Beyond the Hedgehog's Dilemma

I. The Dilemma

On a cold winter’s day, Schopenhauer tells us, porcupines huddle together to protect themselves from the frost; their quills wound them, so they draw apart; the cold pushes them together again, the pain separates them once more — until they find the middle distance at which one can keep warm without being pricked. So it is with men: inner emptiness drives them toward one another, their faults push them apart, and politeness — that cushion of air — serves them as an agreed distance. As for the man who possesses enough warmth of his own, the philosopher concludes, he prefers to remain apart.

II. Three Objections

The parable is admirable, and it is wrong three times.

It is, first, a winter parable. It describes only beings driven by lack: no felt cold, no drawing near — in summer, the porcupines’ right distance is far away. Schopenhauer theorizes only the misery of need; he ignores the warmth that gives itself without necessity.

It then makes equilibrium an ideal, whereas equilibrium reached is a death. The porcupine that has found its distance no longer moves until winter’s end; the humans who imitate it stop speaking to one another to avoid being pricked. Life stops. Yet the pain of the quill is inherent to life: a system in perfect equilibrium is a dead system.

It assumes, finally, a single distance. Between two bodies the gap is one; between two souls, comfort is double. At equal distance, one may be cold while the other already feels crowded. There is no one right distance waiting to be discovered: there are two, and they almost never coincide. Hence a rule the parable cannot state — the rule of the slower one: when the two desired distances differ, the greater one makes law, provisionally; for lack is survivable, and intrusion is not.

III. The Axioms of the Summer Man

First axiom: love is born involuntarily, but its survival is voluntary. One does not choose to fall in love; one chooses to nurse a wounded love, or to let it die. Dopamine is only the anaesthesia of the wound: the quills are there from the first day, but one does not feel them. When it fades, we believe love dead; in truth, it is the pain that has become visible — and we bury the wounded instead of treating him. The death of love is thus only virtual: remove the quills, and it is reborn — good as new, just a little warned of its own fragility.

From this, a law — the law of barbs: love does not die of barbs — it dies of barbs unspoken, for the barbs kept silent are the ones that kill. In French, a single letter separates taire — to silence — from tuer — to kill; in love, they are the same verb. The spoken barb becomes a map: it teaches me my limit, it teaches the other where to press no more. The disinfected barb leaves a clean scar, over which one may weep. The silenced barb stays planted, festers into resentment, then into contempt — the only certain killer. Paradox: we almost always keep silent to protect love. We kill it out of politeness. Explicit politeness — asking, answering — is love’s immune system.

Second axiom: summer first. As long as one is incapable of being of summer, nothing can be done properly. The path is ordered: to love oneself — the key of keys, for he who does not love himself destroys everything, his couple, his love, the other’s love — then to be confident, to be occupied with oneself, and finally to love at least two beings equally, so as to be obsessed by none. Plurality comes last: multiplying bonds before loving oneself is multiplying one’s obsessions instead of dissolving them.

Third axiom: the end of the anaesthesia is inevitable. It cannot be prevented — we would know. This theory therefore does not concern itself with the end, but with resurrection. It begins after.

IV. The Resurrection

In summer, love can live again — for one does not raise the dead: one exhumes the living. And this in three forms. Alone and at peace: because it is voluntary, love can live within oneself without possessing the other, without even the relationship. With the other: this is love forewarned — disinfected, wept over, lucid, chosen anew; it has lost the innocence of anaesthesia and gained lucidity: it knows itself mortal and chooses all the same. Outside every box, finally — the most beautiful form, perhaps: to each their own physical, sexual, sentimental space, and this principle: replace exclusivity with irreplaceability. The unique can be replaced; the irreplaceable cannot. This love fears nothing anymore: it disputes no one’s place. One does not speak there of reconquest — a word of war and of property — but of hospitality: to receive, to be received, to admire.

V. The Architecture of Life

The fault of the couple-box is that it is an emotional monoculture: it concentrates on a single person love, safety, sexuality, admiration, listening, projects, family — and every monoculture exhausts its soil. The box must therefore be destroyed — not the love that was inside it: take it out of the box, and see that it breathes better outdoors. Plurality is not, first of all, a sexual arrangement; it is a diversification of bonds — several centres of love: beings, a body of work, beloved things. The free being lives alone; he receives, or is received; he imposes his presence on no one, and no one imposes theirs on him. Quality over quantity: distance is not set on average, it is dosed per person — few bonds, but chosen ones, and politeness for all the rest. Living at a distance keeps the mystery without the mystery: whether there are secrets or not, the mystery remains imaginary, and that is what counts. The right distance in love remains naturally impossible: it is a work for two — pure love, the will neither to suffer nor to cause suffering, deep knowledge of the other’s needs and limits.

From this, a second law — the law of exclusivity: every exclusivity tends to impoverish the rest of one’s bonds. It is not only conjugal — it can be parental, professional, religious. Whenever one bond draws in all the emotional energy, the others wither: the parent who loves no one but his children brings down his couple. That is why, everywhere and not in love alone, exclusivity must be replaced with irreplaceability.

One thing alone cannot be solved: the asymmetry of desire — “I want more.” It is not solved; it is dampened: by speech, by the plurality of sources, by inner summer — wanting more without demanding more. And whoever is furthest along in his summer carries the greater share of the waiting: summer is not a privilege that grants rights, it is a capacity that imposes duties.

VI. The Third Way

Philosophers are people like us — no more intelligent in matters of love; they have often theorized from their winters. Man suffers, but fleeing is not the solution: Schopenhauer is wrong. Accepting without reacting is not the solution: the others are wrong too. The third way is the only one: work upon oneself — making oneself able to carry. For in the face of what makes hearts and guts suffer, we have only one power: that of learning to suffer less.

Love, for its part, remains a volcano: it shatters every theory, including this one. It cannot be tamed; one builds around it an architecture of life that survives the eruptions. And the whole method holds in four words that a grandmother knew before all the philosophers: you must talk, a great deal.

* “Man” in the sense of human: summer has no gender. — In dialogue with Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena; Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life), and in counterpoint: Nietzsche; E. Fromm, The Art of Loving; H. Fisher; J. Gottman.