Eva Illouz is a Moroccan born sociologist who writes intelligently on the topic of relationships. In her book Why Love Hurts (2012) she makes an argument that I made as far back as 2003 (here), namely that the modern value of autonomy conflicts with stable, committed forms of love.
Why? She explains in this quote (p.136):
The cultural motif that defines and constitutes worth here is autonomy, which in turn explains why requesting promises is conceived as exerting “pressure”...This idea makes sense only in the context of a view of the self in which promises are viewed as posing limits on one’s freedom: that is, the freedom to feel differently tomorrow from the way I feel today. Given that a limit on one’s freedom is viewed as illegitimate, requesting commitment is interpreted as an alienation of one’s own freedom. This freedom in turn is connected to the definition of relationships in purely emotional terms: if a relationship is the result of one’s freely felt and freely bestowed emotions, it cannot emanate from the moral structure of commitment. Because emotions are constructed as being independent of reason, and even of volition, because they are viewed as changing, but, more fundamentally, because they are seen as emanating from one’s unique subjectivity and free will, demanding that one commits one’s emotions to the future becomes illegitimate, because it is perceived to be threatening to the freedom that is intrinsic to pure emotionality. In commitment, there is thus the risk of forcing the hand of someone to make a choice that is not based on pure emotions and emotionality, in turn alienating one’s freedom.
The basic point is that if I wish to be autonomous, I must have a freedom to self-determine my own life. I cannot do this if I make a serious commitment to another person as this would curtail what I might choose to do at some later time.
Eva Illouz adds depth to the argument by noting that the problem is made more pronounced when relationships are defined in purely emotional terms, i.e. as "the result of one's freely felt and freely bestowed emotions". If this is how relationships are defined, as they mostly are in modern life, then what happens in the relationship won't be swayed by reason or prudence, nor is it possible to think of commitment as being settled in the will.
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| Eva Illouz |
She repeats this argument, i.e. that there is a contradiction between the aims of autonomy and love, with a quote from Judith Butler (p.131):
In fact, I would even claim that it is precisely the development of individuality and autonomy that makes modern erotic desire fraught with aporias. As Judith Butler claims: “Desire thus founders on contradiction, and becomes a passion divided against itself. Striving to become coextensive with the world, an autonomous being that finds itself everywhere reflected in the world, self-consciousness discovers that implicit in its own identity as a desiring being is the necessity of being claimed by another.” Such a claim by another person is beset with contradictions, because “we have to choose between ecstatic and self-determining existence.”
Eva Illouz goes on to make an argument I only partly agree with:
I would suggest that, to the extent that in modernity men have internalized and most forcefully practiced the discourse of autonomy, autonomy has the effect of exerting a form of symbolic violence that is all the more naturalized and difficult to perceive. Consequently, autonomy is (and must remain) at the center of the project of women’s emancipation. (p.136)
Clearly, men dominate the rules of recognition and commitment. Male domination takes the form of an ideal of autonomy to which women, through the mediation of the struggle for equality in the public sphere, have themselves subscribed. But when transposed to the private sphere, autonomy stifles women’s need for recognition. For, it is indeed a characteristic of symbolic violence that one cannot oppose a definition of reality that is to one’s own detriment. (p.137)
Her argument is that men can get what they want from relationships as autonomous beings (sex), but that what women want is recognition (commitment), which is what the focus on autonomy makes difficult to achieve.
She is right that it is usually men who are the gatekeepers of commitment. However, it was feminist women who did most to impose autonomy as a value on relationships between men and women. It has been women who have changed the terms of engagement; men have played more of a reactive role (though there are exceptions to this, such as the playboy ethos promoted by the likes of Hugh Hefner).
The other difficult aspect of Eva Illouz's views is that she is committed to the values she identifies as damaging relationships. She frankly acknowledges the problem that modernity has damaged relationships, describing her book as being:
the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of conversations with close friends and strangers that left me perplexed and puzzled by the chaos that pervades contemporary romantic and sexual relationships
To some extent, she poses the issue as an imbalance in autonomy:
On the contrary: I would contend that men can follow the imperative for autonomy more consistently and for a longer part of their lives and, as a result, they can exert emotional domination over women’s desire for attachment, compelling them to mute their longing for attachment and to imitate men’s detachment and drive for autonomy. It follows that women who are not interested in heterosexual domesticity, children, and a man’s commitment will find themselves more likely to be the emotional equals of men.
