Philosophy’s foundational emotion, φιλία (philia), meant for the Greeks an intimate engagement with things—one that reveals their deepest root, their inner meaning and constitution. That disposition introduced a mode of knowledge that, in its full reality, reaches the ultimate nature of things. The Greeks called it σοφία (sophía, “wisdom”).

Henri Bergson once remarked that philosophy is born from a concentration of thought upon the foundation of a pure emotion. These two elements are not merely juxtaposed; they constitute, in their deepest root, a single unity from which the act of philosophizing emerges. What is that foundational emotion? What kind of thinking does it bring forth?

Let’s go through the motions of love. There’s always something new to learn. Love is not limited to romance—we love art and science, a mother loves her child, the devout love God. Yet romantic relationships often obscure love’s pure essence, tangled in personal histories, fleeting passions, and external circumstances. What we call love is sometimes anything but. The subject is much vaster—Dante believed that love moves the sun and the other stars.