The Philosophical Analysis of Love in Allamah Tabatabaei's View: Explanation, Investigation and Review

The role and effect of 'love' in the volitional action of the free-willed agent is an undeniable fact. However, the precise understanding of this fact is dependent on going through some stages including the philosophical analysis of the truth of love. Allamah Tabatabaei is one of the few philosophers who have sought to analyze love. In this article, our goal is to explain and investigate Allamah's view about love using an analytical-critical approach. In Allamah's view, "love is an existential relationship between the lover and the beloved, and such a relationship is dependent on the two parties". From this, he concludes that love is not, due to its nature, dependent on conscience and awareness, and that in some instances, its existence depends on the existence of conscience is the feature of the aforementioned instances. Similarly, Allamah maintains that love is a gradational truth that is running in all beings. He also believes that every 'thing' loves itself. The idea that the truth of love is not dependent on conscience and awareness is defective. Love is something dependent on the lover, and is sometimes the same as him. Allamah's definition of love does not apply to love of 'self', and his analysis is unable to explain love of 'self'. Rather, such an image of love necessitates the denial of love of 'self'. Of course, love is a truth added to self, and in those cases wherein the beloved is existentially contrary to the lover, the existence of love is not dependent on the objective existence of the beloved; rather, acquisition of some sort of awareness of the beloved is enough for acquisition of love.