Although this sounds reasonable, I don't think it captures what is happening. Most women have been persuaded that they should defer serious commitments and play the field whilst young; it is only when it comes time to settle down that they face the issue of commitment from men being described here, and mostly from a certain class of men. And then in later years it is women who initiate most of the breaking of commitment via divorce.
Again, she argues in the following quote that the problem is the distribution of autonomy:
I argue that such false consciousness – feeling responsible for being left – is explained by the ways in which several features of our moral universe intertwine with the power of men, i.e. the structure of recognition in romantic relationships (and probably in modernity in general); by the fact that the ideal of autonomy interferes with recognition and operates within a fundamentally unequal structure of the distribution of autonomy
This, once more, is only partly true. It is predicted that 45% of American women aged 25 to 44 will be single by the year 2030 - so the issue of "recognition" does exist for women in this age group. However, this is not because of an unequal distribution of autonomy as part of the structure of society. Society has gone to considerable efforts to make women autonomous in their personal lives. For instance, when women are in their "player" phase then the expectation is that society will enable this via abortion on demand, access to contraception, the absence of slut shaming etc. Similarly, when women are in the motherhood phase, they are enabled to achieve this independently of men via subsidised child care, access to IVF, single mother welfare payments etc. And if women wish to be independent through divorce, then this too is enabled via alimony, child support payments and decisions regarding child custody.
So what is her conclusion? She is not one of those moderns who believes that love should be sacrificed to autonomy. She defends love as a meaningful bond. Her solution is to restore an ethics to relationships,
...so as to devise new strategies to cope with emotional inequalities and meet women’s larger social and ethical goals...What should be discussed, then, is the question of how sexuality should be made a domain of conduct regulated both by freedom and by ethics...this book suggests that the project of self-expression through sexuality cannot be divorced from the question of our duties to others and to their emotions...For when detached from ethical conduct, sexuality as we have known it for the last thirty years has become an arena of raw struggle that has left many men and especially women bitter and exhausted. (pp.246-47)
It's a good quote (even if it is framed in terms of women's goals rather than a common good), but it is followed by this:
This book is thus a sobered endorsement of modernity through love. It recognizes the necessity of values of freedom, reason, equality, and autonomy, yet is also forced to take stock of the immense difficulties generated by the core cultural matrix of modernity.
She is walking an intellectual tightrope here. She wants to be part of the modern gang, whilst at the same time recognising the significant harm being done. Even so, her book is thought provoking and insightful - I intend to post again on some of the issues she raises.
There’s another topic worth investigating here, in my opinion, that makes up an undercurrent of her thoughts, such as when she says “the freedom to feel differently tomorrow from the way I feel today” and “our duties to others[‘] […] emotions.” It’s something I’ve been made more aware of recently through a number of personal incidents, but there’s a real unexamined driving ideology here that emotions equate automatically to action. Eva doesn’t even question her assumption that how we behave is determined by how we feel and that people’s feelings are what we ought to be concerned about, even though she’s clearly thought about it. I can’t claim an exhaustive examination of this, but once you notice it it’s clear it’s everywhere. The so-called transgender movement is practically founded on the notion that how you feel ought to determine reality, but that’s somewhat adjacent to the, I think, larger phenomenon of action being assumed to derive almost purely from emotion. I would suspect this is a development from the ideals of the Romantic movement that lionized feeling and passion, but I haven’t investigated to find out.
ReplyDeleteA number of other thoughts, in no particular order:
1) There is a flawed blindness here to the reality that relationships are by nature and definition (limiting ourselves to benevolent ones) cooperative. Eva does not seem to question her premise, no doubt inherited from her feminist intellectual ancestors, that relationships between men and women are competitive. If these relationships are competitive, why would any commitment be expected at all? You don’t commit to rivals and enemies.
2) I can only assume she’s completely ignorant about the modern state of men if she wants women to be “the emotional equals of men.” Modern men are painfully lonely, despondent, and despairing. If she somehow means this in a benevolent (or at least well-meaning) way, I assume it’s somehow connected to her perception of male drive and achievement being a product, somehow, of their emotions, rather than wishing women to experience the actual day-to-day emotions of the contemporary male.
