Ossorio: There’s a rule of thumb, a purely empirical generalization, that the person you fall in love with, is the person with whom you can be the way you really want to be. Now, the question is, given this, isn’t love inherently self-interest?

That’s tricky because the simplest answer is "No." It doesn’t even seem to follow. There’s too much of a gap to draw that kind of conclusion. What you might say is you need to be approaching this in a fairly cynical way to draw that conclusion. So, given the analysis of love that we got this afternoon, to think that it would be used purely in your narrow self-interest, is a pretty cynical approach. And without that cynicism there is no reason to draw any such conclusion.

Audience: Well, it’s the premise that’s troublesome here, I believe.

Ossorio: What?

Audience: That first part of that statement that you read off.

Ossorio: Well it says "If as I think you have said, you fall in love with the person with whom you can be the way you really want to be..."

Audience: Who said that?

Ossorio: I did.

Audience: You said it?

Ossorio: Yeah. [Laughter] And all I can say is literature is full of examples in prose, drama, and poetry where it opens up with the woman saying "The man I love must be A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H…" and in the end she is riding off in the sunset with somebody who has none of these characteristics. [Laughter] And if you ask why, this is the answer. The notion that you fall in love with somebody because they have a long list of virtues is nonsense.

Audience: Last year I heard you say that, you also pointed out [?] surprised or even horrified if… [Laughter]

Ossorio: Yeah. One of the subsidiary arguments against drawing the conclusion that it’s self-interest, is that often you don’t know who you really want to be until you meet this person. If you don’t know ahead of time, how could have you selected them for that?

Audience: Well, you could realize. You get involved and you say, "Wow, when I’m with her I am who I really want to be. I am going to grab a hold of her and with her I can be who I want to be."

Ossorio: No. That’s love. [Laughter]

Audience: What’s the value of self-interest in formulation? That concept has been very sticky.

Ossorio: Well, yeah. Remember the four perspectives of hedonic, potential, ethical and esthetic. One of the things you can do with each one of those is to say that the other three are simply variations on it. Everything is a form of pleasure. Everything is a form of self-interest. Everything is a form of fittingness. Everything is a form of how things ought to be. And the fact is that you can do it with each of the four and make the other three apparently subsidiary, except that you find that you need to carry the distinctions. If you think that it’s all different kinds of pleasure, you still have to carry the distinctions between these different kinds of pleasure. If you think it is all self-interest, you still have to carry the distinctions between these different kinds of self-interest because they work very differently. And the same for fittingness and the same for how it ought to be.

Audience: I didn’t think you could do that with a negation sort of idea. If you want to show somebody why it isn’t all self-interest, try a flip statement which is people are never generous. And if you don’t buy that one, then you don’t buy the idea it’s all self-interest.

Ossorio: I would expect that somebody who takes this seriously would say "Yeah, people are never really generous." That’s a tame example compared to this.

Audience: Yeah, but that isn’t the real example.

Ossorio: Yeah. That’s the point.