Trust and the Experience of Love

Abstract

There are two ways in which the reference to love in philosophical work creates a curious space for reflection on trust and its role in love. Discussion of love often emerges in philosophical analysis as a primary example of human existence. That love becomes an exemplar of existential experience is perhaps due to the fact that we all have some sort of phenomenological understanding of what it is to desire love, to love, and to be loved. However, the centrality of love to human existence ultimately lies in its associations with transcendence and thus growth, development and transformation, and the possibility of fulfillment. The possibility of creating loving bonds with another person, bonds that both uplift and ground existence, also creates the possibility of a touchstone in life: affectively, corporeally, reflectively, indeed in all senses of what it is to be human, we find in love a point of reference that we can trust, namely, another self who shares and knows the intimate structures of our world. If love is sustained by trust, then trust seems also to be central to human existence. But the focus on their intertwining is rarely developed within discussions of love's affective structure.