3) She is also completely blind to female commitment. Of course this is a common failing, especially for feminists of the want-a-man variety, but it’s at least notable that her concerns about commitment are really concerns about the commitment of men to women. She’s solipsistically concerned about why men aren’t committing to her or people like her. I would assume that any person investigating this topic would start from an obvious position that relationships require some sort of reciprocity, in which case a percieved lack of commitment from men should have some sort of reciprocal dearth of percieved commitment from women (which is indeed the case), but she does not have this position. Perhaps as a woman she finds what men desire from women to be unfathomable, which would be unfortunate, but it’s hardly secret. Women have abandoned their commitments to men and many have even attacked any notion that there should even be any expectations of commitment from women at all, and I speak of course of one primary area: sex. Feminists have claimed for women, for better or worse (worse), the lack of need to commit not only their virginities but their sexualities entirely (primarily evident through the instituting of “marital rape” laws). Men nowadays cannot expect even the most basic commitment men want from women, which is that they’ll commit themselves sexually to only one man. What does Eva think women are offering to commit to men nowadays? I think it’s even fair to say that this abandonment came before the male abandonment of their commitments to women, and certainly the general ubiquity of the former precedes the general ubiquity of the latter.
4) I can’t support this with statistics, but it’s hardly been an uncommon experience of mine with men I associate with that many, if not most, of them are unwilling to develop an emotional commitment to a woman either from past experience of having women abandon them or for fear of that happening to them. Women by contrast seem more worried about ever getting the commitment at all rather than losing it. If we’re speaking of “emotional commitments,” whatever Eva means by that, but I’ve presumed it means some sort of enduring affection and drive to support.
Delete5) Men only seem to come ahead in this competitive commitment game if you view it in material terms because of their greater labor capacity. A man is not only much more able to materially support himself, which is why women seek the material support of men, but is much more comfortable living on very little. Quite a number of men are happy with a clean bedroom, a gaming computer, and a working internet connection. I do not think there is a single woman on the planet looking for a man that would be happy with the same, which would undermine any project to increase “female autonomy.” Even if, magically, the female capacity for labor could be increased, I would call it a futile endeavor to try to engineer women to be comfortable living alone in a tiny apartment with just an internet connection for their social and entertainment needs.
5a) It’s probably worth pointing out that this comfort with poorer conditions means men are going to be able to “outbid” any woman in negotiations for commitment. A man is much more willing to endure the single life than a woman which is always going to seem to give men as a group the edge in dictating the terms of relationships, viewed competitively, even if we ignore the possibility of violence. In the game of relationship chicken that is modernity, women are always going to blink first.
5b) Men don’t desire attachment any less than women, at least in my experience. I would argue the majority of a percieved male “drive for autonomy” is not out of some perverse desire to be independent and “free” comes either from modern conditions that make a lonely, “autonomous” lifestyle comparatively more attractive than a committed relationship than a modern woman (owing to the degraded state of the latter which offers very little for men) and a confusion about the more dominating and aggressive attitudes typical of men. Trying to emulate that can only force women into the male world of aggression, dominance, and (in modernity) extreme loneliness and social poverty. I think that would be, to say the least, an extreme disservice to women. Men have more power, as said above, simply because they are comparatively more comfortable being alone than women, not because they desire to be alone. I think almost any man I could ask (excepting the degenerates for whom the impulse towards women has been reduced to a mere transitory sexual impulse) if given a number of magic wishes would wish for a perfect wife, as opposed to a perfect single life.
Sorry for the wall of text. Needless to say I found it an engaging post.
larger phenomenon of action being assumed to derive almost purely from emotion. I would suspect this is a development from the ideals of the Romantic movement that lionized feeling and passion That's a really significant point. It is bad enough that we have the "empowerment is freedom to act in any direction" idea. But in theory, at least, people could act according to reason. Instead, we have the "I feel x, therefore I have the right to do y" - even if this is contrary to what reason would suggest we do. What matters is how we feel, it seems. It is plausible that this derives from the Romantic movement, as the earlier, pre-Romantic moderns generally did not lionise feeling in the same way, though, to be fair, the Romantics themselves generally aimed at elevated feeling. I wonder (this is just a thought experiment) if it has something to do with the logic of modernism itself. If what matters is maximum preference satisfaction, and preferences are equally valid, then there is perhaps less "rational" justification for any act. It just comes down to subjective preference, i.e. what we want to do and this itself may be perceived to be based on what we feel like doing or having.
