Classification of human love into real and metaphorical types
Generally speaking, human love is of two types:
1. Real love: The love of God and His Attributes and Actions due to man’s dependence on Him.
2. Metaphorical love: Any kind of love for anything other than God.
Metaphorical love, by itself, is divided into spiritual and animal loves, which will be explained later.
The most important kinds of metaphorical love are the following:
1. Love of animal souls for marriage and mating. The philosophy behind it is the survival of generations and preserving the species.
2. Love of leaders for power and leadership and their greed for attaining and securing it. This love seems to be a part of their nature and soul. The philosophy behind it is longing for dominance of the soul over its subordinate powers.
3. Love of merchants and the rich for gaining wealth and their avarice for collecting and saving money. This also seems to be a part of their nature and soul, and the philosophy behind it is to guarantee the happiness and prosperity of their children or those who come after them.
4. Love of scholars and philosophers for gaining knowledge, compiling, writing and publishing books, doing research for discovering the secrets and complexities of science, and teaching and presenting them to learners and the talented. This kind of love is also natural and intrinsic, and the philosophy behind it is to revive the souls, resurrect them from a death due to benightedness, help them to rise out of the grave of nature, and awaken them from the sleep of ignorance and forgetfulness.
5. Craftsmen’s love for presenting their art and improving, embellishing and developing it. This kind of love also seems to be instinctive, and the benefits of people and society lie in it.
6. Love of the witty and people of elegant taste for the beautiful.[25]
The above kinds of love are quite common among people, and philosophers have offered a philosophy for each of them. The affection for the beautiful, which is called love in its height of intensity, has always been a topic for discussion and contemplation due to its being in contrast with moral, religious and ethical issues, and a lot of different and contradictory ideas have been expressed in relation to it. The criteria for distinguishing good love from bad love, certainly, consist of their consequences and effects. Accordingly, it is said that the nobility of love lies in the nobility of the beloved, and the kind of the beloved the soul desires depends on its degree of existence and nobility. Thus one will know about the nobility of love, the degree of the lover’s nobility, and his ontological grade by attending to the beloved. Mulla Æadra has an interesting and memorable remark in this regard. He says that the nobler and the higher the souls, the more beautiful, subtle, valuable and pure their friendships and desires. So, the love of vegetative powers, whose function is limited to nourishment, growth and reproduction, is limited to the same things. The love of the animal soul, which is superior to the plant and is endowed with higher powers concerning eating, having relationships with the opposite sex and reproduction is reflected in a more delicate and distinguished way. Such functions are performed naturally in plants, while in animals they are accompanied with free will, choice and employment of the senses and imagination. When a noble power such as rationality is added to an animal’s powers, its actions will also be more noticeable, purposeful, enduring, solid and sublime.
From man’s animal soul actions and reactions such as feelings, imagination, eating, sexual relationships and fighting the enemies are issued. Insofar as these faculties are not directed by the rational soul, they will be mean and worthless, as the actions of the wicked and inferior people, who look more like beasts than human beings, are considered to be similar to those of animals. It is only after association with the rational soul that such faculties gain value, luminosity and delicacy, and the same animal actions are issued with a kind of skillfulness, perfection, nobility and elevation.
The nobler and higher the souls, the more delicate and glorious, and the purer and richer their objects of love and desire. [26]
Love of the beautiful
A kind of love in human life appears in the form of one’s excessive interest in another person. This love is much deeper than parental or married love; it reaches a degree at which the lover goes beyond his normal state, loses the ability to eat or sleep, and all his attention is directed to his beautiful beloved. An example in this regard is Majnun love for Laila, which has been repeatedly referred to in Iranian literature. In such a state of love, the lover finds all perfections, virtues and good in his beloved and is ready to sacrifice his life and soul for her; he cuts off from all and makes a special fire with the imaginal form of his beloved in the realm of his existence. He burns himself in the heat of that fire and enjoys this burning. Such a state is never felt by animals or, at least, cannot be proved or observed in their case. The nature of this state comprises one of the subjects of philosophy and modern psychology.
Views on the nature of the love of the beautiful
Murtaèa Muìahhari has a short discussion on this issue in his Fiìrat, which is mainly inspired by Mulla Æadra’s views in al-Asfar.: He says, "Some have dispensed with this word simply by saying that it is a disease or an illness. This theory - love as a disease – has no followers nowadays. On the other hand, it is said that love is a gift rather than a disease. [27]
It has been written in al-Asfar that some people believe that love is condemned and obscene and is the job of the idle and the lazy.
