2019年年底以来，我和Kevin有不少邮件往来。今天发的这一篇关于“爱”。起源于有一天和Kevin聊天，我提到说：在英文里，爱一个人叫"falling in love"；而在中文里，爱一个人叫“爱上了” —— It literally means "loving up". 中文里，爱是向上的，爱让一个人想要变得更好。而英文里，爱是向下的，是坠落的。而作为一个生活在美国的中国人，在影视作品中甚至在生活中所看到的西方爱情文化似乎确实挺“堕落”的。Kevin回复了我许多，可能又觉得意犹未尽。在2020年元旦那天给我发了一封题为"on love and falling...down, in and up?"的邮件，开启了我们此后关于爱这个话题的18封邮件交换。在此挑选一部分和大家分享，因为这实在是有意思的对话。

Zifang,

My friend, i hope you first day of the Gregorian New Year of 2020 found you well.  I had some friends over for a roast of beef with yorkshire pudding and green beans and shallots.  I tried a different recipe for yorkshire pudding and sorta failed.  oh well.  so much for being adventurous!

You occupy my thoughts often, but those thoughts have been in overdrive since you mentioned the linguistic differences regarding the act of Love on a person between Chinese and English.  As you know the discussion of "falling in Love" in English is likely hundreds of pages of discussion in itself and I am taking on grave risk in tackling thoughts on both English and Chinese. As a result, I recognize I am at a disadvantage since I know you are a thoughtful person who is proficient in English and is a native speaker of Chinese. Since I am disadvantaged it likely makes sense that I attempt to tackle the idea of what the significance of "falling" in Love is in English and make a simple stab at the Chinese.  This may meander a bit, so let me try to structure this:

1) There are many types of Love, but let's bucket them into two types: Higher and Lower

Not surprisingly, I reach into Plato's Symposium to lay the foundation for my thoughts on Love.  Pausanias' speech brings us the first stratification of Love, higher and lower, as well as how the customs of the land aid people in expressing love in its different forms.  Since I know you have read Symposium, and since Pausanias' speech can come across anachronistic in its treatment of love between the old and the young, I will not dwell on the details.  However, it sets the table for the idea that there is a Lower and Higher form of Love, which Plato calls Common and Heavenly.  The Lower form of Love is characteristic of more "popular" forms of attraction.  The Higher form is concerned about intelligence and wisdom.  The latter requires a concept of nobility and, through the examples provided by Pausanias, you see the role society and the state play in constructing a code of behavior around Love.  It is clear that each state provides for different cultural norms on what is "acceptable" around engaging in the pursuit of Love, and, of course, Athens encourages the nobler Higher Love.

Of course, it is worthwhile mentioning that Symposium need not be the ultimate authority on the matter, but most of my additional evidence is going to be from Plato.  Lower Love is called base love in Phadedrus and desire in Republic.  I am uncertain if you have ever read Confessions by Saint Augustine, but he also breaks down love into a dualism: cupiditas (love of the material world) and caritas (love of God).  This is unsurprising, of course, since Augustine was a big fan of Plato.  However, it helps illustrate just how much Platonic thought has shaped our entire lives in the West...without most of us even knowing it.

2) A thoughtful approach to Love in the West is lacking in the post-Classical period.  

What we have is a focus on Lower love, or an inability to understand and discriminate between loves.  This confusion, coupled with the intense emotions attraction can bring, makes Love feel like an infection.  One suffers from Love in the West.

Without doubt individuals have been given greater agency over their daily affairs and greater ability to express themselves with passing generations.  With the waning of the medieval Church, literature surrounding the concept of love grows increasingly "pop" and is likely a reflection with a concern with Lower Love.  We can drum up all the modern romantic comedy scenes that show incredulous men and women struck by Eros' arrows and finding themselves blind and mad in love.  However, Shakespeare continues to be the best repository of how man feels about (wo)man...

"The sight of lovers feedeth those in love"

(As You Like It --Act 3, Sc 4)

"Love goes by haps; Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps"

(Much Ado About Nothing --Act 2, Sc 1)

"Hear my soul speak.  Of the very instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly at your service"

(The Tempest --Act 3, Sc 1)

"Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make females mad"

(A Midsummer Night's Dream --Act 3, Sc 3)

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind"

(A Midsummer Night's Dream --Act 1, Sc 1)

"Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love"

(Antony & Cleopatra --Act 3, Sc 5)

All of those quotes draw a picture of (wo)man as being the one experiencing Love in an rather uncontrollable manner.  The idea that the mere sight of seeing lovers, feeds those in love is really telling, no?  This is a real infection of our soul.  The Cupid analogies (of course going back to our Greek friends there) follow suit with the passive nature of an infection of love.  However, I feel it's the more obscure reference to Love in Antony & Cleopatra that will prove to be most useful to us.  Here Shakespeare is giving us a really important word..."passions."  Passion is defined as a "strong and barely controllable emotion" and its etymology is fascinating.  According to Google Dictionary, the evolution of passion is as follows:

Pati (Latin): to suffer 

Passio (Late Latin): the suffering of Christ

passion (Middle English): that which must be endured, suffering, pain

Shakespeare is saying that pure Love is a barely controllable emotion.  This passion of Love is something where the subject is expected to endure pain and suffering, much like Jesus on the cross.  Wow...How can we note feel like we have fallen.

