philosophy of love argumentative essay

The Ethics of Love

• Published: 05 November 2021
• Volume 25 , pages 423–427, ( 2021 )

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• Alfred Archer 1  

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Morgan Gagnon - ‘The Ethical Potential of Love in the Wake of Sexual Violence’

Paddy McQueen - ‘Sexual Interactions and Sexual Infidelity’

Kamila Pacovská - ‘Remorse and Self-love: Kostelnička’s Change of Heart’

Anca Gheaus - ‘Unrequited Love, Self-victimisation and the Target of Appropriate Resentment’

Laura Candiotto and Hanne De Jaegher - ‘Love In-Between’

Roos Slegers - ‘The Ethics and Economics of Middle Class Romance: Wollstonecraft and Smith on Love in Commercial Society’

Alfred Archer - ‘Fans, Crimes and Misdemeanors: Fandom and the Ethics of Love’

Editor’s Introduction

What duties do we owe to people we love, people who love us, and people we have fallen out of love with? Can we be morally blameworthy for our romantic and sexual preferences? While the philosophy of love has long been a focus of philosophical attention (for an overview see Helm 2021 ), these issues relating specifically to the ethics of love were, until recently, relatively neglected. While philosophers from the past such as Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, Montaigne, Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche all discussed some ethical dimensions of love (see May 2011 ), this topic has only recently reemerged as a topic of sustained philosophical investigation.

In the recent literature, philosophers have begun to investigate several important issues that relate to the moral principles that ought to govern our romantic, friendship, sexual and other forms of relationship with others. This includes discussions about the ethics of sexual and romantic preferences. This debate has considered, among other topics, whether it is morally wrong to have sexual or romantic preferences for people from particular ethnic backgrounds (Zheng 2016 ) and whether it is unjust that some groups of people are desired less than others (O’Shea 2020 ; Srinivasan 2021 ). Philosophers have also begun to investigate whether we have a human right to be loved (Liao 2015 ) or to be free from social deprivation (Brownlee 2020 ) and whether we have duties to make friends with others (Collins 2013 ). Similarly, the recent literature has also involved discussions of a number of ethical issues that arise from romantic and sexual relationships such as consent (Dougherty 2013 ), infidelity (McKeever 2020 ), the use of love drugs (Earp and Savulescu 2020 ; Spreeuwenberg and Schaubroeck 2020 ), and ethical issues that arise at the end of relationships (Lopez-Cantero and Archer 2020 ). Relatedly, philosophers have also explored the ethical status of relationships that go against conventional heterosexual norms such as homosexuality (MacLachlan 2012 ), polyamory (Brunning 2018 ), and asexuality (Brunning and McKeever 2021 ). While far from a comprehensive overview, this hopefully provides a general idea of the kinds of ethical issues relating to love, sex and relationships that have been the focus of philosophical attention in recent years.

This special issue arises from a workshop on the Philosophy of Love that was held at Tilburg University on the 13th and 14th of February 2020. I would like to thank all the speakers, commentators, and attendees of this workshop. Special thanks to my fellow organizers Wim Dubbink, Martine Prange and Roos Slegers. Special thanks too to Wietske Petrisor who did an excellent job as the student assistant for the workshop and to the production team at Springer, particularly Kavitha Gunasekaran, Saritha Hemanth and Subaysala Ravichandran. Little did we realize as we enjoyed two days of fascinating talks that this would be the last in-person philosophy event that many of us would attend for quite some time. I am glad that the last in-person workshop I attended before a COVID-enforced 18-month break was such an interesting, enjoyable, and memorable one.

While the topic of the workshop was on the philosophy of love more generally, several papers focused specifically on the ethics of love. From these papers, several were invited to submit to this special issue of the Journal of Ethics and six of these made it through the peer-review process. These papers form the bulk of this special issue and include the contributions from Morgan Gagnon, Anca Gheaus, Laura Candiotto and Hanne De Jaegher, Roos Slegers and Alfred Archer. These papers were subject to the journal’s standard peer review process, with Alfred Archer serving as the acting associate editor for the papers from Gagnon, Gheaus, and Candiotto and Jaegher. To ensure an impartial review process, the papers from Slegers and Archer were handled by a different associate editor for the journal who was unknown to them.

The contributions from Paddy McQueen and Kamila Pacovská were submitted to the journal independently of this workshop. In McQueen’s case, the paper was handled as a normal submission and only after the paper was accepted did I offer McQueen the chance to include his paper in this issue. In Pacovská’s case the paper was handled as a submission for the special issue from the start and went through the standard review process for special issue submissions.

The first two papers in this issue examine ethical issues related to love and sex. Morgan Gagnon’s ‘The Ethical Potential of Love in the Wake of Sexual Violence’ investigates how people ought to respond to sexual violence committed within their communities or by their loved ones. In such cases, love may make it more difficult to respond appropriately to these offenders. However, these same loving relationships can also play an important role in helping to encourage atonement and moral development from the wrongdoers and wider changes in the community that helped facilitate this harm. This, argues Gagnon, has important consequences for how we should respond to sexual violence.

Paddy McQueen’s ‘Sexual Interactions and Sexual Infidelity’ continues the exploration of the ethics of love and sex by developing an account of the nature of sexual interaction and then using this account to defend a view of the nature of sexual infidelity. According to McQueen, a sexual interaction is an interaction in which two or more people engage in sexual activity together with the aim of satisfying a sexual desire in a mutually supportive way. This account has the implication that a wide range of actions can constitute sexual infidelity, including, perhaps surprisingly, the private use of pornography.

The next two papers investigate the connection between love and reactive attitudes like remorse and resentment. Kamila Pacovská’s ‘Remorse and Self-love: Kostelnička’s Change of Heart’ draws on Janáček’s opera Jenůfa to argue that self-hatred is not an appropriate response to one’s own wrongdoing. Self-hatred, Pacovská argues, is a response that stems from a vicious form of pride and self-love which prevents people from acknowledging their own moral shortcomings. This self-hatred is in part caused by the view many of us have of ourselves as morally virtuous people which is threatened when we act immorally. Instead of self-hatred, Pacovská argues that true remorse focuses on the victim rather than the wrongdoer and involves taking a humbler attitude to one’s own moral qualities.

Anca Gheaus’ ‘Unrequited Love, Self-victimisation and the Target of Appropriate Resentment’ examines whether we are justified in feeling resentment when we love someone who does not love us back. According to Carlsson ( 2018 ), we are justified in feeling resentment in such cases. Even though we are not wronged here, we are harmed by the fact that the person we love does not love us in return. In response to this line of thought, Gheaus argues that those who do not return our love do not harm us but rather fail to benefit us. This failure to benefit is insufficient to warrant resentment, so we should not resent those we love unrequitedly.

The next two papers investigate the ethics of love from feminist perspectives. In ‘Love In-Between’ Laura Candiotto and Hanne De Jaegher develop an enactive account of loving which is inspired by Irigaray’s ( 1996 ) account of love. According to Candiotto and De Jaegher, loving involves participatory sense-making. This means that love involves two people trying to make sense both of each other and the relationship they have with each other. Candiotto and De Jaegher then explore the ethical implications of viewing love in this way, arguing that love should involve a willingness to accept the ways in which the person we love is different from us. Acknowledging difference is seen as the first step for engaging in dialectical processes of transformation. We should also open ourselves up to being changed by those we love and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with them, so that we can better know ourselves and each other. This implies a fundamental transformation in how lovers speak to each other.

Roos Slegers’ ‘The Ethics and Economics of Middle Class Romance: Wollstonecraft and Smith on Love in Commercial Society’ examines the similarity between Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft’s philosophies of love. Both philosophers were concerned that commercial societies leave little room for romantic love. According to both Smith and Wollstonecraft, the growth of commerce and the development of the middle class encourages vanity. Men are encouraged to be vain about their wealth power and statues and women are encouraged to be vain about their appearance. This vanity gets in the way of developing human connections with others and so acts an impediment to romantic love. The rather depressing result is that it will be very difficult, according to Smith and Wollstonecraft to develop genuine loving relationships in commercial societies.

The final paper in this volume examines the ethics of fandom. How should fans of celebrities or sports clubs respond when the object of their fandom has behaved immorally? Fandom, Archer argues, shares many features with romantic love such as an appreciation of the particular qualities of the loved one or object of fandom, participation in attachment developing practices and changes to how the fan or lover perceive their beloved. Based on this, Archer argues that fandom can be morally dangerous, as it can encourage fans to provide support for immoral behavior, to adopt an immoral point of view and to engage in acts of retaliation against those who uncover the immorality of the fan’s idol. This provides some reason for fans to abandon their fandom. However, it does not necessarily mean that fans have a duty to do so. Fans may instead choose to adopt a critical stance to their idol rather than abandoning their fandom altogether. However, fans have good reason to be cautious about their ability to take a truly critical stance towards their idols.

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Archer, A. The Ethics of Love. J Ethics 25 , 423–427 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09387-x

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Published : 05 November 2021

Issue Date : December 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-021-09387-x

What is love? A philosopher explains it’s not a choice or a feeling − it’s a practice

Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri-Kansas City

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Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected] .

How do you define love? Is it a choice or a feeling? – Izzy, age 11, Golden, Colorado

Love is confusing. People in the U.S. Google the word “love” about 1.2 million times a month . Roughly a quarter of those searches ask “ what is love ” or request a “ definition of love .”

What is all this confusion about?

Neuroscience tells us that love is caused by certain chemicals in the brain . For example, when you meet someone special, the hormones dopamine and norepinephrine can trigger a reward response that makes you want to see this person again. Like tasting chocolate, you want more.

Your feelings are the result of these chemical reactions. Around a crush or best friend, you probably feel something like excitement, attraction, joy and affection. You light up when they walk into the room. Over time, you might feel comfort and trust. Love between a parent and child feels different, often some combination of affection and care.

But are these feelings, caused by chemical reactions in your brain, all that love is? If so, then love seems to be something that largely happens to you. You’d have as much control over falling in love as you’d have over accidentally falling in a hole – not much.

As a philosopher who studies love , I’m interested in the different ways people have understood love throughout history. Many thinkers have believed that love is more than a feeling.

More than a feeling

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought that love might cause feelings like attraction and pleasure, which are out of your control. But these feelings are less important than the loving relationships you choose to form as a result: lifelong bonds between people who help one another change and grow into their best selves.

Similarly, Plato’s student Aristotle claimed that, while relationships built on feelings like pleasure are common, they’re less good for humankind than relationships built on goodwill and shared virtues . This is because Aristotle thought relationships built on feelings last only as long as the feelings last.

