Stascha Rohmer's Theory of Love as a Ground of Human Existence and Freedom

Stascha Rohmer is a German philosopher who was born on June 29, 1966, in Trier, Germany. He attended the Beethoven-Gymnasium in Bonn, and then the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Technische Universität in Berlin, where he earned his doctoral degree in philosophy in 1999. Between 1999 and 2014, he taught at the Institut für Philosophie of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, and at the Instituto de Filosofía of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid. In 2015, he became a full-time professor of the philosophy of law at the Universidad de Medellín, in Medellín, Colombia.
      His research interests include German idealism, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of nature, philosophy of culture, and the philosophy of law, and he has written extensively on the work of Hegel and Whitehead. He has also written on the work of Kant, Kierkegaard, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, Heidegger, Plessner, Horkheimer, Adorno, Hans Jonas, and Scheler.

      His books include Whiteheads Synthese von Kreativität und Rationalität: Reflexion und Transformation in Alfred North Whiteheads Philosophie der Natur (2000), Liebe - Zukunft einer Emotion (2008), and Die Idee des Lebens: Zum Begriff der Grenze bei Hegel und Plessner (2016).

      He has also published German translations of the writings of José Ortega y Gasset (José Ortega y Gasset, Der Mensch ist ein Fremder: Schriften zur Metaphysik und Lebensphilosophie, 2008) and Alfred North Whitehead (Alfred North Whitehead, Denkweisen, 2001).

      In Liebe - Zukunft einer Emotion (Love - The Future of an Emotion), Rohmer asks, "What are the primary motivating drives or forces in human beings?" He proposes hunger, thirst, and the desire for sexual fulfillment as possible candidates for these primary drives or forces. However, he explains that the fulfillment of the need for love may be just as important a motivating force, and that love may function not only as a ground of human existence, but also as a foundation for human freedom.
      Love may be experienced by human beings in profoundly subjective, distinctive, and intimate ways. The subjectivity of love doesn't mean that love doesn't also exist objectively as a ground for the social dimension of human existence, and as a foundation for human freedom. As a foundation for human freedom, love unites autonomy and selfhood, so that the self experiences the other not as a limit, but as a condition of the possibility of its own realization.
      The question of whether love is indispensable for human existence--whether human beings are just as dependent on loving and being loved as they are on physical nourishment and sustenance--is also the question of whether love constitutes an ontological necessity. Is human existence possible without love? Is the continued existence of humanity possible without such a motivating drive or force?
      Rohmer contends that love has a fundamental role in human generativity, and that it establishes a basic sphere of social mediation, which is both intergenerational and intersubjective. At the same time, love may appear in infinitely many forms, and it transcends any finite determination. Thus, it cannot truly be grasped or objectified, and its ontological necessity lies precisely in our understanding of it as a force constitutive of the continuous progress of human life.¹
      With the progress of modern reproductive technology, love can no longer be seen as essential to human reproduction. The biological process of procreation may be possible without the intervention of love and may be achieved through technological interventions such as in vitro fertilization and genetic engineering. However, love cannot be controlled and manipulated in the way that biological cells can be controlled and manipulated. Love has an aspect of freedom that makes possible the cohesion, harmony, and solidarity of human beings. Love also creatively overcomes death by binding successive generations together.²
      However, just as love cannot be conceived in purely biological terms and cannot be placed wholly in the service of procreation, it also cannot be conceived as wholly divorced from procreation. The ideality and universality of love consist in the way that lovers may face each other and may be mirrored by and united with each other, thus creating a relation in which each lover sees their ideal in the other and has their being in the other.
      The objective existence of love may be revealed by examining its relation to a comprehensive ideal of universality that is also an ideal of reason and justice. Love makes it possible for us to realize that we are all interconnected, and it enables us, in our finiteness, to transcend ourselves. Love is like a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected as others and others reflected as ourselves. Indeed, a relationship between two lovers seems to function only as long as they succeed in discovering in each other the pivotal point of their own selfhood.³ Even under the conditions of modernity, love seems to be based on an experience of immemorial commonality (unvordenkliche Gemeinsamkeit), and thus it cannot be understood as merely a product of willfully controlled or calculated behavior on the part of those who supposedly want to fall in love with each other.⁴
      According to Rohmer, love is the fundamental and driving force in the structure of human generativity.⁵ The question then is "Why is human reality so characterized by lovelessness, irrationality, and injustice?" Why is human reality so characterized by disunity, as manifested by brutality and fascism, crime and hatred, deception and exploitation, war and genocide?
      A theory of love as a basic driving force that seeks to reconcile the real and the ideal, the individual and the universal, and the separated and the conjoined seems to also require a theory of evil as a basic driving force that causes the division, brokenness, and disintegration of humanity.⁶ However, Rohmer contends that from a standpoint that transcends the present, the structure of human generativity embodies in its universality the realization that whatever is subjectively experienced as love is manifested objectively as rationality, order, and justice. The chain of successive generations overcomes decay and death, and it has no definable beginning or ending.

