10.11.2007
In his article "Love and Death"[1], Dan Moller discusses how depressing it
is to think that love felt for us (mostly of the romantic sort) fades away
quickly after we die, although it was an all-overriding concern for those
who loved us - when we were still there. We hoped they would build their
entire world around us (we did the same); yet when we have passed away, that
world is dismantled depressingly fast. It's what Hamlet so forcefully
criticizes in his first monologue (Hamlet, I.2; he unfairly
generalizes and directs the criticism against women, where in fact there is
no indication it's any different with men).
1) Moller starts his analysis by quoting the consensus in empirical
psychological research: most people adapt after losing a loved person -
they recover quickly and manifest little long-term distress. This goes
somewhat contrary to the folk opinion which has it that such resilience is
rather exceptional, and somewhat pathological, or reflecting a lack of
depth in the relationship that has now ended (301-303). This empirical
finding doesn't mean, of course, that the loss is not felt strongly, and
sometimes devastatingly, by the bereaved; but it means that adaptive
mechanisms kick in and lead them back to normal life after a short
while (303-304).
A primary element in Moller's discussion is the contrast of how people
actually behave in this respect with how they are believed or expected to
behave: People like to think that they have a certain importance, or
significance, for those who love them (308-310); such importance is taken to
be reflected in the fact that after their death, the lives of those who loved
them become to some extent dysfunctional. The analogy here is that of a
sports team (or a company) where a leading team member (or a skilled employee)
leaves. If that person really was important, the team will not only lose
some ability to perform well: it may be unable to function at all. At any
rate, that's what important players in a team or a company imagine. As Moller
notes, their role is a functional one, and they will probably be replaced
by someone else who can fulfill that function; even if they may not reach
their previous height again, the team will be able to get back to working
mode (310). Potentially regrettable, though, for those who are loved by
someone, the same applies to their importance for those who love them: "We
may be desperately needed as companions, friends, sex partners and intimates,
but these roles endow us with much less significance than we imagine, given
that we can be functionally replaced in these respects, and - so the evidence
indicates - upon our deaths very often are." (310)
Conversely, those who outlive their loved ones, and adapt to the new
situation after their loss, have also reason to be uneasy about this
resilience: it "renders us unable to take in and register fully the
significance of our losses" (310). What is meant by 'take in and
register fully' here is that, after we have adapted, we have lost the
capacity to respond emotionally to our loss; but emotions are part of how we
connect to value (perceiving value or projecting it, depending on which
stance one takes on the cognitivism vs. projectivism debate). Therefore, we
have lost part of the capacity to connect to the value of our past love
(311-312). Now why should we be uneasy about that? Because it shows a limit
to our having deep insight into our own condition: it seems to be a fact
about our lives that we are unable (as a result of our adaptive nature) to
recognize our most valuable goods after we have lost them (312-313).
In his final section, Moller considers a view that positions humans at
a healthy mean position in a spectrum between two extremes: being so
overly resilient that any loss is forgotten immediately and life carries on
as if nothing had happened (dubbed the super-resilient extreme) and
having no resilience at all, resulting in permanent misery after any loss for
the rest of one's days (the sub-resilient extreme). According to this
view, we have "a system of attitudes and emotional dispositions that avoids
the pitfalls of either extreme and leaves us at the most livable point on the
continuum" (314). However, as Moller argues, being on middle ground between
two undesirable extremes may make a position the most acceptable, but not
automatically a good one. In particular, there may be elements in our
considered moral stance that make any deviation from the sub-resilient
extreme morally questionable, though it is necessary for our emotional
health. "The kind of importance we have for another, our irreplaceability or
lack thereof, and our inability to appreciate fully our own condition as
vulnerable victims of loss are issues that should concern us no matter how
powerful the countervailing reasons are for accepting a mean (or more-nearly
mean) position on the continuum." (315)
2) Moller's article raises interesting questions, and has
the merit to direct attention to some deeper aspects of a topic that may
look at first glance simply settled by the empirical findings. I think
he is particularly right to note that there is something in these findings
that should make us uneasy - that we overlook a deep aspect of the way
our relationships work if we ignore this uneasiness and its reasons.
