Table of Contents:

Introduction

The word philosophy’s etymological origins go back to two Greek words: philo- and sophia where the first word means “loving” and sophia means “knowledge” or “wisdom”. Thus, philosophy since historical times has been considered the “love of wisdom”, the passionate pursuit of Truth undertaken by someone who is rightly considered as a philosopher or a lover of that which is borne out of knowledge and wisdom. Such an idea is amongst the noblest of dispositions one can think of in a human, but if you try to think about it a bit further then what is this “love” like? Doesn’t everyone “love” knowledge? What even is knowledge that one can be “in love” with? And if your answer to the above questions are positive, then why isn’t everyone already a “lover of wisdom”? Why would someone not want to love that which is wise? Also, why should this sort of “love” be considered as “noble” or “ethical”?

These are the sort of questions that have been asked, answered, criticized and modified since thousands of years along the vast intellectual history of Western philosophy. I’ll be taking up one such discussion, namely The Symposium of Plato and take it apart, paragraph by paragraph to explain from it how the structure of love works.

Lack Embodied : Penia

Plato’s Sympoisum, also known as, ‘The Drinking Party’ was one of his most influential dialogues containing speeches and discussions that would shed light on the nature of love, desire and, of course, wisdom. About halfway through the dialogues one comes across the story of Love, explained by Diotima that Socrates recounts in the party to others. She first clarifies the misconception others had that Love is a god, she isn’t, as said by Diotima to Socrates:

“He is a great spirit, Socrates. All spirits are intermediate between god and mortal.”

And, what exactly is a ‘spirit’ here? The original Greek for this is daimon, which gets often translated to English also as “daemon” referring to that which is a god but also mortal. That which is intermediate between God and the mortal is a spirit or daemon. And then Diotima goes to explain how Love came into existence:

“When Aphrodite was born, all the gods held a feast. One of those present was Poros (Resource), whose mother was Metis (Cleverness). When the feast was over, Penia (Poverty) came begging, as happens on these occasions, and she stood by the door. Poros got drunk on the nectar–in those days wine did not exist–and having wandered into the garden of Zeus was overcome with drink and went to sleep. Then Penia, because she herself had no resource, thought of a scheme to have a child by Poros, and accordingly she lay down beside him and became pregnant with a son, Eros (Love). Because Eros (Love ) was conceived during Aphrodite’s birthday feast and also because he is by his nature a lover of the beautiful, and Aphrodite is beautiful, he has become her follower and attendant.”

Plato, The Symposium (tr. M.C. Howatson). Cambridge University Press

There’s some things to be noted here, in the story told by Diotima Love’s parents have an interesting relationship. Penia, the Goddess that the Greeks personified of poverty and need. She is not allowed to visit the marketplace or the courts because she is considered inferior wherever she goes, and as recounted by the Greek poet,Theognis:

“…everywhere she [Penia] is scorned, and everywhere she is equally hated, regardless of where she is.”

So the picture most Greeks had of Penia isn’t really the nicest, but we might be inclined to jump too quickly to conclusions if we say that Penia is the embodiment of everything that is worthless or that she is a beggar that possess nothing and whose existence is always that of pain. Penia clarifies this for herself in a comic play by Aristophanes, Plutus. Here Penia gets ridiculed by Khremylos and Blepsidemos but she lets the two known that she indeed is a Goddess, that of Poverty. When considered a beggar by Khremylos because she is the sister of Ptokheia (Greek word for beggary), Penia resoundingly clarifies her status:

“It is not my life that you describe; you are attacking the existence beggars lead.”

[…]

“No, my life is not like that and never will be. The beggar, whom you have depicted to us, never possess anything. The poor man lives thriftily and attentive to his work: he has not got too much, be he does not lack what he really needs.”

Aristophanes, Plutus (tr. O’Neil).

Penia’s argument sheds light on our usual way of thinking that equates poverty or need with not having anything. That lacking something means somehow being a precursor to being lack itself. And thus we like to shun away any and every sign(-ifier) of Lack that one might find in all things relating to oneself. But there’s something more to this, why do we really need this Lack? Why is Penia a Goddess? She answers this herself in the preceding dialogues:

“I propose to show that I am the sole cause of all your blessings, and that your safety depends on me alone.”

