Thesis: Necessarily, it is appropriate to love x in the primary (or focal) sense of "love" if and only if x is a substance.
Why? Maybe because of the Augustinian and Thomistic doctrine of the interchangeability of being and love, and the Aristotelian doctrine that substances are what has being in the primary sense.
If the Thesis is true, this has metaphysical and ethical consequences. Metaphysical consequence: All persons are substances. Ethical consequence: We shouldn't love countries, nations, ecosystems, galaxies, ideas, etc. in the primary sense of "love". If, further, we add the Aristotelian claim that the only real substances there are beings that have life, we get the useful fact that we shouldn't love our non-living material possessions in the primary sense of "love". (I am open, however, to particles being substances. It's odd to say that I should love particles in the primary sense. But less odd when one considers the fact that they do have a sort of "life", and even less odd when one adds that love needs to be proportioned to the dignity of the beloved, so that particles, though lovable in the primary sense, are lovable in only a little way.)