Imagine you start a relationship with someone you have little in common with other than you both enjoy playing video games. Should either of you no longer enjoy gaming, nothing would hold the relationship together. Because the relationship is built on pleasure, it will fade once the pleasure is gone.

Compare this with a relationship where you want to be together not because of a shared pleasure but because you admire one another for who you are. You want what is best for one another. This kind of friendship built on shared virtue and goodwill will be much longer lasting. These kinds of friends will support each other as they change and grow.

Plato and Aristotle both thought that love is more than a feeling. It’s a bond between people who admire one another and therefore choose to support one another over time.

Maybe, then, love isn’t totally out of your control.

Celebrating individuality and ‘standing in love’

Contemporary philosopher J. David Velleman also thinks that love can be disentangled from “ the likings and longings ” that come with it – those butterflies in your stomach. This is because love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a special kind of paying attention, which celebrates a person’s individuality.

Velleman says Dr. Seuss did a good job describing what it means to celebrate a person’s individuality when he wrote: “Come on! Open your mouth and sound off at the sky! Shout loud at the top of your voice, ‘I AM I! ME! I am I!’” When you love someone, you celebrate them because you value the “I AM I” that they are.

You can also get better at love. Social psychologist Erich Fromm thinks that loving is a skill that takes practice : what he calls “standing in love.” When you stand in love, you act in certain ways toward a person.

Just like learning to play an instrument, you can also get better at loving with patience, concentration and discipline. This is because standing in love is made up of other skills such as listening carefully and being present. If you get better at these skills, you can get better at loving.

If this is the case, then love and friendship are distinct from the feelings that accompany them. Love and friendship are bonds formed by skills you choose to practice and improve.

Does this mean you could stand in love with someone you hate, or force yourself to stand in love with someone you have no feelings for whatsoever?

Probably not. Philosopher Virginia Held explains the difference between doing an activity and participating in a practice as simply doing some labor versus doing some labor while also enacting values and standards.

Compare a math teacher who mechanically solves a problem at the board versus a teacher who provides students a detailed explanation of the solution. The mechanical teacher is doing the activity – presenting the solution – whereas the engaged teacher is participating in the practice of teaching. The engaged teacher is enacting good teaching values and standards, such as creating a fun learning environment.

Standing in love is a practice in the same sense. It’s not just a bunch of activities you perform. To really stand in love is to do these activities while enacting loving values and standards, such as empathy, respect, vulnerability, honesty and, if Velleman is right, celebrating a person for who they truly are.

How much control do you have over love?

Is it best to understand love as a feeling or a choice?

Think about what happens when you break up with someone or lose a friend. If you understand love purely in terms of the feelings it stirs up, the love is over once these feelings disappear, change or get put on hold by something like a move or a new school.

On the other hand, if love is a bond you choose and practice, it will take much more than the disappearance of feelings or life changes to end it. You or your friend might not hang out for a few days, or you might move to a new city, but the love can persist.

If this understanding is right, then love is something you have more control over than it may seem. Loving is a practice. And, like any practice, it involves activities you can choose to do – or not do – such as hanging out, listening and being present. In addition, practicing love will involve enacting the right values, such as respect and empathy.

While the feelings that accompany love might be out of your control, how you love someone is very much in your control.

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Love & Romance

The philosophy of romantic love, peter keeble says philosophy, like love, is a many-splendoured thing..

Philosophy is normally not shy in dealing with highly emotive issues: Philosophers often tell us what we should not do and that certain cherished beliefs are nonsense. However, not many modern philosophers have written about individual emotions, such as the feeling of romantic love. Yet it would seem a subject ripe for analysis of the kind that Phenomenologists do – to examine in a detailed, neutral way what it is like to be in love. Analytical philosophers have also occasionally dipped their toes in the subject. Romantic love therefore presents a chance to look at how these different forms of modern philosophy tackle the same topic, and compare their strengths and weaknesses.

A neat way of getting at the difference between the phenomenological and analytic approaches is to say that one looks at inner feelings, the other at outer meaning. Phenomenology makes no claims about reality beyond our experience, only about the content and structure of experience. Analytical philosophy, by contrast, is more interested in looking at concepts to ensure that we do not reach unjustified conclusions about ourselves, our world, and what we can know. Thus romantic love can be viewed phenomenologically as an experience of which you are the subject, and analytically as a concept and object of study. The one relies heavily on introspection – whether your own or reports from others – and the other on an analysis of meaning and usage.

We are looking specifically at romantic love here, not love of family or friends, not intellectual love, nor love of your neighbour. Nonetheless, romantic love has many facets and phases. Among these are: falling in love, infatuation, unreciprocated love, erotic love, love within a long-term relationship, falling out of love, unrequited love, and bereavement. They may not all have the same one thing in common, and so might best be grouped together in terms of Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblances’. In what follows I’ll be concentrating on falling in love and love within long-term relationships, which are closely allied.

A. The Phenomenology of Love

The term ‘phenomenology’ can be used to describe the examination of experiences, as I mentioned, but it can also refer more specifically to the philosophical school centred on our experience of the world. A third meaning of ‘phenomenology’ is the body of alleged findings of particular phenomenological philosophers with regard to how our experiences are structured, as well as their practical or ethical implications.

There are two main schools of phenomenological analysis: Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology , and Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutic (or interpretative) phenomenology .

This is terrifying terminology! But put simply, Husserl’s approach, as applied to romantic love, requires us to be aware of all our preconceptions about love and then ‘bracket’ them off, in order to become a stranger in its strange land and observe our experience of it as objectively as possible.

This is already problematic for our present interests. For instance, is it not the case that any experience of love is to some extent moulded by our upbringing in a society that has written and sung so much about this emotion? If so, then our preconceptions about the experience are part of the experience! Indeed, isn’t the experience largely the product of such cultural influence? Maybe even more to the point: how will I know if I’ve rid myself of all the artificial biases of my perception of love? Perhaps it would require extensive training under the tutelage of some transcendental guru.

It is something of a relief to turn to Heidegger’s phenomenology, which gives interpretation a central role in our perceptions. Heidegger’s perspective recognises there is no way to separate yourself from the human world you are in. It is therefore necessary to try to make your personal experience and thinking explicit, in a statement of pre-understanding. Being aware of initial feelings about the experience being investigated should help ensure they are not smuggled back into what one reports.

Making this statement too is problematic, but let me have a go: I think I have a tendency to believe that love is a sometimes-unnervingly-overwhelming emotion that is often overrated as a justification for how people behave. Watch out that this preconception doesn’t sneak in without any evidence.

We now enter the hermeneutic circle . Here we break down the elements of the matter in hand – the experience of romantic love – and look at what each part adds to the whole and how they are related in the totality of the experience.

At this stage we must gather data about what it is like to be in love. The sources include our own introspections, and reports of other peoples’ introspections. When it comes to love, these include, for instance, popular song lyrics.

Collecting Experience Data

Introspection is considering how something appears or feels to you. In my case, looking at feelings of romantic love yielded among other things, what I think is a seldom remarked-on physiological factor, namely a sort of ache in the lower throat and upper chest. However, this is not peculiar to romantic love in my experience – it is similar to my experience of nostalgia or sympathy for a dying child or homesickness.

What of popular music? I was struck by this lyric from Jackie De Shannon, made popular by The Searchers: “I can feel a new expression on my face / I can feel a glowing sensation taking place / … Every time that you / Walk in the room” (‘When You Walk In The Room’, 1964). Here the uncontrollable and unbidden nature of the feeling is emphasised. Here it comes again, along with certainty, in Katie Melua’s ‘Nine Million Bicycles’ (2012): “There are nine million bicycles in Beijing / That’s a fact / It’s a thing we can’t deny / Like the fact that I will love you till I die.” While there is often a sexual element to the romantic experience, this is not always the case. This comes across in a traditional Somerset song collected by Cecil Sharp with the lines, ‘She looked so fine and nimble/ Washing all her linen, oh’ (“Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron’). Here the beloved is engaged in a mundane task, but there is something about the way it is done that manifests qualities that the lover appreciates.

Romantic love may simply be an appreciation of and attraction to physical beauty. However, the experience of love may also be much more than mere appreciation, but transformative, even a matter of life and death. There are so many examples of this in music: here are two. The first was written in 1958 by Philip Spector and performed by the Teddy Bears: “Just to see him smile / Makes my life worthwhile”. In 1970, just before her death, Janis Joplin sang, “But I’d trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday / To be holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine” (‘Me & Bobby Magee’). So overwhelming may the experience of love be that it can seem irrational – as when Dusty Springfield sings, “No matter what you do / I only want to be with you” (1964). This can spill over into a rather unpleasant possessiveness, such as “I want you no matter what you do” – as sung by the Four Seasons in 1966 (‘Opus 17’).

Here we have collected some data about what people say it is like to be in love. But this seems to only be a collection of factoids – interesting and thought-provoking, no doubt, but no more than open-minded social research.

Does it help to gather these insights into one overarching description of what it’s like to be in love? Doing so might produce the following: to be in love is to experience a strong emotion we’re often unable to control that’s accompanied by a sort of ache and an overwhelming admiration for someone, along with a possibly irrational desire to be in their presence and to help them. Put more succinctly, Love is a powerful experience centred on one other person that enriches your whole perspective on life, apparently forever.

This certainly helps to tease out the various aspects of what we experience when in love, but it is not particularly philosophical, more a survey of popular culture ideas about love. Nothing about romantic love necessarily follows from it, such as how we should respond to it. With the benefit of these insights we might be more likely to indulge the strange behaviour of those who claim to be in love: but we might just as well conclude that we should not do so.

Heidegger in Love (Perhaps)

At this stage I turned to various summaries of Heidegger’s phenomenology. In what follows I try to apply these analyses to the nature of romantic love. I should emphasise that this is not taken directly from Heidegger. Rather, it is an attempt to apply his conceptual system to romantic love, and to illustrate how a hermeneutic phenomenologist might turn experiential data into something more profound.

For Heidegger we are inherently social beings who experience and operate through interpretation in such a way that we already see the world, and the loved one, in a particular and to some extent socially-determined way.

Heidegger thought we always see an object as something; in other words, we cannot but be always wearing our cultural spectacles. If I see a door, I see it not as a meaningless piece of wood that I afterwards interpret as an entrance; on the contrary, when I see it, I see it as an entrance. In this sort of way, one’s experiences of love represent a particular way of interpreting one’s experience of another person, the beloved. Love is indeed a very intense example of how we don’t see other people as mere humanoids, or shapes, but rather as people of a certain kind. We do not see a person and then think we love them. Instead, once we’re in love, the other person immediately presents to us as someone we want to be in the presence of and to do good to because they enrich our perspective on life. We feel, to use a phenomenological term, that we want to ‘fuse our horizon’ with them. We want to fuse horizons with another being, and to forge a sort of third being in the interaction between lover and beloved – one which contains some of the qualities of both.

