"The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves"
About this Quote
Camus drops the romance and keeps the pathology: possession doesn`t just accompany love, it outlives it. The line is engineered to sting because it treats a supposedly elevating emotion as a carrier for something colder and more durable - appetite. "Insatiable" isn`t metaphorical here; it`s a diagnosis. Desire doesn`t end when it gets what it wants. It reorganizes the world so wanting can continue, then calls that arrangement devotion.
The pivot is the brutal verb choice: "sterilize". Not "hurt" or "limit" but render barren, unproductive, unable to generate surprise. In Camus`s framing, to love someone as property is to disinfect them of their otherness, to make them safe for the lover`s narrative. You don`t just want the person; you want the person to stop becoming. That`s the subtext: possession isn`t intimacy, it`s risk management. It kills the unruly, open-ended part of a human being - the very part that makes love feel alive.
Contextually, this sits comfortably in Camus`s broader suspicion of consoling myths. In an absurd universe where meaning isn`t guaranteed, people reach for certainty wherever they can get it, including in relationships. Possessive love becomes a small private religion: a promise that at least one thing won`t slip away. Camus punctures that fantasy and forces a harder ethical question: if love requires freedom, how often are we just baptizing control with tenderness?
The pivot is the brutal verb choice: "sterilize". Not "hurt" or "limit" but render barren, unproductive, unable to generate surprise. In Camus`s framing, to love someone as property is to disinfect them of their otherness, to make them safe for the lover`s narrative. You don`t just want the person; you want the person to stop becoming. That`s the subtext: possession isn`t intimacy, it`s risk management. It kills the unruly, open-ended part of a human being - the very part that makes love feel alive.
Contextually, this sits comfortably in Camus`s broader suspicion of consoling myths. In an absurd universe where meaning isn`t guaranteed, people reach for certainty wherever they can get it, including in relationships. Possessive love becomes a small private religion: a promise that at least one thing won`t slip away. Camus punctures that fantasy and forces a harder ethical question: if love requires freedom, how often are we just baptizing control with tenderness?
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
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