DeleteShe’s solipsistically concerned about why men aren’t committing to her or people like her. I would assume that any person investigating this topic would start from an obvious position that relationships require some sort of reciprocity, in which case a percieved lack of commitment from men should have some sort of reciprocal dearth of perceived commitment from women (which is indeed the case), but she does not have this position.
DeleteYes, I think this is a flaw in her overall approach. Her argument is that when women want commitment from men and can't get it, they are given a therapeutic solution, i.e. that they need to psychologically adjust in some way. She, understandably, rejects this and wants a sociological analysis (what has influenced romantic love to be the way it is in society). She does, very boldly for an academic, hint that there were advantages in more traditional courtship practices because the idea of commitment was assumed to be part of the interaction. However, in the chapters I read, she mangles the idea of reciprocity. She seems to think that masculinity has been constructed so that men only want sex from women and experience no other needs or instincts or perceive no other goods from relationships. She thinks she is being hopeful in promoting the idea that men could be remade to want something more. She assumes as well that it is women who are pushing for recognition (commitment) in the private sphere of relationships rather than being the primary agents of a culture of autonomy.
"though, to be fair, the Romantics themselves generally aimed at elevated feeling.”
DeleteYes, I wouldn’t necessarily blame the Romantics outright. However, as far as I know they are responsible for the genesis of elevating feelings so high. While from what I know they championed right or just feeling and prized it working in harmony with reason and will, I suspect that it’s only too easy to degenerate from there to lionizing feeling that is in opposition to reason and will (our seeming present situation), as these feelings must necessarily be stronger to overcome those. cf. modern romances, where the more obstacles there are to the romance, including common sense, the more romantic it is held to be.
"It just comes down to subjective preference, i.e. what we want to do and this itself may be perceived to be based on what we feel like doing or having.”
I think you’re probably right. I posted a comment here some time ago which I’d forgotten in which I worked through my own logic to show that liberalism requires only meaningless choices. In short, since choices that have consequences would influence one to make a decision in one direction or the other, freedom is maximized when consequences are done away with, but this reduces all choices to meaningless preferences. Now that you’ve suggested a connection, it occurs to me that said meaningless preferences by necessity must operate only by feeling since there’s no logical way to choose one option over another. Since we seem to hold that we are defined as individuals by having individual preferences no one else has, this would seem to elevate feeling to the dominant position we observe it in (since feelings would be the truest expression of one’s individuality). Worse, reason in fact cannot have anything to do with decision making rather than being merely subordinate to feeling.
It also occurs to me that to reason necessarily means to discriminate, which liberals have reliably connected with oppression. cf. a previous post you wrote wherein it was said (not in so few words) that treating people differently for their choices was unacceptable and cf. the ubiquitous modern attitude that treating people differently for their unchosen aspects is also unacceptable. Basically treating people in any rational way is unacceptable. Mere feelings and preference can’t be in essence accused of discrimination, at least when you’re sufficiently reeducated and your choices are indistinguishable from random ones.
"However, in the chapters I read, she mangles the idea of reciprocity. She seems to think that masculinity has been constructed so that men only want sex from women and experience no other needs or instincts or perceive no other goods from relationships.”
DeleteThat seems strange to me. Putting aside its lack of accuracy, if she thought men only wanted sex from women you would think she would logically proceed to asking the question: are women committing to give sex to men? If men only want one thing, does it not follow that that thing is what women have to offer to secure receiving things from men in turn?
"She thinks she is being hopeful in promoting the idea that men could be remade to want something more.”
I’m almost scared to wonder what she thinks men ought to want from women. Whatever it is, I’m quite sure they wouldn’t get it (and equally sure Eva would manage to be unaware of women not giving it).
cf. modern romances, where the more obstacles there are to the romance, including common sense, the more romantic it is held to be. There is a movie called Love Actually which is the epitome of this ethos. I have to say also that it is possible to read the love lives of the early Romantics like this as well. They were often passionately disordered. The feelings were thought to outrank other considerations of morality or propriety or even self-preservation. Which raises another consideration. The term "reason" itself had taken on a particular meaning by the Romantic era. It was associated with a coldly scientific materialism. The Romantics urged the idea of the imaginative or the poetic or the intuitive as a counterbalance (though they did not reject science). I am not confident enough with how the terms have been used in philosophy (reason, intellect, intelligence etc.) but I suspect that for earlier generations these faculties were considered not just capable of discursive reason but could discern higher truths. What I am trying to get at is the problem of integrating reason and feeling when reason itself is under question, i.e. when the only secure knowledge of external reality was that which could be measured with scientific instruments or via some sort of reductionist "scientism". Again, to be fair, the Romantics did grapple with this issue; some insisted that the scientifically measurable was not an adequate attempt to grasp the nature of reality.