Unless we’re particularly self-conscious, this perception steals up on us. Perhaps on first meeting we just saw another person; but once in love we see the beloved with all their qualities and our shared history, in one gestalt experience. This is what Heidegger calls a ‘coping state’ – one in which we are not fully aware of what we’re doing, in the same sort of way an accomplished carpenter is not particularly aware of the hammer they’re using. If something goes wrong with the hammer, or with the love relationship, we are jolted out of our coping state and pay it attention. That’s analogous to what happens when we first fall in love – our normal state of chugging along is suddenly shaken up by the awareness of love. It disturbs our everyday coping state.

To introduce a bit more of Heidegger’s terminology, in your interactions with your beloved, you see them as useful to your life project. You are projecting a different future which gives your life further (or some) meaning. I think Heidegger would also say when we are in love we see at least some of the essence of the beloved. But there is also a danger that our feelings are inauthentic and the product of the cliched ‘they’ world – in Heidegger’s German, the world of ‘das Mann’. This is why we must pay particular attention to what we actually feel in order to determine whether it is true love. We might see the sort of love lyrics we’ve just looked at as a guide or litmus test for love.

There are clear links with existentialism here. The authenticity of your love may not lead you into any different behaviours than your inauthentic neighbours, but it might. For instance, authentic love may well decide to break some social taboos of the ‘they world’, regarding race, sex, or age, for instance.

This is fascinating, and perhaps useful. However, it seems to me essentially arbitrary. A pre-existing Heideggerian ideology of authenticity has been bolted on to the experiences of love outlined above. It reveals some possible insights into the experience of love, but it’s like a sculpture adorning an office block, in that it does not have to be that specific sculpture. Another sculpture in a different style would work as well and could have revealed and emphasised other aspects of love. Feminism, Marxism, or evolutionary psychology could just as easily have been bolted on to the experience.

B. Romantic Love: Analytical Philosophy’s Perspective

One approach of analytical philosophy applied to love has highlighted dilemmas of fungibility. If love is based on properties of the beloved then this suggests the beloved can be replaced by someone with similar or superior versions of these properties. If, however, the beloved is irreplaceable because of a history of shared experiences, the possibility arises of being trapped forever with a partner who may change and become less desirable. Here, however, I will concentrate on Gabriele Taylor’s examination of whether we are entitled to pass comment on the appropriateness of somebody’s claim to love another person.

In her article ‘Love’ ( Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 76, 1976), Taylor asks whether falling in love, which we tend to think of as a bolt out of the blue that cannot be questioned, is so different from a large set of other emotions where we can feel justified in questioning whether the feeling is reasonable. She suggests we can question infatuation too. First, she points out that it is the structure of other emotions, such as fear, which enables us to make judgements as to their reasonableness. Fear involves someone thinking that an object, animal, or person has certain determinable qualities which result in and may (or may not) justify that emotion. Suppose, for instance that Sheila fears a cobra because she believes it is venomous. From this we infer:

• Sheila must have some relevant want . In this case, not to be killed.

• Sheila must believe the snake has the determinable quality of being venomous.

• Sheila must believe there is a causal connection between the determinable quality (venomous) and her want (to stay alive).

• The determinable quality can’t be just anything : it must explain the emotion.

So there are criteria by which we can judge if the emotion of fear is justified in any particular case. On closer inspection, we may find that Sheila is wrong in thinking the cobra in front of her is venomous; she may even be wrong in believing it is a snake and not a stick. Or she may not know that the snake is venomous and could kill her, but be fearful of it for some absurd reason, such as an intense dislike of spaghetti.

Taylor claims that there seems to be no comparable structure for love. What is the determinate quality of the object of your love? Lovability ? But this seems too empty and subjective to be useful – so much so that it is a tautology rather than a possible explanation, What, we feel entitled to ask, are the specific properties of lovability that justifiably inspire love? They surely vary markedly from person to person. Nonetheless, Taylor says, although there may not be easily-identified determinable qualities for love, we can observe the common wants of those who are in love. These include:

• A wanting to be with B

• A wanting to communicate with B

• A wanting to cherish and benefit B

• A wanting B to take an interest in A (and for B to admire them – hence all that showing off)

In relation to qualities, most of us will deem these wants to be justifiable if A identifies that B is kindly, or attractive, or has a sense of humour, for example. All that is reasonable. But we would not think it reasonable for A to love B if she thought B was a crushing bore. She might love B despite thinking him a crushing bore, but it would be absurd to love him because she recognises his extreme boorishness.

Taylor concludes that we can ask whether it is reasonable for someone to be in love. However, this is not so much because of easily identifiable characteristics, as in the case of fear (for example, the object of fear has features that are dangerous; and everyone knows cobras are dangerous). Lovable characteristics are to a greater extent in the eye of the beholder, whose wants may also be less clear. Nevertheless, there are some limits on what is reasonable in love. The properties of the beloved must not directly contradict the wants of the lover.

I think Taylor is correct that it is possible to make judgements about whether people are really in love, but I believe her to be wrong in saying that there is a difference in kind between love and, say, fear. Love and fear may be better thought of as placed on a continuum of emotions. At the ‘fear’ end are emotions whose objects have more objective criteria with wider public agreement. At the ‘love’ end. the opposite is true.

The reason we can be so sure about the reasonableness or otherwise of fear, is that there are more clearly objective criteria for identifying fearsome qualities, such as those of a cobra, which most of us would agree are fearsome. However, it seems that the criteria for lovability are more numerous, more subtle, and more subjective. Still, we do expect there to be some identifiable qualities in the beloved that the lover could with some thought identify – and, moreover, some of those qualities (such as being a crushing bore) would be seen as unlovable. Ultimately, who we fall in love with is a bit of an enigma, but not a total mystery. And in any case, doesn’t infatuation have an analogue with the irrational fears known as phobias? As with infatuation, there often seems to be no objective reason for a phobic emotion.

Taylor goes on to consider situations where we might be inclined to argue with someone about the reasonableness of their proclaimed love. For example, it may be obvious that B does not possess the spontaneous sense of humour that A thinks they have. Or it may be clear that B dislikes A. Or A may have an inflated belief that marriage will solve all B’s shortcoming. In each of these situations we would feel justified in sitting down with A and having a good heart to heart with them.

Finally, Taylor looks at examples where someone proclaiming their love does so for all the wrong reasons, including where the love is overly coloured by the lover’s interests. In an example taken from Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House , Taylor tells us that Helmer’s love for Nora is unreasonable because it requires Nora to remain passive rather than develop into a fully rounded person in her own right.

Some Conclusions

I have argued that phenomenology is good at identifying and appreciating an emotion like love, but may bring an arbitrary ideology to bear as a response to it. Analytical philosophy may provisionally assume an understanding of love, before going on to reveal controversies and insights, such as concerning our ability to judge another’s love.

I think that phenomenology and analytical philosophy are not mutually exclusive but collectively revealing. Philosophy, like love, is a many-splendoured thing.

© Peter Keeble 2022

Peter Keeble is a retired local government research officer and teacher in London.

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How to do argumentative philosophy papers

Here are some guidelines for writing philosophy papers. This guide is for writing argumentative papers. More descriptive papers of an historical sort will require a modified version or perhaps a different guide.

How to Do  PHILOSOPHY ESSAYS*

      I.  Introduction

          Thomas  Edison's  much  quoted  remark  that  invention  is   l%

          inspiration   and   99%   perspiration  is  perhaps  a  case  of

          self-effacing understatement.   Nevertheless,  his  point,  when

          applied  to  the  matter  of writing philosophy essays, deserves

          attention.  No one can systematize or lay down rules  that  will

          result   in  inspiration  or  creativity.   This  little  guide,

          however, is written with the conviction that a  large  share  of

          the  burden  of the composition of an essay is almost mechanical

          and rules can be laid down such that, if they  are  followed,  a

          reasonably good result can be confidently predicted.

     II.  Groundwork

          a. First Thoughts

             Let  us  start  with  a  couple  of  typical philosophy essay

             topics: "Aristotle on Happiness" and "What is Justice in the Moral

             Thought of Mill?"

             l.  BEGIN  BY  GETTING  SOME  DEFINITIONS,  in   this   case,

                 definitions  of  "happiness"  and  "justice."

                 Start with a good dictionary.

             2.  WHAT  ARE  THE  ETYMOLOGICAL derivations of key

                 philosophical  terms?  What are the root metaphors on the

                 basis of which the technical terms are constructed?  What

                 do they have in common?  What kind of things can be  "put

                 together?" The point I am getting at is that you ought to

                 be  trying  to get at the conceptual presuppositions that

                 underlie any philosophical problem.  These usually  begin

                 in ordinary language.

             3.  Do  the  key  concepts  have  a  clear application to the

                 world?  That is, is there  any  difficulty  in  deciding,

                 given   the   concept   of   happiness,  about  instances  of

                 happiness?  Is it clear to you what  would  count  as  an

                 instance of happiness or of justice in the context of morality?

                 What  problems  are  raised  by  the application of these

                 concepts to the world?

             4.  Order  the  problems.  This  point  is  crucial.    After

                 having discovered a nest of problems through your initial

                 groundwork  you  should now ask yourself, "which problems

                 require a solution  before  the  other  problems  can  be

                 solved?   What  is  basic and what depends on the basic?"

                 For example, isn't it necessary to know  first  what  Aristotle

                 understands to be the structure of the human soul before

                we can consider what happiness in the soul is?  Don’t we

                have to understand which is the more comprehensive notion,

                morality or justice, before we can say how they are related?

                Remember: Some problems  are  more basic than others.

                Order your questions.  It will save a lot of time.

        b. Research

             In the case of our essays in this course,  you need only

              concentrate on the primary readings. You  will  be

             looking  for  basically  three  things:  (1) definitions, (2)

             distinctions, and (3) arguments.

             l.  Definitions.    How   does   your   author   define   key

                 philosophical  terms?  If he offers no definitions in the

                 text you are using, does he presume certain definitions?

                 Write down the definitions which are explicit.  Write out

                 definitions you think are implicit.  Does the  failure  to

                 define terms leave his arguments ambiguous?