[…]

“You will not be able to sleep in a bed, for no more will ever be manufactured; nor on carpets, for who would weave them, if he had gold? When you bring a young bride to your dwelling, you will have no essences wherewith to perfume her, nor rich embroidered cloaks dyed with dazzling colors in which to clothe her. And yet what is the use of being rich, if you are to be deprived of all these enjoyments? On the other hand, you have all that you need in abundance, thanks to me; to the artisan I am like a severe mistress, who forces him by need and poverty to seek the means of earning his livelihood.”

Aristophanes, Plutus (tr. O’Neil)

Here lies the key to understanding the importance of Penia as a Goddess, she represents that which is contingent for anything to grow. Growth doesn’t happen out of abundance, it happens out of scarcity, out of need or poverty of something. Would you really have people weaving carpets if they lived a luxurious life? Who would be doing the job of bricklaying for an extravagant house if he himself already owned such a house? Here we see that Penia is the personification of whatever it is that symbolizes Lack. And here I mean Lack in the Lacanian sense of the word, where Lacan uses it as the contingent cause for desire to arise. This is the figure of Penia, and she rightly portrays herself as the “sole cause of all your blessings”, as she teaches us that without Lack there is no prosperity.

If lack is necessary for growth and prosperity, why are prosperous people, like Khremylos and Blepsidemos not grateful or appreciative of this lack/need aka Penia? Why is she scorned and hated by everyone? If the prosperous understands that it is lack that drives and sustains their prosperity, then what’s the problem?

The problem lies in the exact ontological opposite of Lack, which is Whole. The person who is in the pursuit of prosperity, resource, always in the look for growth is also in the pursuit of that which is Whole. The Whole that is finally the most abundantly complete thing for the person, after which they can finally enjoy their lives exactly the way they wanted to live and enjoy it. For this person, anything that breaks or cracks the picture of this Whole is a sign of destruction, deterioration and regression into a state that is exactly the opposite of how they see the Whole. As one can see in the play of Aristophanes that I quoted from, Khremylos and Blepsidemos wouldn’t even let Penia speak and present her argument because her existence itself is a reminder of everything they never want to encounter. And this is not just the two of them, according to Diotima and Socrates this is exactly what she receives from everyone everywhere.

For the prosperous, or the person who “has”, the idea of Lack isn’t one of any constructive nature. Lack is what brings you down, what makes you accept that which you always wanted to negate yourself from. If you really “have” that thing, why should you consider about anything related to the position when you didn’t have that thing? Maybe you didn’t have it at some point, but now you have it, and that’s a sign of progress, pat yourself on the back, enjoy that which you “have” and go for the next thing you want to have. It is not difficult to see what our prosperous person here is missing, he’s lacking Lack itself. Any thought of Lack is that of an anxious nature that questions both the person’s identity and the basis of his actions. By negating Lack itself, the prosperous person allows himself to never dream of any possibility of lacking, any possibility of not-having except as a scornful place that one should try to avoid and grow away from. When one doesn’t allow any space for Lack, no hole in the Whole then one forms this obsessional attitude towards growth and satisfaction which depends on the possession of that which one wants to have as a necessity for the Whole. As long as this idea of the Whole is sustained by the illusion of pursuing towards the object that will complete it, the prosperous person feels in control and satisfied. But this satisfaction, as much as it depends on the pursuit it also depends on the act of negation of Lack. The prosperous person must believe that to Lack is necessarily a bad situation, their satisfaction is necessarily dependent on this negation. Whenever the negation of the Lack fails, whenever Penia tries to show her existence as a necessity for the prosperity of Khremylos and Blepsidemos, they both pounce on her and try to negate any value for her existence. She says this again in her resounding tone:

Khremylos: Then tell me this, why does all mankind flee from you? Penia: Because I make them better. Children do the very same; they flee from the wise counsels of their fathers. So difficult is it to see one’s true interest.

Aristophanes, Plutus (tr. O’Neil)

I explained that indeed the person who possess is not prone to allowing for articulating a space for the Lack. But what is this running away that the prosperous person has to undertake, why is it such a necessary thing for them and what is it that makes them flee while also somehow this thing they’re going away from makes them better?

The Birth of Love : Should You Fill the Lack?

Eros (Love) was born when Lack (Penia) found Resource (Poros), doesn’t that give us the idea that love is when the person who lacks finds what he needs? Ironically, that is exactly what one shouldn’t reduce this to. Let’s consider this further.

