When I talk about love in this book, I am describing not something fuzzy and sentimental but clear and bracing. In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “To love is to will the good of the other.”10 The modern philosopher Michael Novak refines this further by adding two words: “To love is to will the good of the other as other” (emphasis mine).11 He continues: “Love is not sentimental, nor restful in illusions, but watchful, alert, and ready to follow evidence. It seeks the real as lungs crave air.”