             2.  Distinctions.  How  does  the  author  "cut up" the world

                 with his concepts?  What  are  the  different  senses  in

                 which  he  uses  words.   Many philosophical problems are

                 greatly aided in their solution by distinguishing  senses

                 of words.  To do this it will be useful to fill your head

                 with  lots  of  examples and ask how the relevant word or

                 concept would cover these.  Make a list of different uses

                 of a concept.  How are these uses  alike?   How  do  they

                 differ?

             3.  Arguments.     Your    most    important    job   is   to

                 extract an argument from the text.   All  arguments  have

                 premises  and a conclusion. .  The conclusion should be a

                 statement of the author's position.  The premises contain

                 the  statements  of  the  evidence   leading   to   these

                 conclusions.   Extract  these arguments.  The backbone of

                 your essay will be the examination  of  these  arguments.

                 You  will  be using two standards for examination: (a) Is

                 the argument valid, that is does  the  conclusion  follow

                 logically  from  the  premises  (that  is,  assuming  the

                 premises are true, does the conclusion then follow.)  (b)

                 Are  the  premises true?  Are they intended by the author

                 to be self-evidently true or does he adduce evidence  for

                 them?   Working from the basic argument you will begin to

                 hunt for hidden premises, alternative premises that would

                 make an invalid argument valid, etc.  All the  time  your

                 eye  will  be  on the conclusion and the question: "Is it

                 true?" Can he prove  it?   Can  I  prove  it?   Remember:

                 Philosophy is mainly concerned with arguments.

  III.  Preparation of Essay

          a. The    outline.     Among    the   most   common   flaws   in

             undergraduate essays are  lack  of  clarity  in  thought  and

             expression and lack of coherent organization.  Student essays

             tend  to  ramble  and  this  indicates  a mind at sea.  It is

             possible, however, to minimize these problems by employing  a

             purely mechanical device.  Make an outline. Now I do not mean

             an  outline  of  the  form: I.  Introduction.  II.  Argument,

             III.  Conclusion.  This is too superficial  and  consequently

             worthless.   An  outline  should  be detailed and represent a

             logical progression of thought. There should be a heading  or

             sub-heading for every paragraph in the essay.  Nothing should

             be  put  into  the  essay that has not been justified in your

             mind  beforehand  and  already  represented  in  the outline.

             Every paragraph in the essay should have a distinct place  in

             the  exposition  and/or  criticism of the arguments.  The

             exposition  should  unfold  premise by premise, the criticism

             point by point.

          b. The outline (Second Stage).   The  creation  of  the  outline

             should  be guided by thought of what the topic requires, that

             is, given the topic, what are the orderly steps to  be  taken

             in dealing with it?  In the second stage you will begin going

             through the outline point by point and thinking about what to

             say for each point.  You will now discover  a  happy  result.

             Your  essay will be about 75% finished! The actual writing of

             the  essay will be almost anti-climactic.

             The  main  work  of  your  essay--which  is  an  exercise  in

             philosophical  thinking and not the search for a stylish turn

             of a phrase--is in your head and not on paper.  The paper  is

             just  a  record  of  your real work. The creation of a tight,

             critically justified outline will help eliminate  the  cotton

             candy  that many students use to pad their essays.  It is not

             necessary to begin with a paragraph on the greatness of  your

             subject or the world-moving importance of your problem. There

             is  no  need  to  end with a stirring tribute to the glory of

             philosophy and the meaning of  life. These  are  superfluous.

             You  are  writing  an  essay  for someone who has heard these

             platitudes  a  thousand  times  before.   Their  addition  is

             extremely  irritating  to  most professors.  Their absence is

             bound to make a good impression.  Start with your substantive

             points.  End your essay when these are  completed. 

             Remember,   don't   try   to   do  everything  at  once.   Be

             systematic.  Take your points one at  a  time.   And  by  all

             means, do not worry about being too narrow.  Your major worry

             will almost always be about being too superficial.

IV.  Writing the Essay.

          a. If  you  have  spent  adequate  time  on  the

             outline, you should now be in a position to produce your essay.

             Having thought out all the major points beforehand,  you 

             can now give your complete attention to the

             special problems of communicating these points.  One  overall

             principle  should guide you: clarity.  Your writing should be

             a window to your thinking.  You will most likely be  able  to

             achieve  this  if you stick to straightforward English prose.

             Every sentence should express one clear thought.  Grammar and

             syntax count.  Remember, there is nothing  childish  about  a

             short, clear, declarative sentence.  It is a good sentence if

             it clearly and accurately reflects your thought when read.

         b. Hints on Composition

               i. Define   the  key  philosophical  terms  you  introduce.

                  Obviously you cannot define  everything.   Nevertheless,

                  when  you  use a philosophical term in your argument you

                  should make the reader aware of the meaning.

              ii. Purge your writing  of  all  jargon.   Jargon  comes  in

                  two  varieties:  the  blatant  and the subtle.  They are

                  equally obnoxious.  Some examples of the  first  variety

                  are:  "interpersonal," "meaningful" and "relevant." Some

                  examples of the second are: "important," "in terms  of,"

                  and  "valid."  The  use  of jargon words and phrases can

                  only be avoided by careful scrutiny of every sentence of

                  your essay.

             iii. Use examples  and  counter-examples when possible. Nothing

                  conveys  the thrust of an argument as well as a cleverly

                  chosen   example.    Examples   illuminate   principles.

                  Nothing conveys your argument against a position as well

                  as a devastating counter-example.  Nothing  supports  an

                  argument an impressively as the anticipation of possible

                  counter-examples  to  the  argument  and  the answers to

                  these.

              iv. Remember  that  your  reader  is  not  inside your head.

                  Don't expect your reader to make  the  associations  and

                  leaps  that are not explicitly laid out in the paper but

                  which went on in your thinking.   In  philosophy  it  is

                  almost impossible for your reasoning to be too explicit.

           Remember:  Straightforward  sentences.

             Arguments.  No padding.

*Adapted from “Some Hints For Composing Philosophy Essays” by L. P. Gerson

=============

Here is a copy of my email sent 7 Dec 2011 regarding course papers:

Dear KUL students, 

Following the customary way I teach graduate and undergraduate courses, I will be quite willing to offer you comments on your outlines of your course paper. I believe I wrote earlier to indicate that we would be willing to do this up to 1 January 2012 . 

To be clear, let me reiterate that I am offering to comment on outlines and not full paper drafts. This is because I believe the outline is what is key to the philosophical discussion written in the full paper. (Also, I prefer not to have the role of proofreader.) The outline should be one page only and should be arranged in hierarchical fashion. I suggest something such as the following but I leave it to you precisely how to proceed with the paper. 

NOTE: Many of you know the value of what follows here. However, I have NEVER had a graduate student in my classes who has NOT found what I  suggest below here and on the website to be valuable to her or her thought and work. Hence, I recommend you give it considerable thought both for this assignment and for any other argumentative paper you might have to prepare. I speak on the basis of 29 years experience teaching graduate courses and grading graduate course papers. Quite a number of my students have published papers which were first written as course papers for me, I mention incidentally. From what we have seen in your submitted short essays assignment, we know you are a very strong group of students with much talent for philosophical study. What I suggest here I believe will prove valuable for your continued philosophical development in many ways. 

Below is what I have in mind for an outline. HOWEVER, your outline should be carefully constructed on the basis of your research. If you have not done  the research, you cannot do the outline properly. This is the sort of outline that should be the result of research and reflection in accord with the guide at  http://web.me.com/mistertea/Aquinas_and_the_Arabic_Philosophical_Tradition_on_Creation/Writing_Argumentative_Philosophy_papers.html .

1. Introduction (written last, 3 paragraphs)

1.1. General importance philosophical issue to be explored (as with a journal article, this should entice the reader to want to read your paper)

1.2. The specific issue the paper will address (as with a journal article, this should communicate clearly what you are doing and why you are doing it)

1.3. How you will proceed in this paper toward the achievement of the end or goal of the paper

This should signal clearly to your reader how you will proceed: "In the body of this paper I first A. . . . With that clarification, I then secondly B . . . This then

enables me to proceed to evaluate C . . . .  I then D . . . .

You cloud also do 1.3 by a series of systematic questions that must be considered and answered in this paper.

2. Body (however many paragraphs your topic requires)

2. 1. A (see 1.3)

2.2. B (see 1.3)

2.3. C (see 1.3)

2.4. D (see 1.3)

3.Conclusion(s). This should be repetitive for clarity sake.

3.1. corresponds to 1.3: This should clearly point out how you have handled and answered or responded to the issues indicated in 1.3

3.2. corresponds to 1.2: This should reiterate how you solved the issue or interpreted successfully the issue mentioned in 1.2

3.3. corresponds to 1.1: This should indicate the value or importance of what you did in the paper in a more general way

For a guide to writing philosophy essays, I strongly suggest you study "How to do philosophy essays"  which I have put on the course website at:

http://web.me.com/mistertea/Aquinas_and_the_Arabic_Philosophical_Tradition_on_Creation/Writing_Argumentative_Philosophy_papers.html .

NOTE: Do not send me your outline and request my comments unless you have first studied this guide.

Cheers, Richard Taylor

Untitled (Portrait of a Man and a Woman) (1851), daguerreotype, United States. Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

Tainted love

Love is both a wonderful thing and a cunning evolutionary trick to control us. a dangerous cocktail in the wrong hands.

by Anna Machin   + BIO

We can all agree that, on balance, and taking everything into account, love is a wonderful thing. For many, it is the point of life. I have spent more than a decade researching the science behind human love and, rather than becoming immune to its charms, I am increasingly in awe of its complexity and its importance to us. It infiltrates every fibre of our being and every aspect of our daily lives. It is the most important factor in our mental and physical health, our longevity and our life satisfaction. And regardless of who the object of our love is – lover or friend, dog or god – these effects are largely underpinned, in the first instance, by the set of addictive neurochemicals supporting the bonds we create: oxytocin, dopamine, beta-endorphin and serotonin.

This suite of chemicals makes us feel euphoric and calm, they draw us towards those we love, and reward us for investing in our relationships, even when the going gets tough. Love feels wonderful but ultimately it is a form of biological bribery, a cunning evolutionary trick to make sure we cooperate and those all-important genes continue down the generations. The joy it brings is wonderful but is merely a side-effect. Its goal is to ensure our survival, and for this reason happiness is not always its end point. Alongside its joys, there exists a dark side.

Love is ultimately about control. It’s about using chemical bribery to make sure we stick around, cooperate and invest in each other, and particularly in the survival-critical relationships we have with our lovers, children and close friends. This is an evolutionary control of which we are hardly aware, and it brings many positive benefits.