The remainder of this post is a critical discussion of some points in
the article. I shall not directly discuss Moller's arguments, but instead
take up some distinctions he makes and some aspects he mentions. (I'll
also relate them to some of the topics in earlier posts.)
3) There is something that concerns me about what Moller calls
the importance we have for others (modeled on the example of the
leaving of a team member, as sketched above). Moller takes a lot of care to
separate this concept from the question of whether others care for us.
As it is, someone can care very much for you and be willing to go through
great pains for you, and still after your death (and after an appropriate
phase of adapting to the new situation) focus attention to someone else and
get back into a normal life, thus experiencing disruption and limited
functioning only for a limited time. So in this case, this person actually
did care about you, yet there wasn't as much importance, in Moller's sense,
as you'd thought.
However, even in the team example there is something selfish about team
members who increase their importance by making sure that the team can't
function without them. Even if they don't actively secure a probable
malfunction in a scenario where the team is without them, they are in a
sense acting irresponsibly. This comes out even more clear in the company
example. It is a basic responsibility for any employee to enable their
co-workers to continue should they drop out (temporarily or permanently).
Note that this is a responsibility not only to the company (and their
customers), but also to the team, i.e. their co-workers.
Relationships such as love and friendship are based on viewing the other
part as valuable in themselves, not only as desirable in that they are there
for us. To hope that the other half of a love relationship will not be able
to lead a full life after the relationship has ended comes dangerously close
to a lack of acknowledgment of their right to continue to be a full
person.
4) In this respect, there is indeed something special about the
situation when one of the people in the relationship dies. What is special
can best be seen when we view the relationship as a life-defining commitment
for both sides. Since it is life-defining, it is pervasive, and people build
their entire world around it (or at least there is a vital part of their
world which is built so). But obviously, lives can be of different lengths,
and the non-overlapping end is precisely the part where one of the involved
persons is not there anymore. Since the relationship ends there (insofar as
it can be lived; it is not implied that it can't be preserved to a certain
degree in memories and habits), it cannot play the life-defining role
anymore, and the world cannot be built around it any longer for the remaining
person.
It is crucial in this situation to understand what exactly the commitment
to the relationship has covered (which isn't a simple question at all). In
the case of romantic love, there is normally an understanding of exclusivity
involved. Still, the exclusion may either be seen to be valid as long as
the relationship lasts, or as valid eternally. Only in the latter case it
would imply a demand that even after the death of the beloved that
relationship (now past) is the focus of the rest of one's life. With
friendship, there isn't usually such a requirement of exclusivity.
In appreciating that we are loved, we appreciate that the other person
makes this commitment. But it is a commitment to us and to our
relationship, both of which aren't capable of playing any active role in the
other person's life anymore when we die. In demanding the commitment to
extend further than that, i.e. to something more than us and the
relationship, we would ask for a different sort of commitment. We would
precisely ask them to be happy with us and within this relationship, and
hopeless unhappy after that. This is not exactly selfish (in the way
a leaving team member was selfish in the example above), since there is not
actually any benefit for the person receiving the commitment; but there is
still a remarkable lack of concern for the well-being of the other
person.
5) Another way to formulate the point I have made above would be:
someone who thinks of his own importance for a lover reflected in the
inability, on the lover's side, to go one after the death of the loved one,
doesn't respect the other's full life span as a valuable good. We should be
aware that one's life's
time is the most important good at all; and that applies of course not
only to ourselves. The part of the lover's life span that comes after the
death of the loved one is still part of their life span, and investing it
in a past relationship is probably not the best use that can be made of it.
(But it may be, for instance in the case of an artist who works the
experiences of great joy and equally great pain after the loss into her
work. Note, however, that this is also a new commitment, which simply does
not conflict with the commitment to the past relationship.)
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[1] Dan Moller, "Love and Death", in: Journal of Philosophy
CIV (2007), 301-316.
