❝ Citação
what is love? I think Oscar Wilde is right when he defines love in De Profundis as giving what one does have and receiving that over which one has no power. To love is to commit oneself to another not without the guarantee that love will be returned, but with the hope that it might be. Love takes place in the subjunctive mood: it may be, it might be, would that it were the case. The logic of love is akin to the logic of grace. I give something that is truly beyond my capacity to control, I commit myself to it completely, but there can be no assurance that love will be reciprocated. At any point in a love relation, the beloved can and must be able to say ‘I love you not.’ If this is not the case, if the beloved cannot refuse love, then love is reduced to coercive control, to contractual obligation and command. None of these is love. If God is all-loving, then he, she or it has to allow us to refuse that love and take our life and death into our own hands.
Passagem de Notes on Suicide, de Simon Critchley.