Abstract

This essay develops a comprehensive theory of love as a learned process and the fulfillment of understanding. Rejecting reductionist views of love as mere chemistry or instantaneous emotion, it frames love as a cognitive, ethical, and temporal structure that integrates past, present, and future. Drawing on Aristotle, Fromm, Heidegger, Piaget, and Bowlby, the argument posits that love is built through coherent practices—care, transparency, continuity—and only exists as long as this structure is maintained. Love is thus not a passive feeling but an active process of learning and fulfillment that can be directed toward persons, objects, ideas, or knowledge itself. A key distinction is made between biological attraction or emotional habit and true love, which requires the integrity of the learned relational process. The theory explains both the formation of loving bonds (e.g., in child development) and their dissolution when the underlying process is broken, leaving only sentiment or custom behind. [The complete essay is in Spanish.] This work is part of an expanding series of philosophical essays available and their expansions in the author's personal archive.