Love Quote by Mortimer Adler

Adler is doing what mid-century public philosophers often tried to do: rescue a thick, moral vocabulary from the mush of appetite. He draws a hard line between desire as consumption and love as a posture toward another person. The sentence is basically a diagnostic test: when you want someone, does the wanting include an active impulse to delight them, or does it stop at getting what you came for? That split matters because it reframes sex from a private itch into an ethical relationship.

The phrasing is telling. “Not merely to use them” is the quiet indictment, an early warning flare against turning people into instruments. Adler’s context is the postwar, pre-Sexual Revolution world where “unbridled sexuality” was becoming both a fear and a fascination, and where popular culture was learning to market liberation while still treating bodies as commodities. His move isn’t prudish so much as philosophical: he’s arguing that lust becomes humane only when it carries generosity.

There’s subtext in the modesty of “some impulse.” Adler isn’t demanding sainthood or self-erasure; he’s insisting on a minimum threshold of care that transforms desire into regard. The definition also sneaks in a standard for judging ourselves. You can’t hide behind chemistry or “needs” if you’re asked whether you actually wanted the other person to feel good in a way that counts for them, not just as evidence of your prowess.

It works because it makes love measurable without making it mechanical: love shows up in the direction of your attention.