On Love

Love is a human fact, something that happens to humans; no one would deny that. However, its nature is far from clear. Some love stories are tragedies (in the special sense of the term). Other love stories are comedies, just a matter of knowing how to talk to them, of how to persuade them to love them back. Others still are satyr plays. But the true story of love —the good ones— they involve the kind of love, which expands the definition to cover other fields, a rational desire for consistency and intelligibility, a desire to be able to tell and live a coherent story. It is immortality they are in love with.

These are my reasons for affirming that love is the eldest and mightiest and noblest of the Gods, the chief author and giver of virtue in life and of happiness after death.