DeleteIt also occurs to me that to reason necessarily means to discriminate, which liberals have reliably connected with oppression...Basically treating people in any rational way is unacceptable. Mere feelings and preference can’t be in essence accused of discrimination
DeleteThat's so interesting. I think liberal modernity pushes strongly in this direction, though not everyone is willing or able to be this pure.
Delete
“sexuality” itself is a term freud came up with to deny that man is Lovingly Made In The Image Of God. he claimed humanity was “sexuality” and then defined that as a series of perversions. then defined perversion as “self-expression.” all to claim that sex somehow lead to gnostic “self-creation.”
ReplyDeletethese people have little idea what they are doing or pushing for, other than they must be faithful to their satanic coven no matter how much it destroys them. this one is simply providing a different coping mechanism than the last, but the intent is the same.
I don't know if it is just me, but I find her prose difficult to decipher, never mind Judith Butler's!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is. More so if you are just reading excerpts. But it is not just to sound erudite - she makes some interesting arguments.
Delete"It follows that women who are not interested in heterosexual domesticity, children, and a man’s commitment will find themselves more likely to be the emotional equals of men."
ReplyDeleteLOL. Yes, and of course of little interest to men too!!
You can really see women's psychology here and where it leads to when she says there's a need 'to devise new strategies to cope with emotional inequalities and meet women’s larger social and ethical goals.'
In other words: communism, or some form tending as close to it, and the confiscatory and controlling state, as is possible without the whole thing falling apart. That is men stop actually working, as opposed to going through the motions. That is how women's 'autonomy' will be established with this worldview, and any subsidization of it and consequent loss of freedom is a mere detail.
No one, including men, have the 'autonomy' she imagines. The autonomy she wants is one without consequences for her, and without the requirement for reciprocity which necessarily curtails such autonomy.
The autonomy is in the decision of what you will sacrifice for higher goods. What else COULD it be?
When one good conflicts with another, we should reconsider whether one of the goods is only a partial or qualified good.
ReplyDeleteAutonomy is a partial good. It is good to be free from tyranny. Note that documents of the American founding, such as the Bill of Rights, prioritize certain freedoms, but not some absolute concept of freedom. Once you have freedom of religion, of speech, of assembly and association, etc., you will not be tyrannized. At that point, you are prepared to trade minor freedoms for certain benefits.
Modern "autonomy" means freedom from all restraints, which is not possible in a civilized society that endures. Autonomy, like freedom, is presented as an unqualified and absolute good when it is a qualified limited good. If unlimited autonomy conflicts with love, family, procreation, and other unqualified goods, then we need to awaken to the fact that autonomy is only a partial good.
Its interesting, when you refer to modern autonomy as 'freedom from constraints', I am immediately reminded of the Satanic wish to be free from God and subjection to the moral law, or even less theological, to the constraints of reality. To the denial that such contraints could even exist.
DeleteSatan refused to be subject to God, to have no Gods before me, to be his own god, and define his reality with reference only to himself.
The Founding Fathers always said, to paraphrase,
'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.'
Those masters being either external institutions or internal vices.
Is radical autonomy just a disguised demand to define your own moral law? To be your own god?
the devil committed suicide by refusing to bow before and serve a Human Woman: The Blessed Virgin Mary. the devil never said such things to God or about Him.
DeleteClark Coleman, well said. I think there are two problems. The first is making autonomy the overriding good or principle of society. If we are going to talk about autonomy, then it should be, as you put it, as a qualified good, one that should not be allowed to undermine higher goods.
DeleteThe second problem is the way that the West over the entire period of modernity has swung between heteronomy & autonomy. There has either been a command view of morals (heteronomy), where we obey a moral law simply because it has been commanded by an authority, or else the opposite view (autonomy) in which we order ourselves as we see fit.
The alternative is to see the moral law as promoting the intrinsic good of our own nature, so that we are more fully and freely ourselves the more that we discipline ourselves to follow it. The moral law is not then an arbitrary imposition that is wholly external; it only "constrains" in the sense that it is not permissive - it does not constrain the unfolding of what we are truly created to be as men and women.