Fantastic! This reminds me of Derrida, who once said in a video that love is not liking a person's qualities, but liking a person. Love is holistic in a way, because it penetrates the superficial qualities that may draw you to a woman, and encompasses flaws and imperfections.

Not according to the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats: And, as usual, Derrida is dead wrong.

For Anne Gregory


'NEVER shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
'But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or [
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair.'
'I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'

William Butler Yeats

I've never encountered a refutation in the form of a poem before!

But I'm not convinced by pathos; try logos. Yeats' claim is a bit empty. And I don't know why you criticised Derrida so heavily while letting Kierkegaard off the hook so easily.

Yeats' claim may be false, but what is "empty" about it? He is saying that God alone can see into the essence of anyone. But human knowledge is confined only to the accidental properties of people. And, I don't know about God's knowledge, but it seems to me that human knowledge is as Yates describes it. But that is surely not an empty claim. Derrida was a fraud, and a charlatan. Kierkegaard was not. He said some interesting things.

Just observe the fleeting nature of what usually passes for love these days and see the truth of these words.
Notice how often it is not the person that is seen but only an aspect of that person. And if that aspect no longer holds sufficient appeal, where is the love?