One thing one might note in the myth of Diotima is that Poros was asleep when Eros was conceived. It is obvious that had he been awake, such an event would never have happened. Poros the son of Metis (Invention), the God of resource and power, was in a sleep that deprived him of any knowledge about what Penia is on to. And to just look at things a bit further, Penia, whom everyone hates all the time at all places, is at the doorstep of the banquet of gods, that too a banquet which is held on the occasion of Aphrodite’s birth. She cannot on any standards be considered along with those at the banquet. In this sense, as Lacan already noted in his 8th Seminar on Transference, Penia was prior to Love. She was a contingent prior for the birth of the love, in other words, Lack is the contingent prior for Love. And at the same time, what else is contingent is the “did not know” of Poros. This situation is analogous to that of Socrates himself, when he was being told this story by Diotima, Socrates stood at the position of the one who doesn’t know, as he often does in his dialogues to allow the creation for something that otherwise would subside under the apparent battle of words. Lack of knowledge and its embodiment is necessary for there to begin a dialogue. Two Whole(s) can’t produce without an articulation of lack taking place prior to the process.

Love is when a being of lack finds the object (here, a person) that is unaware of its own lack. This is often seen by most as the Whole, ’the resourceful one’ as we say these days. What happens here is not that the being of lack goes to Whole to fulfill itself, rather the birth of love, the encounter of love is when lack as such begins to articulate itself in that which seemed Whole, for better or worse.

The Divine Shine of Agalma

Alcibiades’ Love for Socrates

Just after Socrates finished his speech recounting Diotima’s story of Love, a disruption occurs. Alcibiades was found in the courtyard heavily drunk and in a loud voice. And just as he comes, Socrates doesn’t take a moment to notify Agathon to keep him off, he even says:

“I must say my passion for him has become quite a burden. From the moment I fell in love with him I have not been allowed to look at or talk to a single good-looking man, or if I do so this man here gets jealous and resentful and his behavior is quite extraordinary–he hurls insults at me and all but hits me. […] because I am completely terrified by his mad obsession with being loved.”

Plato, The Symposium

We learn here that this relationship not only has a past, but a rather difficult one. Socrates has loved him, he has had to be under the obsession of Alcibiades that takes even a violent turn. Alcibiades goes ahead and gives a lengthy speech (what I might call a “rant”) against the nature of Socrates in love. I don’t want to recount everything, but the main gist of Alcibiades was how what he has experienced is of immense pain:

“…in my case the bite I have suffered is even more painful, and I suffered it in the most sensitive part–the heart or the soul or whatever one is meant to call it. I have been struck and bitten by the things they talk about in philosophy…”

Plato, The Symposium

And, what was the cause of this pain? Interestingly, just after this fragment of the speech Alcibiades goes on to chain compliments for Socrates, about his fortitude and endurance in battles, and his strength of character. So where exactly did Alcibiades receive pain from Socrates? It was in the realm of love. And he mentions several others he think who have suffered the same fate from Socrates. This is what Alcibiades seems to have encountered, he had thought that Socrates was the person who loved him but instead in assuming that he realizes that he [Alcibiades] is the one who loves Socrates:

“They [other lovers of Socrates] have been deceived into thinking that he was their l over, but then have found that they were in love with him instead. So what I say to you, Agathon, is : don’t you too be deceived by this man and like the fool in the proverb have to learn by your own bitter experience. Learn from us and beware.”

Plato, The Symposium

Socrates, The Divine Seducer?

Socrates on the other hand has an interestingly different situation:

“What you see is a Socrates who is liable to fall in love with beautiful young men, is always in their company and is greatly taken by them. And then again he is also completely ignorant and knows nothing–so far as outward appearance goes. […] Believe me, he is not a bit interested in whether someone is good-looking, and in fact he despises good looks more than you would eve imagine. The same is true of wealth and every other mark of distinction that most people regard as a matter for congratulation. He considers that all these attributes are worthless and that we ourselves–I mean it–are of no account. He spends his whole life pretending ignorance and teasing people.”

And he continues with something that will allow me to introduce what exactly an agalma is:

“But when he is a serious mood and opened up I don’t know if anyone else has seen the statues [agálma] he has inside, but I saw them once, and they seemed to me so divine and golden, so utterly beautiful and wonderful, that in brief I felt I had to do whatever Socrates told me to do.”

Plato, The Symposium

That is where the agalma shines. What has happened is Socrates interacts lovingly and stays in the company of beautiful young men while being completely ignorant about anything remotely erotic or that which might follow from extraordinary outer appearance, or other conditions. He allows for love without allowing for love to be circled around these things, giving the other person either an enigma or an annoyance that confuses them as to ask themselves: what is love? or more precisely, Does Socrates love me?

