ass. Because you know that equivalent unsavory things are true of you, too.
So count me, I guess, as one who is not an idealist. It is just too exhausting making excuses for the real features of an imperfect other person who is "supposed" to be the embodiment of all your hopes and dreams for a partner in life. It reminds me of making excuses for this supposedly deeply interventionist god I used to worship when it was self-evident that he was not intervening whatsoever. At least with a human partner, you're dealing with someone who is REAL. But for that to be completely true -- so that you're not dealing with some highly stylized fantasy overlay rather than the person themself -- you must accept not only their flesh and blood reality, but their failings and weaknesses. In my experience ... most potential partners are not up for that. And they certainly are not committed to know you and hold fast to you in that real sort of way.
