La contraddizione amorosa. Sull’univocità e irriducibilità dell’amore

The Contradiction of Love. On the Univocity and Irreducibility of Love · Love introduces a contradiction into existence – a contradiction of love. This contradiction does not arise by going against logic, nor is it the negation of the Spirit or a principle, as Hegel would have it. Rather, it is the contradiction that love itself introduces into existence when it happens, confronting existence with something it could not have foreseen or expected. Love happens by surprising existence and introducing something it does not know. This is the ‘contradiction of love’, the contradiction that love introduces into existence when it happens, confusing all clarity of mind and all certainty of spirit. The aim of this paper is to explore this contradiction. To do so, two steps will be taken. Firstly, the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion will be examined. Rather than focusing his research on ‘what’ love is, Marion focused on ‘how’ it manifests itself. To explain this, he invoked univocity. The second step will emphasise the irreducible nature of love, highlighting the impossibility of annihilating it, because it is the source of the invisible and infinite ‘relationship’ that constitutes the human being.