Henrich's reflection takes its cue from a sentence of John, which emphasizes a characteristic of the partnership of man and woman in the spirit of Christianity: namely, that at its core it is the absence of fear for itself. John's theology of love is connected to this understanding of life. In his analysis of self-consciousness as an indubitable grounding, however, Henrich shows how a purely human understanding of love can be gained. Admittedly, real life bonds are most often formed and experienced in fluctuation between many modes of understanding. The procedural mode of this reasoning itself then becomes the theme of the investigation.