With that, we find ourselves on the other side of our problem. Perhaps one may think, with what we have discussed in the previous paragraph, that nothing more needs to be said here. Indeed, following the above, we must conclude that the Lover cannot know whether their Beloved knows them. However, so far we have viewed the situation from the perspective of the individual. Let us take the place of a phenomenological observer and see what this asymmetry entails. The individual is simultaneously both finite and infinite. They are infinite because they can set before their mind infinite objects. Yet, they are finite because they cannot fully set themselves before their minds. Unphilosophically, we might say that a “little bit” of them remains from which they do the thinking. That is to say, the individual is necessarily blind to a part of themselves. We shall refer to an example again. Imagine the Lover in their most joyous, or most wrathful moments. In such moments a million and one thoughts may rush through their heads. Still, their emotions might grant them a moment of lucidity. Nevertheless, regardless of how well they know the contents of their thoughts, they are not conscious of the thinking or acting out of such thoughts. One’s Beloved, however, bears witness to these moments. They see the idiosyncratic celebrations in joy and the venomous spite in resentment; they see the nape of one’s soul. Thus, taking this in conjunction with what we have said earlier, we ought to make a correction. The Lover’s image of their Beloved may indeed be correct, or at least, aspects of it, as in such moments. However, as mentioned above, they can never know whether this is the case. The analogous scenario in scientific inquiry is the possibility that a theory stumbles upon a necessity or natural law: the theory will never know whether it ever did so.[1]      

So, what then? Having only spoken of the negative, limitations and failures, were we not excessively harsh with Love? Additionally, it seems that there is nothing that Love could offer us. All this will be true if we simply stopped here — we will not. Nor shall we desert our established positions: the Beloved will forever be an Other to the Lover. Yet, one should not despair over this. For a love between two individuals, how could it ever be otherwise?[2] Furthermore, we ought to remind ourselves that we are, after all, in foreign land. Impossibilities may weigh one down on their ascent towards Reason. Here, however, such things have no force. The unknowability of the Beloved simply doesn’t matter. One might even say, in a Kierkegaardian manner, that Love is this paradox — or else love has never existed just because it has always existed.[3] Thus, let us see this movement play itself out to its conclusion. The Lovers finds the image of their Beloved falsified. They recognize it as their own image, one writ in water. In this is also an intimation of the inner subjectivity of their Beloved and of the infinite distance between them. The action proper to the realm of Eros, is that the Lovers love in spite of this. It is in this commitment to Love, recognizing this uncrossable distance, that the Lovers at once traverse it. They supersede it simply by their mutual recognition. That is, despite the ineptitude of any predicate expressing their Beloved, they do come to know each other: they know each other by the nothingness of these predicates.[4]

[1] See Lakatos’ Necessity, Kneale and Popper, for his discussion of Popper’s and Kneale’s perspectives on natural and physical necessity. 

[2] I am not speaking of a love between parent and child, or an individual’s love for their pet. Additionally, some popular science fiction ideas allow for individuals to link their consciousnesses and fully immerse oneself in the inner world of the other. The Beloved in such instances becomes an object of adoration for the Lover who has full comprehension of them. This, to me, is not love.

[3] Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. See Problema I and II for his discussion of the absolute in contrast to the ethical and the universal. Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasises the paradoxical nature of faith throughout the text. The movement of Love that we discuss here is similar in its sublation of its moments. In Love and Faith, the individual is higher than the universal. However, the crucial difference (in my view) lies in how the universal is sublated. Love is wholly immanent, it supersedes the universal, i.e. the concrete predicates, in the recognition that it can never go beyond them. The immanent needs no external ground nor guarantee. Whereas for the Kierkegaardian knight of faith, the subject’s relationship with the absolute is precisely that which goes beyond the realm of the ethical or the universal. (However, I must admit I haven’t quite flesh out the difference for myself.)

[4] We may even say that to recognize the Lover is to see the “the Night of the World” in them. To quote his famous passage, “The human being is this Night, this empty nothing which contains everything in its simplicity – a wealth of infinitely many representations, images, none of which occur to it directly, and none of which are not present. This [is] the Night, the interior of [human] nature, existing here – pure Self – [and] in phantasmagoric representations it is night everywhere: here a bloody head suddenly shoots up and there another white shape, only to disappear as suddenly. We see this Night when we look a human being in the eye, looking into a Night which turns terrifying. [For from his eyes] the night of the world hangs out toward us.”, G. W. F. Hegel’s The Philosophy of Spirit (Jena Lectures 1805-6).