The Love and Pain of Intimacy

Abstract

The article is a phenomenological exercise in clarifying love based on the fundamental question of Heidegger's later thought, Ereignis. In this sense, love appears as the realm of belonging between the human being and beyng (Seyn) from the perspective of the bond of mutual favor. At first, love is indicated as the core of the historical event. The starting point is the definition of love as the liberating “will” of each entity to endure according to the power of its own possibility of being. It is then clarified as the care that enables everything and each thing to exist from itself. In this context, the essence of pain is initially only indicated as necessary for overcoming the metaphysical definition of the human being as subject.

In the second section, the meaning of love becomes clearer, beginning from the unity and intimacy between beyng and the human being. To this end, the notion of reference becomes central. In the third section, pain is characterized as the correspondence and guardian of the departure from beyng, since the unity of intimacy is maintained at the expense of the differentiation of beyng, which promotes the tearing apart of a split and distancing. In the end, pain emerges as an ontological trait of the humanity yet to come.