FOOTNOTES

¹Stascha Rohmer, Liebe – Zukunft einer Emotion (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 2008) p. 33.

²Ibid., p. 48.

³Ibid., p. 65.

⁴Ibid., p. 67.

⁵Ibid., p. 230.

⁶Ibid., p. 232.

Streets in Baltimore that are Named after Slaveholders

• O'Donnell St. - John O'Donnell (1749-1805) was a wealthy merchant who enslaved people on his Canton plantation.
• John St. - John Eager Howard (1752-1827) was a soldier, statesman, and slaveholder. He has three streets in Baltimore named after him (John, Eager, and Howard Streets).
• Eager St. - John Eager Howard (1752-1827) came from a wealthy family of slaveholders and was born at their "Belvidere" plantation, which he inherited, and which is now the site of the Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore. He also bought a plantation in Marriottsville, which he gave as a wedding present to his second son, George. George Howard married Prudence Ridgely, and they named the plantation "Waverly," after the famous novel, Waverley, by Sir Walter Scott. The Waverly planation relied on the labor of enslaved people.
• Howard St. - John Eager Howard (1752-1827) was an officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He was also Governor of Maryland (1788-1791), a member of the Maryland Senate (1791-1795), and U.S. Senator from Maryland (1796-1803). 
• Calvert St. - Cecil Calvert (1605-1675) was the second Lord Baltimore. He owned two ships, The Ark and The Dove, which he sent to establish the colony of Maryland in 1633. The ships arrived in February 1634, carrying colonists and slaves. A painting by Gerald Soest (c. 1600-1681) entitled "The Second Lord Baltimore," which is owned by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, shows Cecil Calvert with his young grandson Cecil and a young African slave.
• Baltimore St. - Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore.
• Charles St. - Charles Calvert (1699-1751) was the fifth Lord Baltimore. He was proprietary governor of the colony of Maryland from 1732-1733. A painting by John Hesselius (1728-1778) owned by The Baltimore Museum of Art shows him at the age of five with one of his family's slaves.
• Greene St. - Nathanael Greene (1742-1786) was a Major General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He was a slaveholder.
• Fayette St. - The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) became a slaveholder when he bought a plantation in French Guiana with the intent of freeing the enslaved people there.
• Lafayette Ave. - Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834).
• McDonough St. - John McDonough (1779-1850) was a wealthy merchant and slaveholder. He supported efforts by the American Colonization Society to enable freed black slaves to return to Africa.
• Washington St. - George Washington (1732-1799) was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army (1775-1783) and the first President of the United States (1789-1797). He enslaved people at his Mt. Vernon plantation.
• Laurens St. - John Laurens (1754-1782), although he supported the abolition of slavery, came from a family of wealthy slaveholders in South Carolina. His father owned slaves, and he would have inherited them had he lived long enough. While serving as an officer during the Revolutionary War, he unsuccessfully attempted to form a regiment of enslaved soldiers, who would have been granted freedom in exchange for their service. He was killed in a battle on the Combahee River in 1782, one of the last battles of the Revolutionary War.
• Ridgely St. - Charles Ridgely II (1702-1772) was a merchant and owner of the Hampton plantation, which relied on the labor of enslaved people.
Eden St. - Sir Robert Eden (1741-1784) was the last colonial Governor of Maryland (1769-1776). He was married to Caroline Calvert, the daughter of Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, and sister of Frederick Calvert, sixth Lord Baltimore. After his death, a claim was made on behalf of his widow in order to recover property, including enslaved people, that he had lost possession of when he had been forced to leave Maryland in 1776.
• Gilmor St. - The Gilmor family was a prominent Baltimore family who enslaved people on their plantation, Glen Ellen, which is now the site of the Loch Raven Reservoir. Robert Gilmor Jr. (1774-1848) was a wealthy merchant and shipowner. His brother Harry Gilmor (1838-1883) was a Confederate Cavalry officer who later became Baltimore City Police Commissioner (1874-1879).