“The very point is that it is not about how it makes me feel, but it is a fascination and appreciation for the value of the thing itself.” That reminds me of something C. S. Lewis wrote in “Men without Chests” from The Abolition of Man. The entire essay is well worth reading; it is a serious charge leveled at a school textbook that purportedly teaches English but is in reality a propaganda piece for the authors’ relativistic philosophy. One line Lewis quotes is, “We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.” (The context is two men’s reactions upon seeing a waterfall, one calling it “sublime” and the other “pretty.” The textbook debunks the idea that “sublime” refers to any characteristic of the waterfall itself, but is just as subjective a description as “pretty.”)

It’s not relevant here, but I can’t resist quoting one of my favorite lines from the essay, the concluding sentence: We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. I tend think of it when contemplating (as in Lewis’s essay) the effects of certain educational policies, but it probably has a much wider application.

And Stephan, you will no doubt like this one: “St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it.” St. Augustine would probably not approve of my statement that I love Jack Daniels barbecue sauce. 🙂

And I need to correct an already awkward sentence by making it more awkward: “I think it’s a question of the use of language as much as of Stackhouse’s own main point.”

of, of, of.

I think it’s a question of the use of language as much as Stackhouse’s own main point. (He admits as much quite a ways down in his comment #69 saying “If you’re “in love with” your grandchildren or “in love with” someone or something other than your lover, then sure, sing it.”)

I’ll try my own luck at including the direct link: Jesus, I’m NOT in Love with You.

@Irishoboe: Yes, ITIWBAGNFARB – at least some alternative one with crooning harmonies, folksy guitar, and breathy vocals.

Just trying to figure this out: you’re asking me for an alternative to “love” (v, transitive) to capture how something else (city, grandkids, etc.) makes you feel good and attracted to it by virtue of its character? If that’s the case, I’d suggest either your option, “captivating,” despite being a participle and despite Eldredge hijackery, or a passive form of a verb like (you’re making me use my thesaurus again) allure, beguile, bewitch, captivate, charm, dazzle, delight, draw, enamour*, enrapture, enslave*, ensnare*, entertain*, enthrall, entrance (v), fascinate, gratify*, grip, hold, hook, hypnotize, infatuate*, intrigue, lure*, magnetize, mesmerize, please* (v), seduce*, spellbind, take, vamp*, wile*, win, to name but a few. 😉 (The * signifies I wouldn’t use it for New York or your nephews.)

I take your point that love describes a long continuum from tough decision to enthusiastic response. So maybe I should delight in cheese and be hooked by Virginia Tech footbal and won and held by Jesus.

Second, the meaning of the phrase “in love with.” At first I didn’t quite see why Mom got so upset about it, but then I realized that I explain my reasons from coming back to Switzerland by saying “I fell in love with the city, the school, my church, etc.” So, what do I mean by it and how can I substitute for it if the phrase bothers people like Stackhouse and Stephan (WBAGNFARB)?

I agree that ‘loving’ a food is too strong, but I cannot deny that I use ‘love’ in this way quite frequently. “I love chocolate” means I intensely enjoy eating chocolate, but in the case of “in love,” the whole is not the sum of its parts. I may like New York City because of the museums, the parks, the hustle and bustle, the history, or any number of reasons, but one person may like all those things while another is captivated (ooh, bad word I know) by something magical in the whole of New York City. There’s a connection, a delight, an enjoyment that is somehow inexplicable and outside the self.

I love chocolate because of how it makes me feel. Someone ‘in love’ with NYC certainly likes the way he feels when he walks down the street, but that’s not what he would tell you if you asked him why he loves it. He would talk about the object itself. The phrase “in love” implies that the object has some kind of life and internal value that is worthy of enjoyment and preservation. The chocolate bar I consume is not the object of my love – my own pleasure is.

I naively think that falling in love with a human is this way, too. It’s not about how the other person fulfills my sexual desires but that the person himself is valued beyond the self. I delight in him, I desire to be with him and it is not simply because he is handsome or smart and fulfilled everything on my wish list. I love the ‘object’ so much that I overlook its faults (which is not the same as calling them good or not desiring that they should change for the better – quite the opposite) and make considerable self sacrifice to protect and bring the best for my “love.”

I think this kind of love for a city or a grandkid is appropriate as well. What would you call it?

@Sursumcorda: I hope we’re misusing the term “in love with.” I know people say “The moment I picked up the racket I fell in love with tennis,” but to me that’s an unnecessary abuse of the term. I suppose you want to use it referring to your grandchildren in order to indicate a greater devotion than the phrase “I love my grandchildren” may imply, because we also casually love nacho cheese chips. I’d rather we stopped loving football, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, toe socks, chapstick, and Beethoven, and reserved that verb for grandchildren, friends, perhaps even pets, but (grammatical) objects where love has a real meaning. Then we can go on to use “in love with” for romantic relationships alone, and our language would be a lot less muddled. I don’t know the evolution of our use of the word, so I don’t know if I’m championing former use or just a reform.

I’ll agree that non-sexual affection merits a revival, but I don’t think that’s behind Stackhouse’s view (I can’t read the blog; the link is only a <a> and a </a> and I’m too lazy to google it). Fortunately humans are reasonably good at understanding the influence of context and won’t get creepy ideas if I say I’m in love with gorgonzola, but I’d still rather not use the term that way. They won’t likely get creepy ideas if I say I’m in love with my Mom, but I’d rather grant the use of that phrase to my Dad and myself state that I love my Mom to bits or some such phrase. It would represent a gain in clarity.

In the end, I don’t care what you call it, as long as you keep on loving your children and grandchildren with constancy and selflessness.

By the way and beside the point: “Sursumcorda” can be re-arranged to spell “mucus ardors.”

While I can agree with him in disliking most of that kind of song, I was perturbed by his ill judgement of those who like and sing them, because many people do not see the phrase “in love with” in that restricted context. (You are the second who does — though I’ll admit it’s not a question I’ve asked of many.)

Perhaps we’re simply misusing the term, and have committed the error C. S. Lewis complained of when he said the term “gentleman” once had a narrow, specific meaning, and its metamorphosis into meaning someone with good manners and character simply made things confusing. (Particularly, I suppose, because the second definition did not apply to so many gentlemen of the first.)

But I’m inclined to think it has more to to do with the nature of our sex-saturated society, in which the erotic has eclipsed almost all the other wonderful and God-given delights of love. That is what I found creepy about Stackhouse’s post — the idea that “in love with” implies eroticism. I wouldn’t use the phrase as you suggest, but only because my love of spaghetti carbonara is not strong enough for such a statement — and if I said it about the Yankees, there’d probably be murder done here. (I’m in love with — in Stackhouse’s sense — a die-hard Red Sox fan.) But I’m madly in love with my grandchildren, for example, and I don’t care who knows it — though I guess it’s good to be aware that such a statement might cause some people to report me to Child Protective Services!

Sorry to rant so. You actually did me a favor by reinforcing Stackhouse’s view, since one person might be crazy but two is at least a trend. 🙂 I shall have to be more careful with my casual affections. But I’m afraid this is a hot button for me — the reduction of love to the sexual (to overstate just a little). My husband works with Indians who report having had to be trained in “cultural sensitivity” on coming to the U.S. In India, they say, it is common — as I believe it ought to be — for two men to walk down the street with their arms on each other’s shoulders, but here that has implications they would rather not give! I believe the loss of non-sexual affection, physical and otherwise, is a cause of many problems in our society. But I should write my own post, instead of hijacking yours!