"If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love"
About this Quote
Adler draws a bright, almost prosecutorial line between love and lust, and the severity is the point. He is not moralizing about sex so much as diagnosing a motive: when another person is treated as a tool for "self-satisfaction", the relationship collapses into appetite. The phrase "only for" does the heavy lifting. It narrows the indictment to a specific kind of desire, the desire that reduces a human being to a delivery system for pleasure, validation, or escape.
His language is deliberately clinical. "Usually" and "in the form of sensual pleasure" concede complexity while still steering the reader back to first principles: intentions matter, and the inner logic of an act can be ethically different even when the outward behavior looks identical. Adler's subtext is classical and Thomistic: love is willing the good of the other; lust is a misuse of the other for the self. That framework matters because it insists that consent or intensity alone cannot define love; a relationship can be passionate and still fundamentally instrumental.
The context is mid-century moral philosophy trying to keep human dignity intact in an increasingly commodified culture. Adler, steeped in Aristotelian virtue and Catholic natural-law reasoning, is pushing back against modernity's tendency to make desire its own justification. The quote works because it turns romance into a question of ends: am I oriented toward the other person's flourishing, or toward my own consumption? In a culture that markets intimacy as self-care, Adler's distinction lands like a rebuke - and a diagnostic test.
His language is deliberately clinical. "Usually" and "in the form of sensual pleasure" concede complexity while still steering the reader back to first principles: intentions matter, and the inner logic of an act can be ethically different even when the outward behavior looks identical. Adler's subtext is classical and Thomistic: love is willing the good of the other; lust is a misuse of the other for the self. That framework matters because it insists that consent or intensity alone cannot define love; a relationship can be passionate and still fundamentally instrumental.
The context is mid-century moral philosophy trying to keep human dignity intact in an increasingly commodified culture. Adler, steeped in Aristotelian virtue and Catholic natural-law reasoning, is pushing back against modernity's tendency to make desire its own justification. The quote works because it turns romance into a question of ends: am I oriented toward the other person's flourishing, or toward my own consumption? In a culture that markets intimacy as self-care, Adler's distinction lands like a rebuke - and a diagnostic test.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
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