And when he has undertaken this task of getting you to follow him on love and encounter his ignorance about the same, he who sticks with him and stays close to him (like Alcibiades) see the shine of that from which Socrates’ lovers have been attracted to. This is the agalma, what Alcibiades expresses as “divine and golden”. The paradoxical nature of this does hint us to some things to be considered. First of all, Socrates isn’t a beautiful person when outer appearances are considered and most sources other than The Symposium concur on this. He would go on days without bathing and has been also, allegedly, compared to that of a frog. Why, then, would anyone so magnificently beautiful in every manner as Alcibiades would even consider falling in love with Socrates? What would make any young person sitting next to him, imagine romantic involvement? Alcibiades certainly did so:

“and I would be there in Socrates’ company by myself. I would be alone with Socrates, by myself, no one else there. My assumption was that he would immediately have with me the kind of conversation any lover would have with his beloved when they were alone together, and I was delighted. But absolutely nothing like this happened. He would talk to me in his usual way, and after we had spent the day together he would take himself off.”

Plato, The Symposium

Poor Alcibiades. We might see here something akin to a lover that is accused of being seductive or even intentionally seducing but at the end is disappointing in discounting every effort towards him/her. But, this accusation towards Socrates is actually unfounded, one can’t accuse him of seducing when he actively stays ignorant.

Here we arrive at the crux, the idea is not to find out with some investigation that Socrates indeed is either really a lover or really a seducer that leads to beautiful young men being hurt. Rather here we see that what’s accused of Socrates is a product of what is seen by the lover, Alcibiades or someone else, it is the lover that sees the shine and confuses the source of the shine with the appearance of the body. Socrates neither denies nor affirms anything with regards to that, just like he never in dialogues takes a firm position to “defeat” the other person, but continues inquiring with the semblance of ignorance until the other person finds something that they themselves hadn’t realized.

Why the, Alcibiades, who considers Socrates so magnificent and is in love with him would give him such a treatment in front of others in the symposium? Lacan provides an eloquent answer to this:

“What did Alcibiades try to do? I would say that he tried to get Socrates to manifest his desire to him. He knows that Socrates has some desire for him, but what he wanted was a sign thereof.”

Jacques Lacan, Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII : Transference (tr. Bruce Fink, ed. Jacques-Alain Miler)

Alcibiades wanted a public proof of Socrates’ love, both for himself and others to ensure that indeed Socrates does love him.

The Fantasy of Agalma

So how does this “shine of agalma” have anything to do with love? Doesn’t it sound like something against love? If agalma is all about this outer appearance of the body, something that Socrates gives no value to, at least that’s what it looks like on the surface. Things aren’t as simple, agalma shouldn’t be confused with the naive idea of a pretentious jewellery (something agalma gets translated to). When we think of shiny things such as clothes or a jewel, we are sometimes very prone to either quickly valuing it as if it has something that nothing else has, or, we devalue it as if it’s worth nothing. The latter is what might be a superficial reading of what I have portrayed of Socrates from The Symposium.

Let’s look at something from Slavoj Zizek to get some insight on this:

“…for late Lacan, the object is precisely that which is ‘in the subject more than the subject itself’, that which I fantasize that the Other (fascinated by me) sees in me. So it is no longer the object which serves as the mediator between my desire and the Other’s desire; rather it is the Other’s desire itself which serves as the mediator between the ‘barred’ subject S and the lost object that the subject ‘is’–that provides the minimum of phantasmic identity to the subject. And one can also see in what la traversée du fantasme [the traversal of fantasy] consists: in an acceptance of the fact that there is no secret treasure in me, that the support of me (the subject) is purely phantasmic.”

Slavoj Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies. Chapter I : “Seven Veils of Fantasy” (2009)

To the uninitiated, the Lacanian jargon here might be off-putting but I assure you this is precisely connected to what we have been talking about. What this above paragraph says, when taken in context of The Symposium, is that the love of Alcibiades for Socrates finds itself not in Socrates himself or who he is physically but in the desire of Socrates. But this, still isn’t the Other’s desire. Other (Autre) in Lacan doesn’t refer to some other human being, it refers to the social symbolic order as such. So, Alcibiades in almost vehemently complaining about Socrates not only asks the question of love from Socrates, but also asks a question to love itself! How would anyone else love me? What does it mean for someone else to love me, if I go past these things and still fail? Where is it that the kernel of love, given and received, lie? This investigation into what desire from the Other is like, itself becomes the desire of Alcibiades. And as Zizek says, it “serves as the mediator” between the lacking subject and the “lost object” (agalma) which Socrates is, for Alcibiades.

