溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is Love, Too, an Art That Can Be Learned?
Is love a fate that simply arrives, or an art that can be learned and practiced?
Love, too, may be guided by art.
Ovid's view of love as an art was one extreme of the long question: is love fate or ability? Romanticism, at the opposite pole, sang love as a bolt of destiny that can be neither learned nor governed, holding that the moment craft enters love, it loses its truth. Yet in the modern age some thinkers sided again with Ovid, arguing that love is not an emotion one happens to fall into but an ability that must be learned and practiced — that we fail at love not for lack of the right person but for lack of the skill of loving. Is love fate or art? The question still divides the wish to leave love a mystery from the wish to treat it as a thing to learn.
In an age awash with dating advice and relationship skills, Ovid's question — whether love can be learned — was already asked two thousand years ago. The answer still divides us.
Ovid declares provocatively: love, too, is an art.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Ovid declares provocatively: love, too, is an art. As a ship advances by the craft of oar and sail, love can be learned and refined. In a deliberately light tone he teaches the rules of love, yet beneath it lies a serious question. We treat love as fate, but does love not also require practice? I feel this question pricks the romantic fantasy. Falling in love may be an instant, but keeping love is closer to a skill. Does love arrive on its own, or must it be learned? I look back on how clumsily I have loved.
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