3) Do we know what it is to be fallen?

Playing off of our quick talk on what "passion" really means, we should quickly think about what "fallen" means, no?  Fallen is a really rough word in the English language.  If we just, rather conveniently, lump the different parts of speech together, we get the following list of definitions.  Fallen is the past participle of the verb to fall:

subject to sin or depravity (adj)

regarded as having lost honor through sex outside of marriage (adj)

killed in battle (adj)

move downward, typically rapidly and freely without control, from a higher to a lower level (v)

lose one's balance and collapse (v)

decrease in number, amount, intensity, or quality (v)

be captured or defeated (v)

pass into a specified state (v)

Wow...some pretty strong associations here.  This may not be as clear cut as just losing your balance.  If we are feeling passions of Love like we are expecting to feel Christ's crucifixion on the cross, it is interesting to see the adjectives here!  Of course, we are dealing with verbs not adjectives, right?  So we can sort of rest our heads on the idea that Love will definitely cause you to start to lose your balance...much like an infection.  The etymology here is interesting, but not too clarifying.  Fall comes from Old English/Dutch/German ideas of moving downward but has Old Norse throwin in as downfall, sin.  The meaning of the word as a noun seems to have infected some of the other meanings just a tad, no?

4) Confucius is too Persian for the Greeks.  Too noble, orderly and political for modern Western attitudes.  However, is there something to loving up in a linguistic turn?  

I already admit I am woefully unprepared to discuss Chinese linguistics and Chinese philosophy, but I will not let that stop me!!! Feel free to kick me over the Internet, if need be.  Confucius uses Ren to discuss the virtue of altruism, and it usually is centered around some relationship that has a power dynamic (Parent/Child, Teacher/Student, Spouse/Spouse, Leader/the People).  Ren is also a key ingredient to political philosophy.  This is of interest to me because the concept of Love is a key part to Plato's political philosophy as well.  Are both Confucius and Plato talking about Higher Love?  The targets of these philosophical works are going to be elites capable of making, or influencing, political decisions.  The tie in here to Pausania's discussion on how customs nad laws around love differed depending on country is important.  There is a political element that cannot be ignored and this, in both cases, have a further link to acting nobly.  Clearly, Shakespeare and the romantic comedies of the last 30 years are not quite speaking to the same audiences, correct?

I recall Ren having an inward impact on the individual, much like Western Love.  By being in love with others, you end up being deeper and more content yourself.  However, on the flip side, I also recall Ren not being able to be cultivated since Ren is innate to individuals.  This is sort of a departure from the Greeks, who felt that proper education and context could help shape leaders.  I do not remember enough about the Analects, but there is definitely some overlap in the love of knowledge, etc.  This all culminates with 君子.  So we have this very strange line of thinking in Confucian thought that uses Love to describe how to achieve superior virtue.  Given this, how can one not be tempted to fall upward into virtue...

5) We all fall down in Love, but we have the ability to look up after?

The easiest summary for me is that the West seems to focus more on how the idea of Love seems to have a chaotic effect on individuals and society.  There is an infectious element to Love where one feels compelled to express feelings.  This vulnerability to man in Love has been celebrated in the West in poetry, literature, and art and is likely focused more on more popularly held beliefs on Love, aka Lower Love than what the Greeks were getting at in Symposium.  On the flip side, Confucian concepts of Love are far more political and focus on organization and acts of nobility.  This is, perhaps, not too far off from Plato's thoughts on the subject, but it is definitely far away from post Classics Western thinking.  Chinese Love may focus more on building a better person in both the subject and the object. This would be closer to the Higher Love discussed in Symposium.

So I do not know if anything I typed actually means anything haha, but it was the most intelligible I could come up with after some time in my head.  I think, given what I have reflected on, I would prefer an expression that recognizes the vulnerability, but focuses on the strength of a superior bonding.  What better than to say that man falls in love, yet is helped up by Love.

Please, when you have the time, share what your thoughts are!  I apologize in advance for any typos, but I my editing is unreliable at my age and this time of nite.

-Kevin

这封邮件里，Kevin提到了这几个方面的内容：

• 将爱分为higher love和lower love，渊源是出自柏拉图的《会饮篇》里包萨尼亚的说法。

• 后古典时代（可以理解为古希腊古罗马文明后），西方缺少对爱有思虑的认识，爱变成了吃苦受折磨，讲到爱与激情（love & passion）的关系。

• 我们知道 “堕落”fall到底是什么吗？从词源的角度来看堕落。

• 讲到他对东方文明中关于爱的一些认识，主要是从他了解到的儒家文化中“仁”爱的概念，这里更多的是higher love。

• Kevin认为人可能会在爱里坠落，但也正是爱使人向上。

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