And the end of that quote also carries within it both one of the “ends of analysis” and the nature of Socrates towards Alcibiades and other lovers: traversing the fantasy. Socrates realizes that indeed “there is no secret treasure in me”, this is exactly what I have been bringing up as him being “ignorant” or as Alcibiades says : “pretending ignorance”, and the love for him [Socrates] rests on this fantasy. This is the enigmatic thing about Socrates, and about psychoanalysis’ approach to cure as well, that without fixating on being the lover he receives love all the time and knows precisely the fantasmatic support it rests on. And retroactively, this knowledge itself is part of what makes him the attractive love-object he is. As in the realm of inquiry where Socrates “knows that he knows nothing”, similarly here Socrates knows that he has no treasure, and knows that he does not love.

But does that mean, love is a fantasy? Or that every fantasy is somehow an encounter of love? How does one delineate between love and fantasy? The answer to this is in the traversal of fantasy, but needs some unpacking.

The Triangulation Between Love and Desire: Veil of a

We see at the end of Alcibiades’ speech that Socrates not only interprets Alcibiades being confused but also points out that since the beginning of his speech what, apparently, Alcibiades had in mind is to trigger a quarrel between Agathon and Socrates. And the point of doing this, as Socrates says, is to have a proof of Socrates’ love for Alcibiades only and Alcibiades’ love to be only for Agathon. What this means in a psychoanalytic manner is explained by Lacan:

“What you [Alcibiades] want, in the final analysis, is to be loved by me [Socrates] and to have Agathon be your object.”

Jacques Lacan, Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VIII : Transference (tr. Bruce Fink, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller)

This is not to be interpreted superficially as jealousy. It is more than that, it is the triangulation of desire and love. Alcibiades wants to have Agathon as the object whom he’d like to love, only him. But, only on the condition that he receives Socrates’ love, only for himself. What Alcibiades desires is exactly the same thing, whether in Socrates or in Agathon, it’s the agalma or as Lacan says, “the supreme point at which the subject is abolished in fantasy”. The demanding possessiveness that we see in Alcibiades is nothing but the demand to love Socrates as his lover.

And that is the basic demand (not desire) of love: “to desire the Other as desirer”. But Lacan goes further and says something much more interesting about the relationship of the two.

“Alcibiades demonstrates the presence of love, but only insofar as Socrates, who knows, can be mistaken about its presence, and only accompanies him in being mistaken. The deception is mutual. Socrates is just as caught up in the deception–if it is a deception and if it is true that he is deceived–as Alcibiades is.

But which of them is the most authentically deceived, if not he who follows closely, and without allowing himself to drift, what is traced out for him by a love that I will call horrible?”

Jacques Lacan, Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VIII : Transference (tr. Bruce Fink, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller)

When we love, this sort of deception is not only usual but, I claim, necessary for love to be conceived. Love here no longer is at the level of essentialism, whether you can figure out the “essence” of yourself and the other person and then on the basis of those essence love takes its course. No, rather, it is on the basis of deception through these essences that we allow ourselves to be in a position of loving. What does this deception of essence allude to? Nothing other than what we started with, Penia, need, or as we like it, Lack! Lack is what the deception tries to veil.

Like Alcibiades when we see our beloved in the initial moments, he or she is this representation of perfection that is almost waiting for us to be united. This usually happens from one side and then slowly infecting the other as well. We, like Alcibiades, see the agalma in the other person, and fixate it as the core of our pursuit and love. This (partial) object in Lacanian psychoanalysis is nothing other than a shade of object petit a¹ or what is better known as the object cause of desire. This object is the phenomena that drives you into making you feel : This is what I want! What promises fulfillment, satisfaction and security against the anxiety of uncertainty. Uncertainty not just about life but about one’s own desire, it is one of the most existentially angst inducing things to wonder about the paradoxically eluding nature that our desires and wants have. The a is the image of your antidote to all that. Just as Socrates’ disposition, the “divine and golden” which Alcibiades saw in him was the antidote to what he wanted the most, to be as good of a person as he can be.

And the solution is not to renounce this movement of a, to renounce the value in going from one deception of satisfaction to another by dropping (the semblance) of wants itself, but rather to pursue the a, to enjoy it, while knowing that it really isn’t the treasure that it looked like. That the satisfaction you receive actually is fundamentally incomplete, never achieving its epitome and swiftly moving to another place. The problem never was with the incomplete satisfaction of the object, to believe that is to still believe in the ability of objects to still satisfy in any complete manner. The problem was with our dependence on complete satisfaction as the ultimate goal.

Giving What You Don’t Have

This is what happens when we take the encounter of love into something that gets reduced to a mere level of completing each other in particular ways that somehow is supposed to benefit one another. What we lose sight of is the importance of Lack that love has from its outset. Because the encounter is the lover’s demand to receive the reciprocation, reciprocation of what? Of something? No, it is the reciprocation of the act of lack that he or she commits.

When you express love, you aren’t proclaiming a universal truth nor are you demanding an action that needs to be performed, you are showing that, by loving this person, you embody this lack. You embody that, here I am in my imperfectly wounded being wearing the robe of apparent perfection kneeling before you to express that you, my love, is what I live for. That somehow my past retroactively brings me to you, that every ground I stand on somehow needs you.

And the foundation of this is Lack, and thus love is when you (the lover) is giving the person, effectively, what you don’t have. This might be difficult to understand from the place of our usual intuition that follows absolutes of positives and negatives. What you don’t have is what you lack, and what it means to give your lack is to recenter your lack from yourself to the other person. You are symbolizing the lack within the lover who now becomes the cause of desire, instead of being the object of desire. Objects of desire always keep switching and cycling from one to another, what stays and what gives ground to desire itself is this lack. And when one re-centers this lack in the other person, the person becomes not only related but central to every path the course of desire undertakes.

What happens when one gives only what one has without articulating his/her lack? You reduce the love and person to another of many equivalents that you pursue and leave. The lover no longer, as I said, stays as your cause of desire, but a mere object. (An)other of those that you repeat the same pattern of pursuing, loving, idealizing, regressing, turning into one of your symptoms and then looking for another object (person). Instead of being if not the Absolute, or a category with the only object it becomes part of several objects in the same category. This is the reason, as I had shown, that Socrates refuses to play the game, so to speak, that Alcibiades seems to be dragging him into. Socrates doesn’t wish to be one of the many lovers Alcibiades “wins” with the beauty and eloquence he has, to not accept the position of the beloved.

Satisfaction, and even happiness works at the level of negating lack, as I explored in the second section. The resourceful, in terms of love or money, never wants to allow for any lack to exist or be articulated. Thus, a true act of love, has to go not only against but beyond the level of satisfaction. And because it has such a structure, love’s ground is nothing other than this lack. To say more directly, there is no definite support for love. You can’t guarantee neither the reciprocation nor the lifespan of love, and everything that tries to do so (one such example is dating apps²) is fundamentally antithetical to love. And this is captured by a beautiful quote of Lacan:

There is, on the one hand, the position of the Other as Other, as the locus of speech, to whom demand is addressed and whose radical irreducibility manifests itself in the fact that it can give love, that is, something that is all the more gratuitous because there is no support for love, since, as I have been telling you, to give one’s love is to give nothing of what one has, for its precisely insofar as one doesn’t have it that love is at issue.

Jacques Lacan, Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book V : Formations of the Unconscious.

Epilogue

This way of love is not only rare and getting rarer today, but it’s exactly what we despise, and the reason being we love solutions. What we need to realize is that we need to find again the paradox and the question to which we have found solutions and to re-vitalize those questions. And that means to take love along with Lack, without a support, without the manual of complete satisfaction and still hold the courage to have fidelity to the encounter we have when we fall in love. Instead of pushing away the fall, we need to embrace it, and see its importance. Love without the fall, is not love, it’s a transaction! And this fall is what knots together the lack, desire and object petit a. The fall will not only get the subject to be necessarily without or against modes of satisfaction, but to live in such a manner that enables him to have spurious moments of inspiration and passion. And these moments are worth a lot more than the satisfaction we pursure over the objects of our desire, that perpetually promise and wash our promise of complete fulfillment. And in this manner, neither sex nor biology becomes a “pre-condition” for love, on whether we are wired to love this person or not. Every such methodology is heavily reductive that refuses to admit the place of the subject. Love no longer becomes that which hides a pursuit for sex, but, as Lacan famously said, love is that which takes the place of non-relation in sex. Now, that is something a whole piece should be dedicated to. Nonetheless, the point it renders stands, love isn’t a mere toy of sex, just as it isn’t a mere toy of satisfaction, or a mere toy of exchanging needs.