Some have viewed it as a mental disease; some call it the ‘divine madness’; and some have never apprehended its nature, meaning or end at all.
Conversely, some have regarded it as a human virtue, praised it, and spoken about the virtues of lovers, the nobility of love and its end. [28]
To continue with his discussion, Muìahhari says, "Some believe that there is only one kind of love, and that is the sexual love, and that all kinds of human love are rooted in the sexual instinct. He refers to Freud as one of the advocates of this theory. However, this view is absolutely unjustified, because sexual love is rooted in egocentricity and the lover’s selfishness and desire for possessing the beloved for himself, in which case we would rather call it ‘passion’ rather than love. Union and possession have no place in love; the problem there is the annihilation of the lover, which is not consistent with egocentricity. It is here that the above issue develops an extremely important and debatable form and turns into a topic worthy of analysis in philosophy and psychology. [29]
After quoting various views concerning this kind of love, Mulla Æadra expresses his views on its philosophical nature. He presents a relatively detailed account of this issue in a chapter entitled ‘On the Love of the Witty and the Youth for Beautiful Countenances’. In a part of this chapter he says,
If we inquire into this kind of love more carefully and pay attention to its universal causes, transcendent origins and philosophical ends, we find out that such a love, that is, taking extreme delight in watching beautiful countenances and having excessive fondness for those of delicate features and a beautiful appearance is among divine actions, has a philosophy of its own and leads to some benefits. It exists in the souls of the majority naturally and without any formality or artificiality. It is certainly good and desirable, especially when it becomes a means to higher ends. Tough souls, hard hearts and dry natures are void of this kind of love, and their love is simply restricted to the mutual attraction between men and women". [30]
In another passage, to reject some views, Mulla Æadra argues as follows: Regarding those who attribute this love to the deeds of the idle and those who have no ambition, it should be said that they have no understanding of hidden issues or subtle secrets. Neither do they know anything except for what is manifested to the senses or appears to superficial perceptions. They are also unaware of the fact that the Most High God does not create anything in the nature of souls unless for an important reason and great purpose. [31]
To clarify the issue still further, Mulla Æadra, as mentioned earlier, divides love into real and metaphorical types. Metaphorical love, itself, is divided into human love and animal love.
The origin of human love is the similitude of the souls of the lover and the beloved in nature and substance, as well as the lover's obsession with and wonder for the features of the beloved, which originate from his soul.
In animal love, the origin is corporeal passion and the desire for animal pleasures, and the lover's utmost lovesickness and wonder are directed to the appearance of the beloved and the color and shape of her body.
Muåaqqiq Ìusi’s remarks in his commentary on the ninth Namaì (section) of al-Isharat in this regard are worth reading: Beware that human love is divided into real love, as discussed before, and metaphorical love, which is divided into the human and the animal loves. The origin of human love is the similitude of the souls of the lover and the beloved in substance. The lover's utmost obsession which originates from his soul is the beloved’s features. The origin of animal love is animal desire and the lust for bestial pleasure, and the lover is mostly amazed at the appearance of the beloved and the color and form of its body due to their being corporeal issues. [32]
There is a fine borderline between human love and animal love, since both are a kind of attraction between opposite sexes, though originating from two different human aspects. The former is necessitated by subtlety of the soul, purity of the spirit and tenderness of heart, while the latter is necessitated by the carnal soul and originates from sexual desires. Perhaps, one of the reasons for philosophers’ disagreements concerning the love of the witty for beautiful countenances and their praise or contempt for this kind of love is the very superficial similarity between human love and animal lust. According to Ibn Sina, rational human souls, due to their abstract and spiritual aspects and natural subtlety, always desire for things which are unique in beauty, glory and goodness. They are also interested in harmonious sounds, savory food and drinks and the like. Ibn Sina believes that this kind of love is rooted in the animal soul; however, he maintains that, due to its association with the rational soul, the animal soul sometimes follows it in its good choice and search for desirable things. Nevertheless, it lacks the power or right to interfere with the issues specific to the rational soul, such as perceiving the universals and imagining the intelligible. [33]
