ABSTRACT
Emmanuel Levinas, more than most modern philosophers, has written perceptively about love, conceived as responsibility for the Other before oneself. Love is impossible to pin down, to abide forever, it "ceaselessly escapes" the solicitor, it "slips away". There are many common delusions, or delusion-like views that people hold to in their love relationships. As one gets older, it becomes increasingly apparent just how limited, flawed, and downright deficient one's behaviour is in one's love relation. For Sigmund Freud, love is marked by genital primacy in sexuality, and object love in relationships with others. In contrast to Levinas, Freud's view of love is driven, if not limited, by his guiding assumption about the human condition, that man is fundamentally egotistical and pleasure seeking. Perhaps the best defence against ambivalence in a love relation, the potentially relationship-destroying dichotomies, contradictions, and incongruities, the ever-present shadow of Thanatos, is a mindfully held counter-vision, a new way of thinking, imagining, and valuing the Other.
