Sie sind auf Seite 1von 3

We are all familiar with the French Revolutions political side, which radically

changed Western beliefs about the relationship between man, society, and
government. Yet the French Revolution also had a deeply personal aspect,
known as the Romantic Movement, which changed the way we think about
something even more fundamental: love. Before the modern era, love had an
objective element inextricably bound up with various social duties. In the
modern era love means the subjective, intense desire at a particular moment
for some other person. Lets explore the subject of pre-modern love, and
see whether it was inherently defective and deserved to be discarded.
If we go back far enough, pre-modern love becomes primitive love, which
was the same as modern love. One person had an intense desire for another
person, they had sex, and when they no longer desired each other intensely
they ceased to have sex. This might sound agreeable to some of us in
theory, but it created serious problems when it involved a man and a
woman:
1. If a woman was free to have sex with multiple men, then there was no way
of determining who the father was when she became pregnant. Thus,
children were born without paternal support and were abandoned.
2. A womans fertility and attractiveness usually decline much faster than a
mans. Men would consistently abandon women after a few years for
younger partners, leaving older women and their offspring to fend for
themselves for the rest of their lives.
3. When free love is permitted, it quickly becomes an obsession. Men and
woman spent an inordinate amount of time pursuing sex with each other.
This lead to violent conflict over mates, and emotional drama consumed so
much time that nobody invested much effort in developing high culture or
improving technology.
These and countless other problems meant that any society wishing to
advance beyond the most primitive state had to attach a set of socially
enforced rules to sex between men and women. Across the world, very
similar sets of rules developed and eventually became known as the
institution of marriage. What were these rules? A woman would devote her
most fertile and attractive years to one man, who could be confident that
any offspring were his. Consequently, he was obligated to support them
materially and emotionally. In return, the man was not permitted to abandon
the woman as her attractiveness declined. He was obligated to support her
and their offspring. Some cultures permitted powerful men with extra

resources to take on younger mistresses or even another wife, but the


interests of his first wife and legitimate offspring had priority.
Considering how much men value consequence-free sex, marriage was
probably a bad deal from a selfish standpoint. But if society was going to
advance beyond a primitive state, it was necessary. Social evolution is every
bit as ruthless as biological evolution, and cultures that had controlled sex
and subordinated it to higher goals quickly conquered cultures that spent all
their time infighting over sexual partners.
The bad deal for men was also turned into a good deal by the rise of the cult
of domesticity. Over time women discovered a whole set of non-sexual
attributes that maintained their desirability against younger women as they
aged. Above all, women learned to provide constant emotional support to a
man. Men can function alone, but they tend to become abstracted and
anxious the longer they do. Women are much more social and grounded in
the moment, and can bring a man into a richer, more social life if he has
confidence in the sincerity and consistency of his wifes support. Then of
course there are all the mundane domestic acts that demonstrate emotional
support, such as cooking. As the old peasant proverb goes: beauty fades,
cooking does not. Furthermore, by adopting feminine mannerisms, careful
selection of clothing, makeup, and so forth a woman could maintain a high
level of desirability for years longer than otherwise. Gender roles may be in
part an artificial construct, and they are ideologically very out of fashion, but
they evolved across the world for a reason, and they evolved for the benefit
of women looking to maintain long-term commitment.
People tend to look at pre-modern love as dull and mechanical, but is that
necessarily true? The ancients knew about passionate desire Paris
kidnapped Helen with the help of Aphrodite but they saw nothing
particularly noble about his subjective physical and emotional desire. Indeed,
Paris is seen as weak and cowardly in the Iliad. Compare him to Odysseus.
When we first meet him at the beginning of the Odyssey, he has achieved
everything that a worldly man could hope for; he is shipwrecked on a private
island with the eternally beautiful goddess Calypso. She cherishes him and
has vowed to make him her immortal lover. Yet Odysseus spends all his days
sobbing for home, and eventually undertakes a journey in defiance of the
god Poseidon that will probably end in his death for a chance to return
home to his aging, mortal wife Penelope. We dont think of the Odyssey as a
romance, because Odysseus is a man of craft and action, not poetry. But isnt
it one of the finest romances? Words are cheap; an act of devotion like his

can only come from a profoundly spiritual, rather than merely erotic love. It
also demonstrates how much even a strong warrior like Odysseus values the
emotional and domestic support of a devoted wife.
Christianity only reinforced the objective definition of love as self-sacrificing
mutual support: The Church entwining the duty to support ones spouse in a
worldly sense with the duty to support ones spouse in a spiritual sense.
Christianity then strictly prohibited all other forms of romantic love. If all this
sounds a bit dull to the modern mind, I have to ask what a better basis for
love is? There is no reason why sharing a mutual, deep attachment to the
same religion and/or culture, coupled with the adventure of struggling
together to survive in an uncertain world while raising children in the face of
it all is not a wonderful basis for passionate love. What else is there? Shared
hobbies? Looks? Charm? Cultivating a sexy persona? After a few months or
years these shallow foundations to a relationship will wash away.
If some people were unsatisfied with pre-modern love, then there was
something wrong with them, or something wrong in the execution of premodern love. But there is nothing inherently wrong with the ideal of premodern love. As this blog moves forward Ill be considering the topic of love
further, particularly through the romance novels that emerged at the
juncture of pre-modern and modern love like War & Peace, or Pride &
Prejudice. I hope youll follow along.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen