The Finite Promise of Infinite Love, or What Does It Mean to Love Forever

Bibliographic Data

ID22133752
AuthorsErrol Boon (0009-0005-5836-2535, Leiden University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume10
Issue3
Pages57
Publication date2025-05-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2409-9287 • E-ISSN: 2409-9287
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/philosophies10030057
OpenAlexW4410319666
LanguageEN
References cited16

This paper offers a philosophical account of the specific form of romantic love underlying the ideal of love-based marriages. Rather than examining the institution of marriage, it considers marriage as the promise of infinite love between finite persons. Although this promise may seem irrational, even those who never formally marry still invoke phrases like ‘I love you forever’. In three steps, this paper explores what we could possibly mean by infinite love and how it can be rationally promised throughout a finite life. First, I trace the concept of infinite love back to the metaphysical discussions surrounding the emergence of the love-based marriage among German Idealists and Jena Romanticists. Next, drawing on John Searle’s speech act theory, I examine how the ideal of infinite love can be articulated as a promise. Finally, I turn to early existentialist thought—particularly the notions of passion (Lidenskab, Leidenschaft), repetition (Gjentagelsen, Wiederkehr), and the moment (Øjeblik, Augenblick) as developed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—to justify the meaning of the marital promise. In short, I propose that instead of interpreting the marital promise as a description of an expected reality, we should approach it as a passionate necessity that discloses the world in a fundamentally indeterminate way. By reframing the marital promise in this light, I aim to show that marital love is compatible both with the ideal of personal autonomy and with an alternative conception of rationality and temporality

Psychoanalysis · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology

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