Love Has No Why

The famed Dominican friar Meister Eckhart has a phrase, “Love has no why” (Die Minne hat kein Warum), and it is perhaps one of the most famous statements in Western Christian mysticism. In its fuller, but less familiar form, he writes: “Love has no why. It loves because it loves. It knows no reason. It asks for no reason.” What exactly this means, like most great poetry, is a subject of some debate.

At first glance, this sounds like a defense of irrationality, but Eckhart means something more subtle in his prose. Most human actions are done for a reason. They are directed towards some specific goal. We work to earn money. We study to gain knowledge. We exercise to improve the state of our health. These actions are all clearly goal-directed. They have a why, a purpose outside of themselves.

For Eckhart, true love is something different. Genuine love does not treat the “beloved” as a means to some further end. Loving that person or that thing is the end to itself.  If I love someone solely because they are wealthy, attractive, or useful, my love is actually directed toward those benefits and not the person. The person becomes a vehicle for something else. That is to say, love, or rather real love, is beyond any clear prudent purpose.

However, Eckhart would not say love is irrational, at least not in the same sense of being foolish or contrary to reason. Rather, love is non-calculating. It is born of an emotional certainty. Our reason often operates by comparison and purpose. Love transcends the logic of engineering or strategy. A young mother does not calculate whether her child is “worth” loving. She simply loves her child. A friend does not maintain a spreadsheet of various favors received and rightfully owed. The deepest forms of love seem excessive from a purely rational perspective. This is why lovers throughout the history of art and literature often appear irrational. Love introduces something novel into the human soul. It is fundamentally a different order of value.

Eckhart, being a mendicant friar, while he is interested in the idea of human nature, is speaking more specifically about divine love. It stands to reason that God does not love humanity because humans are useful to Him in any material way. God gains nothing from creation. Therefore, divine love cannot be motivated by any type of need. God loves because love is His nature (1 Jn. 4:8). Likewise, the soul united to God begins to love in the same way, not for the sake of some nebulous reward, not even for the proposition of heaven, but simply because goodness is lovable. Eckhart suggests that a truly holy person would love God even if no reward existed.

All of this is to say that no one, in their heart of hearts, respects love that is not freely given. True love, if in fact it is true love, is free because it arises from what we are, not from what we hope to obtain. A flower blooms because it is in its nature to bloom. Eckhart uses a similar imagery elsewhere in his writing, when he says: “The flower blooms because it blooms.” It does not bloom to be admired or born out of any sense of gratification. Its flowering is its own justification. What is more, love is entirely independent from the idea of effort. If one spouse would ask the other “Do you love me?”, among the sundry incorrect responses would be, “I’m trying very hard.” Love is also removed from any conscientious effort. The Maronite poet Khalil Gibran in the early 20th century speaks to this same observation in his own prose when he writes:        

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

Some theorists in contemporary psychology have claimed the existence of “psychological egoism,” that all people are motivated by self-interest as their primary motivation. This unique form of cynicism assumes that every behavior has an underlying motive that is fundamentally selfish. Eckhart challenges this kind of behavioral reductionism. He suggests there are moments when human beings act from an overflowing abundance, and that this abundance is synonymous with love. In that sense, “Love has no why” is a radical claim. Perhaps even a subversive claim. It posits that the greatest act of humanity is not a transaction, but as gifts freely given. As Christ Himself taught, “Freely you have received; now freely give” (Mt. 10:8).

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash