Love as the craftsmanship of the self
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5335-8896
Abstract
This article proposes a conceptual shift in the study of love moving away from the question of what love is toward an inquiry into what love does and focusing on its existential and performative efficacy. To this end, I will draw on Robert C. Solomon’s conception of emotions, which understands love not as an internal feeling, but as a social praxis and a vital strategy: a set of acts that shape relationships and define identity. From this perspective, love is a relationship, and romantic relationships are privileged spaces for (self-)definition, where loving and being loved imply a permanent
transformation of the self resulting from an assemblage of actions, affects, and bodies.
In late modernity, love faces the paradox of «together, yet me»: the desire for fusion
without the loss of individual autonomy, which creates a structural tension. The article
concludes that care is the fundamental constitutive practice of love. We are as we
love: our identity is shaped through acts of care. Understanding love as an ethical and
transformative practice, as I proposed, is to understand who we are and who we can
become.
How to Cite
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love, emotions, identity, praxis, interdependency
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