Love is for Courageous People, All the Rest Are Just Couples
Unpacking Umberto Galimberti’s Daemonic Philosophy of Desire and the Profound Vulnerability True Love Demands.
by Michael Lamonaca 14 June 2025
Love. The very word often conjures images of heartwarming romance, idyllic companionship, and blissful togetherness. But what if our modern understanding of love is fundamentally flawed, too shallow to grasp its true, often terrifying, power? For Umberto Galimberti, the eminent Italian philosopher and psychoanalyst, love is far more than a sentimental bond or a comfortable arrangement. It’s a “daemonic” force, an elemental, uncontrollable current that tears through individual boundaries, challenges sanity, and demands a level of courage that most relationships, content to be mere “couples,” simply cannot sustain.
In his profound work, Le cose dell’amore (The things of love), Galimberti invites us to strip away the cozy romantic illusions and confront love in its rawest, most unsettling form. He argues that genuine love isn’t something we choose or control; it’s a destiny that descends upon us, a disruptive encounter with the “Other” that shatters our ego and exposes us to the infinite, and often frightening, possibilities of connection, ecstasy, and devastating loss. His perspective, steeped in the insights of Plato, Nietzsche, and Freud, paints a picture of love as an existential condition, an experience so powerful it leaves us profoundly changed, if we’re brave enough to truly surrender to it.
The Body of Love: More Than Just Emotion
Before diving into the daemonic, it’s essential to grasp Galimberti’s holistic view of human experience. Much like the idea that “the body keeps the score,” Galimberti emphasizes that love isn’t just an emotion felt in the mind; it’s an experience that permeates our entire being, manifesting physiologically, emotionally, and existentially. When love strikes, it’s a full-body phenomenon, a profound physiological and psychological upheaval that can be exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.
Modern society often tries to compartmentalize emotions, to understand them rationally, but love defies such neat categorization. It’s an immersive state where thoughts and sensations intertwine, creating a deep resonance within us. To truly understand love, then, requires acknowledging this integrated experience, recognizing that its power is felt not just in the heart, but in the very core of our physical and mental existence.
The Daemonic Nature of Eros: Love’s Uncontrollable Power
At the heart of Galimberti’s philosophy of love is the concept of its “daemonic” nature. This term, drawn from the ancient Greek notion of daimon, refers not to anything evil, but to an irresistible, divine, or guiding force that operates beyond human reason and control. For Galimberti, Eros—passionate, desirous love—is the quintessential daimon. It’s a powerful intermediary, bridging the human and the transcendent, the individual and the infinite.
When Eros strikes, it’s not a gentle persuasion; it’s an invasion, an obsession that disregards logic and rational planning. It compels us towards the object of our desire with an intensity that borders on madness, demanding a surrender of the ego. This uncontrollable power can manifest as overwhelming longing, intense jealousy, ecstatic joy, or profound suffering. Galimberti argues that this very unpredictability and irrationality are central to love’s true essence. It’s a force that pulls us out of our ordinary lives, sometimes towards unparalleled bliss, sometimes towards deep pain, but always towards a heightened, more authentic state of being. He challenges us to acknowledge that genuine love, far from being a choice, is often a destiny that descends upon us, pushing us into uncharted territories of self and other, requiring immense courage to face its demands.
Love in the Age of Technology and Rationality: A Diluted Experience
One of Galimberti’s most cutting critiques targets how modern, technologically advanced, and rationalized societies attempt to domesticate and diminish the daemonic nature of love. In an era obsessed with control, predictability, and efficiency, the chaotic, irrational, and vulnerable aspects of love become deeply unsettling. We seek to manage love through self-help books, relationship apps, and dating algorithms, attempting to reduce it to a formula or a predictable series of steps designed for maximum “happiness.”
Galimberti laments the loss of the “mystery” or the “sacred” in relationships. When love is stripped of its terrifying grandeur and presented as a mere calculation for personal fulfillment, it loses its transformative power. Technology, with its promise of perfect matches and instant gratification, fosters an illusion of control over something inherently uncontrollable. This inevitably leads to profound disillusionment when the messy, unpredictable reality of love inevitably clashes with these sanitized expectations. For Galimberti, true love demands a profound leap of faith, a willingness to confront the unknown and endure the discomfort of deep vulnerability—a courage that modern society often recoils from in its pursuit of comfort and certainty.
The Paradox of Vulnerability: Surrendering Sovereignty for Connection
The daemonic nature of love demands vulnerability. To truly love, one must open themselves completely to the Other, risking rejection, betrayal, and profound loss. This act of surrender challenges the individual’s sense of sovereignty and autonomy. Galimberti delves into the paradox: love promises unification and wholeness, yet it inherently involves a dissolution of the self into the Other. This can be terrifying, as it blurs the ego boundaries and forces a confrontation with one’s own incompleteness.
The suffering inherent in love—jealousy, the fear of abandonment, the pain of unrequited affection, or the anguish of loss—is not an anomaly but an integral part of its daemonic nature. It is through these trials that love exercises its transformative power, forcing individuals to grow, to confront their limitations, and to discover deeper dimensions of themselves. In this sense, true love is a constant negotiation between maintaining one’s individuality and succumbing to the overwhelming force of connection, a challenging yet ultimately enriching dance between two independent beings. This is where courage is paramount: the courage to expose oneself fully, knowing the potential for pain, but also the potential for unparalleled growth and connection.
Reclaiming the Depth of Love: An Invitation to Courage
Umberto Galimberti’s exploration in Le cose dell’amore serves as a stark, yet ultimately liberating, invitation to reclaim a more profound and authentic understanding of love. He urges us to move beyond superficial romantic ideals and to confront the raw, often unsettling, truth of love as a daemonic force. This means acknowledging its irrationality, its capacity for both ecstatic joy and profound despair, and its inherent risks.
To embrace love fully, according to Galimberti, means to cultivate the courage to accept our vulnerability, to surrender to a force larger than ourselves, and to be willing to be transformed by the intense encounter with the Other. It’s a call to bravery in the face of the unknown, an acceptance that love is not a guarantee of perpetual happiness but a tumultuous yet deeply rewarding journey into the very depths of human experience. By understanding love in its fullest, most “daemonic” sense, we might just unlock its most profound and transformative potential, allowing ourselves to truly live and be moved by the deepest currents of human connection. The courage to step into this tumultuous dance is what truly distinguishes those who experience love from those who are merely couples.
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