Loves Knowledge by Martha Nussbaum

1315 Words3 Pages

Love as an impairer or love as an enhancer. As I went along reading these literary pieces, such as Proust’s Swann In Love, and Marquez’s Love In The Time Of Cholera, I couldn’t help but continuously see love being implicitly depicted as an impairer. I did manage to find a great example of love as an enhancer in Nussbaum’s Loves Knowledge. Love impairs our judgments and makes us do ridiculous things that we only do whilst in love. The impaired nature of our minds can be both beautifully displayed in the most innocent of ways or completely strange and misguided. But when enhanced, beautiful cognition of one’s self occurs. A jolt of something so real and all knowing happens, cataleptic impression.
In Nussbaum’s, Loves Knowledge, love shows itself as an enhancer. In this particular case it was love as an enhancer of knowledge of one’s state of heart. Marcel, when he hears of Albertine’s departure, says, “I had believed that I was leaving nothing out of account, like a rigorous analyst; I had believed that I knew the state of my own heart” (Nussbaum, 162). Marcel believes that he is not in love with Albertine, but it requires “this sort of scrutiny…for the requisite self-knowledge” (Nussbaum, 162) for him to come to terms with the truth of his heart. The scrutiny described is a form of self-deception, Nussbaum says. Marcel had to go through a cataleptic experience; anguish, an immense new jolt, a physical blow…to the heart, like a thunderbolt, in order to render himself responsible for the true way he was feeling about Albertine and her departure. This all comes as an “acknowledgement of his love” (Nussbaum 268). Nussbaum explains that there are elements of both discovery and creation here when Marcel has this experie...

... middle of paper ...

...
The duty of proving faithfulness or its counter inundates Swann’s mind with thoughts of who, what and why Odette is doing this. The constant searching for evidence exhausts Swann and has him going mad. Just one more example of how at times your duty whilst in love can backfire and cause cognitive dissonance in your thoughts resulting in resentment or overthinking.

Works Cited

Garcia, Marquez. Love In The Time Of Cholera. New York: Vintage International 2003. Print.

Proust, Marcel. Swann In Love. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, INC, 2002. Print.

Krishnan, Rahul. Timothy Reckart’s Head Over Heels. Columbus, OH. 2014. Essay.

Garcia, Marquez. Love In The Time Of Cholera. New York: Vintage International 2003. Print.

Nussbaum, Martha. Loves Knowledge. Print.

Proust, Marcel. Swann's Way. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, INC, 2002. Print.

Open Document