Although Tillich can on occasion slip into speaking of love
as reunion or even just union instead of a drive or urge or movement toward
reunion, it is clear in the whole context of his thought that when this
happens, it is a slip in perfect accuracy of language, nothing more. Love for
Tillich is not union. That this is so shows up in two consequences he draws
consistently from his basic notion of love as a drive to union of the
separated. The first is that it is hard to speak meaningfully of self-love.
Self-love cannot really be a concept, Tillich says, but only an ambiguous
metaphor, which we would do well to remove from our vocabulary. “Is there any
separation in the structure of self-consciousness” to be overcome by love? The
second and even more striking consequence of Tillich’s basic notion of love is
that love ceases in the measure that reunion is achieved. Fulfilled love is the
end of love, for without separation there is no love and no life. Love
necessarily remains unfulfilled, for its complete fulfilment would mean the
elimination of the lover and the loved. Tillich’s understanding of the emotion
of love, as we shall immediately see, in terms of a response to an imagined
union, a response of anticipation, fits with and confirms the position that
love ceases insofar as union is actualized.
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