But the addictive nature of these chemicals, and our visceral need for them, means that love also has a dark side. It can be used as a tool of exploitation, manipulation and abuse. Indeed, in part what may separate human love from the love experienced by other animals is that we can use love to manipulate and control others. Our desire to believe in the fairy tale means we rarely acknowledge the undercurrents but, as a scholar of love, I would be negligent if I did not consider it. Arguably our greatest and most intense life experience can be used against us, sometimes leading us to continue relationships with negative consequences in direct opposition to our survival.

We are all experts in love. The science I write about is always grounded in the lived experience of my subjects whose thoughts I collect as keenly as their empirical data. It might be the voice of the new father as he describes holding his firstborn, or the Catholic nun explaining how she works to maintain her relationship with God, or the aromantic detailing what it’s like living in a world apparently obsessed with the romantic love that they do not feel. I begin every interview in the same way, by asking what they think love is. Their answers are often surprising, always illuminating and invariably positive, and remind me that not all the answers to what love is can be found on the scanner screen or in the lab. But I will also ask them to consider whether love can ever be negative. The vast majority say no for, if love has a darker side, it is not love, and this is an interesting point to contemplate. But if they do acknowledge the possibility of love having a less sunny side, their go-to example is jealousy.

J ealousy is an emotion and, as with all emotions, it evolved to protect us, to alert us to a potential benefit or threat. It works its magic at three levels: the emotional, the cognitive and the behavioural. Physiology also throws its hat into the ring making you feel nauseous, faint or flushed. When we feel jealousy , it is generally urging us to do one of three things: to cut off the rival, to prevent our partner’s defection by redoubling our efforts, or to cut our losses and leave the relationship. All have evolved to make sure we balance the costs and benefits of the relationship. Investing time, energy and reproductive effort in the wrong partner is seriously damaging to your reproductive legacy and chances of survival. But what do we perceive to be a jealousy-inducing threat? The answer very much depends on your gender.

Men and women experience jealousy with the same intensity. However, there is a stark difference when it comes to what causes each to be jealous. One of the pioneers of human mating research is the American evolutionary psychologist David Buss and, in his book The Evolution of Desire (1994), he details numerous experiments that have highlighted this gender difference. In one study, in which subjects were asked to read different scenarios detailing incidences of sexual and emotional infidelity, 83 per cent of women found the emotional scenario the most jealousy-inducing, whereas only 40 per cent of men found this to be of concern. In contrast, 60 per cent of men found sexual infidelity difficult to deal with, compared with a significantly smaller percentage of women: 17 per cent.

Men also feel a much more extreme physiological response to sexual infidelity than women do. Hooking them up to monitors that measure skin conductance, muscle contraction and heartrate shows that men experience significant increases in heartrate, sweating and frowning when confronted with sexual infidelity, but the monitor readouts hardly flicker if their partner has become emotionally involved with a rival.

The reason for this difference sits with the different resources that men and women bring to the mating game. Broadly, men bring their resources and protection; women bring their womb. If a woman is sexually unfaithful and becomes pregnant with another man’s child, she has withdrawn the opportunity from her partner to father a child with her for at least nine months. Hence, he is the most concerned about sexual infidelity. In contrast, women are more concerned about emotional infidelity because this suggests that, if their partner does make a rival pregnant and becomes emotionally involved with her, his partner risks having to share his protection and resources with another, meaning that her children receive less of the pie.

To understand someone’s emotional needs means you can use that intelligence to control them

Jealousy is an evolved response to threats to our reproductive success and survival – of self, children and genes. In many cases, it is of positive benefit to those who experience it as it shines a light on the threat and enables us to decide what is best. But in some cases, jealousy gets out of hand.

Emotional intelligence sits at the core of healthy relationships. To truly deliver the benefits of the relationship to our partner, we must understand and meet their emotional needs as they must understand and meet ours. But, as with love, this skill has a darker side because to understand someone’s emotional needs presents the possibility that you can use that intelligence to control them. While we may all admit to using this skill for the wrong reasons every now and again – perhaps to get that sofa we desire or the holiday destination we prefer – for some, it is their go-to mechanism where relationships are concerned.

The most adept proponents of this skill are those who possess the Dark Triad of personality traits: Machiavellianism , psychopathy and narcissism . The first relies on using emotional intelligence to manipulate others, the second to toy with other’s feelings, and the third to denigrate others with the aim of glorifying oneself. For these people, characterised by exploitative, manipulative and callous personalities, emotional intelligence is the route to a set of mate-retention behaviours that certainly meet their goals but are less than beneficial to those whom they profess to love. Indeed, research has shown that a relationship with such a person leaves you open to a significantly greater risk that your love will be returned with abuse.

In 2018, the psychologist Razieh Chegeni and her team set out to explore whether a link existed between the Dark Triad and relationship abuse. Participants were identified as having the Dark Triad personality by expressing their degree of agreement with statements such as ‘I tend to want others to admire me’ (narcissism), ‘I tend to be unconcerned with the morality of my actions’ (psychopathy) and ‘I tend to exploit others to my own end’ (Machiavellianism). They then had to indicate to what extent they used a range of mate-retention behaviours, including ‘snooped through my partner’s personal belongings’, ‘talked to another man/woman at a party to make my partner jealous’, ‘bought my partner an expensive gift’ and ‘slapped a man who made a pass at my partner’.

The results were clear. Having a Dark Triad personality, whether you were a man or a woman, significantly increased the likelihood that ‘cost-inflicting mate-retention behaviours’ were your go-to mechanism when trying to retain your partner. These are behaviours that level an emotional, physical, practical and/or psychological cost on the partner such as physical or emotional abuse, coercive control or controlling access to food or money. Interestingly, however, these individuals did not employ this tactic all the time. There was nuance in their behaviour. Costly behaviours were peppered with rare incidences of gift giving or caretaking, so-called beneficial mate-retention behaviours. Why? Because the unpredictability of their behaviour caused psychological destabilisation in their partner and enabled them to assert further control through a practice we now identify as gaslighting .

The question remains – if these people are so destructive, why does their personality type persist in our population? Because, while their behaviour may harm those who are unfortunate enough to be close to them, they themselves must gain some survival advantage, which means that their traits persist in the population. It is true that no trait can be said to be 100 per cent beneficial, and here is a perfect example of where evolution is truly working at cross purposes.

N ot all Dark Triad personalities are abusers but the presence of abuse within our closest relationships is a very real phenomenon, the understanding of which continues to evolve and grow. Whereas we might have once imagined an abuser as someone who controlled their partner with their fists, we are now aware that abuse comes in many guises including emotional, psychological, reproductive and financial.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) questioned both men and women in the United States about the incidences of domestic violence they had experienced in their lifetime. Looking at severe physical abuse alone – which means being punched, slammed, kicked, burned, choked, beaten or attacked with a weapon – one in five women and one in seven men reported at least one incidence in their lifetime. If we consider emotional abuse, then the statistics for men and women are closer – more than 43 million women and 38 million men have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

It is hard to imagine that, having experienced such a litany of abuse, anyone could believe that love remained within their relationship. But here the power of the lived experience, of allowing everyone to have their ideas about love becomes clearer. Because, while we have many scientific tools to explore love objectively, at the end of the day, there is always an element of our experience of love that is subjective, that another cannot touch. This is no more powerfully evidenced than by the testimony of those who have experienced intimate partner violence. In 2013, three mental health nurses, led by Marilyn Smith in West Virginia, explored what love meant to 19 women who were experiencing, or had experienced, intimate partner violence. For them, this kind of abuse included, but was not limited to, ‘slapping, intimidation, shaming, forced intercourse, isolation, monitoring behaviours, restricting access to healthcare, opposing or interfering with school or employment, and making decisions concerning contraception, pregnancy, and elective abortion’.

Our cultural ideas of romantic love have a role to play in trapping women in abusive relationships

It was clear from the transcripts that all the women knew what love wasn’t: being hurt and fearful, being controlled and having a lack of trust and a lack of support or concern for their welfare. And it was clear that they all knew what love should be: built on a foundation of respect and understanding, of support and encouragement, of commitment, loyalty and trust. But despite this clear understanding of the stark difference between the ideal and their reality, many of these women still believed that love existed within their relationship. Some hoped the power of their love would change the behaviour of their partner, others said their sense of attachment made them stay. Some feared losing love, however flawed; and, if they left, might they not land in a relationship where their treatment was even worse? A lot of the time, cultural messaging had reinforced strongly held beliefs about the supremacy of the nuclear family, making victims reluctant to leave in case they ultimately harmed their children’s life chances. While it can be hard to understand these arguments – surely a non-nuclear setup is preferable to the harm inflicted on a child by the observation of intimate partner abuse – I strongly believe that this population has as much right to their definition and experience of love as any of us.

In fact, the cultural messages we hear about romantic love – from the media, religion, parents and family – not only potentially trap us in ‘ideal’ family units: they may also play a role in our susceptibility to experiencing intimate partner abuse. This view of reproductive love, once confined to Western culture, is now the predominant narrative globally. From a young age, we speak of ‘the one’, we consume stories of young people finding love against all the odds, of sacrifice, of being consumed. It is arguable that these narratives are unhelpful generally as the reality, while wonderful, is considerably more complex, involving light and shade. But research has shown that these stories may have more significant consequences when we consider their role in intimate partner abuse.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of partner abuse against women in the world. In their 2017 paper , Shakila Singh and Thembeka Myende explored the role of resilience in female students at risk of abuse, which is prevalent at a high rate on South African university campuses. Their paper ranges widely over the role of resilience in resisting and surviving partner abuse, but what is of interest to me is the 15 women’s ideas about how our cultural ideas of romantic love have a role to play in trapping women in abusive relationships. These women’s arguments are powerful and made me rethink the fairy-tale. Singh and Myende point to the romantic idea that love overcomes all obstacles and must be maintained at all costs, even when abuse makes these costs life-threateningly high. Or the idea that love is about losing control, being swept off your feet, having no say in who you fall for, even if they turn out to be an abuser. Or that lovers protect each other, fight for each other to the end, even if the person who is being protected, usually from the authorities, is violent or coercive. Or the belief that love is blind and we are incapable of seeing our partner’s faults, despite them often being glaringly obvious to anyone outside the relationship.

It is these cultural ideas about romantic love, the women argue, that lead to the erosion of a woman’s power to leave or entirely avoid an abusive partner. Add these ideas to the powerful physiological and psychological need we have for love, and you leave an open goal for the abuser.

L ove is the focus of so much science, philosophy and literary rumination because we struggle to define it, to predict its next move. Thanks to our biology and the reproductive mandate of evolution, love has long controlled us. But what if we could control love?

What if a magic potion existed that could induce us, or another, to fall in love or even wipe away the memories of a failed relationship? It is a quest as ancient as the first writings 5,000 years ago and the focus of many literary endeavours, including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – who can forget Titania’s love for the ass-headed Bottom – and Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde . Even in a world where science has largely usurped magic, type ‘love potions’ into Google and the first two questions are: ‘How do you make a love potion?’ and ‘Do love potions actually work?’

But today we know enough about the chemistry of love for the elixir to be within our grasp. And we don’t have to look very far for our first candidate: synthetic oxytocin, used right now as an induction drug in labour. We know from extensive research in social neuroscience that artificial oxytocin also increases prosociality, trust and cooperation. Squirt it up the nose of new parents and it increases positive parenting behaviours. Oxytocin, as released by the brain when we are attracted to someone, is vital for the first stages of love because it quiets the fear centre of your brain and lowers your inhibitions to forming new relationships. Would a squirt up the nose do the same before you head out on a Saturday night?

The other possibility is MDMA or ecstasy, which mimics the neurochemical of long-term love, beta-endorphin. Recreational users of ecstasy report that it makes them feel boundless love for their fellow clubbers and increases their empathy. Researchers in the US have reported encouraging results when MDMA was used in marriage therapy to increase empathy, allowing participants to gain further insight into each other’s needs and find common ground.

Love drugs could end up being yet another form of abuse

Both of these sound like promising candidates but there are still issues to iron out and ethical discussions to have. How effective they are is highly context dependent. Based on their genetics , some people do exactly what is predicted of them. Boundaries are lowered and love sensations abound. But for a significant minority, particularly when it comes to oxytocin, people do exactly the opposite of what we would expect. For some, a dose of oxytocin, while increasing bonds with those they perceive to be in their in-group, increases feelings of ethnocentrism – racism – toward the out-group.

MDMA has other issues . For some people, it simply does not work. But the bigger problem is that the effects endure only while usage continues; anecdotal evidence suggests that, if you stop, the feelings of love and empathy disappear. This raises questions of practicality and ethical issues surrounding power imbalance. If you commenced a relationship while taking MDMA, would you have to continue? What if you were in a relationship with someone who had taken MDMA and you didn’t know? What would happen if they stopped? And could someone be induced to take MDMA against their will?

The ethical conversation around love drugs is complex. On one side are those who argue that taking a love drug is no more controversial than an antidepressant. Both alter your brain chemistry and, given the strong relationship between love and good mental and physical health, surely it is important that we use all the tools at our disposal to help people succeed? But maybe an anecdote from the book Love Is the Drug (2020) by Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu will give you pause. They describe SSRI prescriptions used to suppress the sexual urges of young male yeshiva students, to ensure that they comply with Jewish orthodox religious law – no sex before marriage, and definitely no homosexuality.

Could such drugs gain wider traction in repressive regimes as a weapon against what some perceive to be immoral forms of love? Remember that 71 countries still deem homosexuality to be illegal. It is not a massive leap of imagination to envisage the use of SSRIs to ‘cure’ people of this ‘affliction’. We only have to look at the continued existence of conversion therapy to see that this is a distinct possibility. Love drugs could end up being yet another form of abuse over which the individual has very little control.

Evolution saw fit to give us love to ensure we would continue to form and maintain the cooperative relationships that are our route to personal and, most crucially, genetic survival. It can be the source of euphoric happiness, calm contentment and much-needed security, but this is not its point. Love is merely the sweet treat handed to you by your babysitter to make sure the goal is achieved. Combine the ultimate evolutionary aim of love with our visceral need for it and the quick intelligence of our brains, and you have the recipe for a darker side to emerge. Some of this darker side is adaptive but, for those who experience it, it rarely ends well. At the very least there is pain – physical, psychological, financial – and, at the most, there is death, and the grief of those we leave behind.

Maybe it is time to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about love because the danger on the horizon is not the dragon that needs to be slain by the knight to save the beautiful princess but the presence of some who mean to use its powers for their gain and our considerable loss. Like all of us, love is a complex beast: only by embracing it in its entirety do we truly understand it, and ourselves. And this means understanding its evolutionary story, the good and the bad.

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the philosophy of love: What is love and how should we understand and cultivate it in our lives??

What is love.

love is many things, but fundamentally it is a driving force that inspires us to connect with other people in a healthy and pleasant environment. It is a deep desire to create connections between people, motivated by empathy, respect and compassion. through love, we deliver coherence, stability, security, compassion and feelings of affection. Love has no concrete definition, since it is intangible. It is a feeling that encompasses many things, from the affection and affection that we feel for someone, to the admiration that we feel towards something.

Types of love

there are many types of love that we can experience. self love, romantic love, platonic love, unconditional love, maternal love, brotherly love, among others. Each type of love highlights something different about our lives and our relationships.. Some people can feel different kinds of love for the same person., like maternal love and romantic love. Others may find the loving connection with nature.

cultivate love

It's fundamental cultivate love in our lives to free us from loneliness and isolation. Love helps us open up more to others and realize the fragility of life.. It also reminds us that the world is much bigger than we imagine.. when we cultivate love, we fill it with simple acts like dialogue, the touch, attention and respect. This provides a safe place to deliver our energy, hopes and needs, without fear of being judged or vulnerable. At the same time, it also allows us to build better relationships with others.

the philosophy of love

The philosophy of love it's an old concept, however it remains relevant to the understanding and practice of love in our lives.. This philosophy focuses on consciously connecting our hearts to our minds., accept feelings as they are and understand the diversity of others. This allows us to free ourselves from pain and dissatisfaction, and establish healthier and more fulfilling relationships as we mature and open up to love in a healthy way. The philosophy of love involves cultivating an attitude of respect, reciprocity and compassion. The main key to putting this philosophy into practice is to understand that love is a constant process., and not a goal that we reach and then stop.

In today's world, the concept of love is widely recognized and shared by the majority of people in all countries. Love is a concept that allows us to understand, grow as people, strengthen and develop relationships with others and achieve happiness. However, the true meaning of love is sometimes hard to see through the confusion of ideas about what love really is. Knowing the true philosophy of love through its definitions of life allows us to understand it better and learn how to cultivate it in our lives..

The philosophy of love begins with the understanding of what love is. True love is deeper than a romantic passion or a form of affection for someone.. On the contrary, true love is a soul to soul bond, based on mutual respect and understanding, trust and hope, and security. Love, when it's deep and true, value and honor the loved one, and is not objectified or manipulated.

Once we understand the true nature of love, it is necessary to learn to cultivate it in our lives. The first thing is to practice love towards oneself. This helps to identify the authentic feelings of love, which can then be extended to others. This means treating each person with respect., attention and kindness. It also means making decisions based on respect for others and yourself.. These are some of the main ways we can cultivate love in our lives..

It is up to all of us to understand the true philosophy of love.. In doing so, we can open our hearts and minds to the beauty and understanding of love. We want to invite him into our lives, appreciate it and focus on allowing true love to guide our actions. Understanding the philosophy of love allows us to recognize and cultivate this precious feeling in our daily lives..

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Love Potions and Love Letters: An Argument that Libertarian Free Will isn't Necessary for Loving God

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What Is Love? A Philosopher Explains It’s Not A Choice Or A Feeling − It’s A Practice

How we understand love shapes the trajectory of our relationships..

Love is confusing. People in the U.S. Google the word “love” about 1.2 million times a month . Roughly a quarter of those searches ask “ what is love ” or request a “ definition of love .”

What is all this confusion about?

Neuroscience tells us that love is caused by certain chemicals in the brain . For example, when you meet someone special, the hormones dopamine and norepinephrine can trigger a reward response that makes you want to see this person again. Like tasting chocolate, you want more.

Your feelings are the result of these chemical reactions. Around a crush or best friend, you probably feel something like excitement, attraction, joy and affection. You light up when they walk into the room. Over time, you might feel comfort and trust. Love between a parent and child feels different, often some combination of affection and care.

But are these feelings, caused by chemical reactions in your brain, all that love is? If so, then love seems to be something that largely happens to you. You’d have as much control over falling in love as you’d have over accidentally falling in a hole – not much.

As a philosopher who studies love , I’m interested in the different ways people have understood love throughout history. Many thinkers have believed that love is more than a feeling.

More Than a Feeling

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought that love might cause feelings like attraction and pleasure, which are out of your control. But these feelings are less important than the loving relationships you choose to form as a result: lifelong bonds between people who help one another change and grow into their best selves.

Similarly, Plato’s student Aristotle claimed that, while relationships built on feelings like pleasure are common, they’re less good for humankind than relationships built on goodwill and shared virtues . This is because Aristotle thought relationships built on feelings last only as long as the feelings last.

Imagine you start a relationship with someone you have little in common with other than you both enjoy playing video games. Should either of you no longer enjoy gaming, nothing would hold the relationship together. Because the relationship is built on pleasure, it will fade once the pleasure is gone.

Compare this with a relationship where you want to be together not because of a shared pleasure but because you admire one another for who you are. You want what is best for one another. This kind of friendship built on shared virtue and goodwill will be much longer lasting. These kinds of friends will support each other as they change and grow.

Plato and Aristotle both thought that love is more than a feeling. It’s a bond between people who admire one another and therefore choose to support one another over time.

Maybe, then, love isn’t totally out of your control.

Celebrating Individuality and ‘Standing in Love’

Contemporary philosopher J. David Velleman also thinks that love can be disentangled from “ the likings and longings ” that come with it – those butterflies in your stomach. This is because love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a special kind of paying attention, which celebrates a person’s individuality.

Velleman says Dr. Seuss did a good job describing what it means to celebrate a person’s individuality when he wrote: “Come on! Open your mouth and sound off at the sky! Shout loud at the top of your voice, ‘I AM I! ME! I am I!’” When you love someone, you celebrate them because you value the “I AM I” that they are.

You can also get better at love. Social psychologist Erich Fromm thinks that loving is a skill that takes practice : what he calls “standing in love.” When you stand in love, you act in certain ways toward a person.

Just like learning to play an instrument, you can also get better at loving with patience, concentration and discipline. This is because standing in love is made up of other skills such as listening carefully and being present. If you get better at these skills, you can get better at loving.

If this is the case, then love and friendship are distinct from the feelings that accompany them. Love and friendship are bonds formed by skills you choose to practice and improve.

Does this mean you could stand in love with someone you hate, or force yourself to stand in love with someone you have no feelings for whatsoever?

Probably not. Philosopher Virginia Held explains the difference between doing an activity and participating in a practice as simply doing some labor versus doing some labor while also enacting values and standards.

Compare a math teacher who mechanically solves a problem at the board versus a teacher who provides students a detailed explanation of the solution. The mechanical teacher is doing the activity – presenting the solution – whereas the engaged teacher is participating in the practice of teaching. The engaged teacher is enacting good teaching values and standards, such as creating a fun learning environment.

Standing in love is a practice in the same sense. It’s not just a bunch of activities you perform. To really stand in love is to do these activities while enacting loving values and standards, such as empathy, respect, vulnerability, honesty and, if Velleman is right, celebrating a person for who they truly are.

How Much Control Do You Have Over Love?

Is it best to understand love as a feeling or a choice?

Think about what happens when you break up with someone or lose a friend. If you understand love purely in terms of the feelings it stirs up, the love is over once these feelings disappear, change or get put on hold by something like a move or a new school.

On the other hand, if love is a bond you choose and practice, it will take much more than the disappearance of feelings or life changes to end it. You or your friend might not hang out for a few days, or you might move to a new city, but the love can persist.

If this understanding is right, then love is something you have more control over than it may seem. Loving is a practice. And, like any practice, it involves activities you can choose to do – or not do – such as hanging out, listening and being present. In addition, practicing love will involve enacting the right values, such as respect and empathy.

While the feelings that accompany love might be out of your control, how you love someone is very much in your control.

Edith Gwendolyn Nally is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license . Read the original article .

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Love Argumentative Essays Samples For Students

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Men and women can be “just friends,” but the circumstances dictate whether or not they remain platonic friends..

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Cross-Sex Friendship: The So-Called “Impossibility” of Inter-Gender Platonic Love

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Analysis of Slumdog Millionaire as an Adaptation of Q&A

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Love’s Philosophy ( AQA GCSE English Literature )

Revision note.

Each poetry anthology at GCSE contains 15 poems, and in your exam question you will be given one poem - printed in full - and asked to compare this printed poem to another. As this is a closed-book exam, you will not have access to the second poem, so you will have to know it from memory. Fifteen poems is a lot to revise. However, understanding four things will enable you to produce a top-grade response:

• The meaning of the poem
• The ideas and messages of the poet 
• How the poet conveys these ideas through their methods
• How these ideas compare and contrast with the ideas of other poets in the anthology

Below is a guide to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Love’s Philosophy, from the Love and Relationships anthology. It includes:

• Overview : a breakdown of the poem, including its possible meanings and interpretations
• Writer’s Methods : an exploration of the poet’s techniques and methods
• Context : an exploration of the context of the poem, relevant to its themes
• What to Compare it to : ideas about which poems to compare it to in the exam

Love’s Philosophy is part of the Love and Relationships anthology of poems, and the exam question asks you to compare the ideas presented in two of these anthology poems, specifically related to the ideas of love and relationships. 

It is therefore as important that you learn how Love’s Philosophy compares and contrasts with other poems in the anthology as understanding the poem in isolation. See the section below on ‘What to Compare it to’ for detailed comparisons of Love’s Philosophy and other poems in the anthology.

In order to answer an essay question on any poem it is vital that you understand what it is about. This section includes:

• The poem in a nutshell
• A ‘translation’ of the poem, section-by-section
• A commentary of each of these sections, outlining Shelley’s intention and message

Love’s Philosophy in a Nutshell

Love’s Philosophy, written by the Romantic  poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1820, conveys typical Romantic themes relating to the power of the natural world and intense emotion, in this case, unrequited love . In the poem, Shelley’s speaker shows the complex nature of relationships as he tries to seduce a potential lover.

Love’s Philosophy overview

“The fountains mingle with the river

 And the rivers with the Ocean,”

Translation

• The poem begins with an image relating to water: rivers and oceans and fountains mixing together

Shelley’s intention

• Shelley shows nature as harmonious

“The winds of Heaven mix for ever

  With a sweet emotion;” 

• Shelley now describes the wind mixing with the skies (“Heaven”)
• He describes this as pleasant, emotional and endless
• Here, Shelley links nature and emotion, creating a sensual  mood
• The lines introduce religious imagery  to strengthen his philosophical debate

“Nothing in the world is single;

 All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.”

• The speaker explains that everything occurs as part of something else
• He asserts it is a holy rule of nature that things come together and become one
• These lines link to the title of the poem, Love’s Philosophy, as Shelley’s speaker asserts a simple message that love is governed by a sacred  law of nature
• Shelley alludes to Romantic ideas of the spiritual nature of love

“Why not I with thine?—”

• Here, the speaker directly addresses a silent listener in a persuasive appeal 
• He asks a question to his potential lover: if nature naturally “mingles” then why not the two of them?

Shelley’s intention  

•  The change in rhythm stresses Shelley’s question and suggests the desperation of unrequited love

“See the mountains kiss high heaven

  And the waves clasp one another;”

• The speaker instructs the listener to look at how the mountains and the sky touch, and how the waves seem to be embracing
• Here, Shelley’s speaker directs the listener to see nature linked to intimate, physical love

Lines 11-12

“No sister-flower would be forgiven

   If it disdained its brother;”

• The speaker seems to be suggesting that the sister-flower is the listener and he is the brother
• He suggests strongly that it would be sinful to turn him away
• The speaker again argues that love is natural and innocent using natural imagery  and allusion to siblings
• Shelley again refers to morality  to strengthen his persuasive argument

Lines 13-14

“And the sunlight clasps the earth

 And the moonbeams kiss the sea:”

• The speaker presents another reason for the listener to kiss him
• He explains the sun and the earth are connected in the same way as the moonlight shines on the ocean
• The speaker describes powerful contrasting imagery   to show the natural connection between day and night 
• Shelley connects the sensual imagery of nature with love to show love’s simple and natural nature

Lines 15-16

“What is all this sweet work worth

 If thou kiss not me?”

• Shelley’s poem ends with a rhetorical question  to close the speaker’s argument
• The speaker argues that all the work nature does (and that he has done persuading them) would be wasted if they do not kiss him
• The rhetorical question is ambiguous  to end his persuasion with a playful, yet desperate tone
• Although the speaker’s argument describes love as simple and natural, the poem ends unresolved , suggesting the complex nature of his love

Your exam question will ask you to compare how poets present ideas about love and/or relationships in the poem given to you on the exam paper and one other from the Love and Relationships anthology. It is therefore a good idea to begin your answer using the wording of the question and summarising what the poem tells us about the nature of love or relationships. This demonstrates that you have understood the poem and the poet’s intention. For example, “Shelley presents ideas about complex relationships by presenting a love that is unrequited. Similar themes can be found in…”

Writer’s Methods

Although this section is organised into three separate sections - form, structure and language - it is always best to move from what the poet is presenting (the techniques they use; the overall form of the poem; what comes at the beginning, middle and end of a poem) to how and why they have made the choices they have. 

Focusing on the poet’s overarching ideas, rather than individual poetic techniques, will gain you far more marks. Crucially, in the below sections, all analysis is arranged by theme, and includes Shelley’s intentions behind his choices in terms of:

The last thing examiners want to see is what they call “technique spotting”. This is when students use overly sophisticated terminology unnecessarily (“polysyndeton”; “epanalepsis”), without explaining their analysis.

Knowing the names of sophisticated techniques will not gain you any more marks, especially if these techniques are only “spotted” and the poet’s intentions for this language is not explained. Instead of technique spotting, focus your analysis on the reasons why the poet is presenting their ideas in the way that they do: what is their message? What ideas are they presenting, or challenging?

The speaker’s seduction of his prospective lover by showing everything as connected and paired is reflected in the harmonious two stanza  structure. The regular rhyme indicates a controlled and considered tone as the speaker makes his desperate plea. 

The poem follows a complex argument which shows the speaker’s manipulative control as he persuades his listener to give in to desire.

Shelley’s poem, Love’s Philosophy, symbolises nature as loving and harmonious in a bid to persuade a potential partner to see love as a law of nature. His philosophical language mixes with natural imagery   and physical imagery  to present these ideas as connected. 

Try not to separate “language”, “form” and “structure” into three separate elements you need to include in your answer. To achieve top marks, you need to include an integrated  comparison of the themes and ideas in this and the other poems in the anthology, and focus on the relevance of the method used by the poet to the ideas in the poem(s). This means it is better to structure your answer around an exploration of the ideas and themes in the poems, commenting on elements of language, form or structure that contribute to the presentation of these themes, rather than simply listing all of the key methods you think should be covered when writing about poetry (with no analysis or exploration of their relevance to the themes and ideas). Stay focused on the task, and then choose your comments based on the focus of the question.

Examiners repeatedly state that context should not be considered as additional factual information: in this case, it is not random biographical information about Percy Bysshe Shelley or the Romantic  movement which is unrelated to the ideas in Love’s Philosophy. The best way to understand context is as the ideas and perspectives explored by Shelley in Love’s Philosophy that relate to love and relationships. This section has therefore been divided into two relevant themes that Shelley explores:

• Unrequited love

Complex relationships

Unrequited Love

• Love’s Philosophy, by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was written in 1820
• Romantic poets wrote about the power of nature at a time when science and industry were advancing rapidly: this was seen as rebellious
• In this poem, Shelley’s Romantic philosophies about nature are used to seduce a reluctant listener into a physical relationship which mimics nature
• Romantic poets believe in the importance of emotion, freedom and self-fulfilment 
• This poem encourages the listener to abandon themselves to physical pleasure
• It argues that the physical nature of intimacy is a natural law in order to convince a listener to surrender to his kiss, very typical of Romantic philosophies
• Shelley was considered revolutionary for his ideas about the world, including atheism
• His poem shows the complex nature of relationships by using traditional, archaic language (which suggests a sense of conformity ) to elevate his argument, and philosophise  about love
• His reference to religion and law adds weight to his sophisticated plea
• This is more typical of traditional love poetry which was melodramatic and often presented love as complex and painful
• Shelley’s poem mixes the form of a traditional ballad  with a persuasive argument to show the complexity of relationships
• By using the rhythm of a ballad Shelley’s tone becomes emotional
• However, the poem’s form takes on a logical argument in a bid to influence the listener with rationale , in opposition to Romantic ideals

Remember, AO3 is only worth up to 6 marks in this question. You will be expected to demonstrate your understanding of the relationship between the poem and the context in which it was written in an integrated  way, throughout your answer. It is therefore important to focus on the key themes, and have a thorough knowledge of the cluster of poems. 

Context comes from the key word in the task, so your answer should emphasise the key themes of the effects of desire and love. Writing a whole paragraph about Romantic poets is not an integrated approach, and will not achieve high marks.

What to Compare it to

The essay you are required to write in your exam is a comparison of the ideas and themes explored in two of your anthology poems. It is therefore essential that you revise the poems together, in pairs, to understand how each poet presents ideas about love or relationships, in comparison to other poets in the anthology. Given that Love’s Philosophy explores the ideas of complex relationships , romantic love and desire, the following comparisons are the most appropriate:

Love’s Philosophy and Porphyria’s Lover

Love’s Philosophy and Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’ 

Love’s Philosophy and The Farmer’s Bride

For each pair of poems, you will find:

• The comparison in a nutshell
• Similarities between the ideas presented in each poem
• Differences between the ideas presented in each poem
• Evidence and analysis of these similarities and differences

You will be expected to not only explore this poem in depth, but make perceptive comparisons to themes, language, form and structure used in other poems in the anthology that also comment on complex relationships, romantic love and desire. It is therefore important that you have a thorough knowledge of all of the poems, rather than just memorising a series of quotations. It is also essential that you not only write about the named poem, but compare it to one other in the anthology. Only writing about the poem given on the paper will severely limit your marks.

Comparison in a nutshell:

Both Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy and Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover convey the speaker’s intense feelings, as well as a sense of intention and power, in their response to desire. However, Shelley’s speaker explores natural abandonment and the power of unity, while Browning’s obsessive narrator depicts possessive and destructive love.

Similarities:

Differences:

It is a good idea to outline your choice of second poem in your introduction to your response, with a clear overview of the overarching themes within both poems. You can then use the theme to move between both poems to provide the substance to illustrate your arguments. However, this does not mean that you cannot focus on one poem first, and then the other, linking ideas back to the main poem. You should choose whichever structure suits you best, as long as comparison is embedded and ideas for both texts are well-developed.

This is an effective comparative choice to explore desire and longing within complex romantic relationships. Both Shelley’s Love Philosophy and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 29 - ‘I think of thee!’ consider physical unity as a natural part of love, and present strong emotions when this is denied them.

 Differences:

Both Shelley’s Love’s Philosophy and Mew’s The Farmer’s Bride convey powerful feelings of longing and desire in frustrated romantic relationships. They both suggest a power imbalance which leads to a lack of resolution . 

You can choose whichever poem you feel you are able to make the most in-depth comparisons to in the exam. For example, you could choose to compare the presentation of longing and desire in Love’s Philosophy and The Farmer’s Bride. Or you might wish to explore the idea of physical love as a natural force in Love’s Philosophy and Sonnet 29 - ‘I think of thee!’ What is important is that you view the poems thematically, with a clear emphasis on love and relationships. This will give you a better framework in which to write your response in the exam.

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This essay focuses on personal love, or the love of particular persons as such. Part of the philosophical task in understanding personal love is to distinguish the various kinds of personal love. For example, the way in which I love my wife is seemingly very different from the way I love my mother, my child, and my friend. This task has typically proceeded hand-in-hand with philosophical analyses of these kinds of personal love, analyses that in part respond to various puzzles about love. Can love be justified? If so, how? What is the value of personal love? What impact does love have on the autonomy of both the lover and the beloved?

1. Preliminary Distinctions

2. love as union, 3. love as robust concern, 4.1 love as appraisal of value, 4.2 love as bestowal of value, 5.1 love as emotion proper, 5.2 love as emotion complex, 6. problems concerning love, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries.

In ordinary conversations, we often say things like the following:

• I love chocolate (or skiing).
• I love doing philosophy (or being a father).
• I love my dog (or cat).
• I love my wife (or mother or child or friend).

However, what is meant by ‘love’ differs from case to case. (1) may be understood as meaning merely that I like this thing or activity very much. In (2) the implication is typically that I find engaging in a certain activity or being a certain kind of person to be a part of my identity and so what makes my life worth living; I might just as well say that I value these. By contrast, (3) and (4) seem to indicate a mode of concern that cannot be neatly assimilated to anything else. Thus, we might understand the sort of love at issue in (4) to be, roughly, a matter of caring about another person as the person she is, for her own sake. (Accordingly, (3) may be understood as a kind of deficient mode of the sort of love we typically reserve for persons.) Philosophical accounts of love have focused primarily on the sort of personal love at issue in (4); such personal love will be the focus here.

Even within personal love, philosophers from the ancient Greeks on have traditionally distinguished three notions that can properly be called “love”: eros , agape , and philia . It will be useful to distinguish these three and say something about how contemporary discussions typically blur these distinctions (sometimes intentionally so) or use them for other purposes.

‘ Eros ’ originally meant love in the sense of a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual passion (Liddell et al., 1940). Nygren (1953a,b) describes eros as the “‘love of desire,’ or acquisitive love” and therefore as egocentric (1953b, p. 89). Soble (1989b, 1990) similarly describes eros as “selfish” and as a response to the merits of the beloved—especially the beloved's goodness or beauty. What is evident in Soble's description of eros is a shift away from the sexual: to love something in the “erosic” sense (to use the term Soble coins) is to love it in a way that, by being responsive to its merits, is dependent on reasons. Such an understanding of eros is encouraged by Plato's discussion in the Symposium , in which Socrates understands sexual desire to be a deficient response to physical beauty in particular, a response which ought to be developed into a response to the beauty of a person's soul and, ultimately, into a response to the form, Beauty.

Soble's intent in understanding eros to be a reason-dependent sort of love is to articulate a sharp contrast with agape , a sort of love that does not respond to the value of its object. ‘ Agape ’ has come, primarily through the Christian tradition, to mean the sort of love God has for us persons, as well as our love for God and, by extension, of our love for each other—a kind of brotherly love. In the paradigm case of God's love for us, agape is “spontaneous and unmotivated,” revealing not that we merit that love but that God's nature is love (Nygren 1953b, p. 85). Rather than responding to antecedent value in its object, agape instead is supposed to create value in its object and therefore to initiate our fellowship with God (pp. 87–88). Consequently, Badhwar (2003, p. 58) characterizes agape as “independent of the loved individual's fundamental characteristics as the particular person she is”; and Soble (1990, p. 5) infers that agape , in contrast to eros , is therefore not reason dependent but is rationally “incomprehensible,” admitting at best of causal or historical explanations. [ 1 ]

Finally, ‘ philia ’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one's friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one's country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977). Like eros , philia is generally (but not universally) understood to be responsive to (good) qualities in one's beloved. This similarity between eros and philia has led Thomas (1987) to wonder whether the only difference between romantic love and friendship is the sexual involvement of the former—and whether that is adequate to account for the real differences we experience. The distinction between eros and philia becomes harder to draw with Soble's attempt to diminish the importance of the sexual in eros (1990).

Maintaining the distinctions among eros , agape , and philia becomes even more difficult when faced with contemporary theories of love (including romantic love) and friendship. For, as discussed below, some theories of romantic love understand it along the lines of the agape tradition as creating value in the beloved (cf. Section 4.2 ), and other accounts of romantic love treat sexual activity as merely the expression of what otherwise looks very much like friendship.

Given the focus here on personal love, Christian conceptions of God's love for persons (and vice versa ) will be omitted, and the distinction between eros and philia will be blurred—as it typically is in contemporary accounts. Instead, the focus here will be on these contemporary understandings of love, including romantic love, understood as an attitude we take towards other persons. [ 2 ]

In providing an account of love, philosophical analyses must be careful to distinguish love from other positive attitudes we take towards persons, such as liking. Intuitively, love differs from such attitudes as liking in terms of its “depth,” and the problem is to elucidate the kind of “depth” we intuitively find love to have. Some analyses do this in part by providing thin conceptions of what liking amounts to. Thus, Singer (1991) and Brown (1987) understand liking to be a matter of desiring, an attitude that at best involves its object having only instrumental (and not intrinsic) value. Yet this seems inadequate: surely there are attitudes towards persons intermediate between having a desire with a person as its object and loving the person. I can care about a person for her own sake and not merely instrumentally, and yet such caring does not on its own amount to (non-deficiently) loving her, for it seems I can care about my dog in exactly the same way, a kind of caring which is insufficiently personal for love.

It is more common to distinguish loving from liking via the intuition that the “depth” of love is to be explained in terms of a notion of identification: to love someone is somehow to identify yourself with him, whereas no such notion of identification is involved in liking. As Nussbaum (1990, p. 328) puts it, “The choice between one potential love and another can feel, and be, like a choice of a way of life, a decision to dedicate oneself to these values rather than these”; liking clearly does not have this sort of “depth.” Whether love involves some kind of identification, and if so exactly how to understand such identification, is a central bone of contention among the various analyses of love.

Another common way to distinguish love from other personal attitudes is in terms of a distinctive kind of evaluation, which itself can account for love's “depth.” Again, whether love essentially involves a distinctive kind of evaluation, and if so how to make sense of that evaluation, is hotly disputed. Closely related to questions of evaluation are questions of justification: can we justify loving or continuing to love a particular person, and if so, how? For those who think the justification of love is possible, it is common to understand such justification in terms of evaluation, and the answers here affect various accounts’ attempts to make sense of the kind of constancy or commitment love seems to involve, as well as the sense in which love is directed at particular individuals.

In what follows, theories of love are tentatively and hesitantly classified into four types: love as union, love as robust concern, love as valuing, and love as an emotion. It should be clear, however, that particular theories classified under one type sometimes also include, without contradiction, ideas central to other types. The types identified here overlap to some extent, and in some cases classifying particular theories may involve excessive pigeonholing. (Such cases are noted below.) Part of the classificatory problem is that many accounts of love are quasi-reductionistic, understanding love in terms of notions like affection, evaluation, attachment, etc., which themselves never get analyzed. Even when these accounts eschew explicitly reductionistic language, very often little attempt is made to show how one such “aspect” of love is conceptually connected to others. As a result, there is no clear and obvious way to classify particular theories, let alone identify what the relevant classes should be.

The union view claims that love consists in the formation of (or the desire to form) some significant kind of union, a “we.” A central task for union theorists, therefore, is to cash out just what such a “we” comes to—whether it is literally a new entity in the world somehow comprised of the lover and the beloved, or whether it is merely metaphorical. Variants of this view perhaps go back to Aristotle (cf. Sherman 1993) and can also be found in Montaigne (1603/1877) and Hegel (1997); contemporary proponents include Solomon (1981, 1988), Scruton (1986), Nozick (1989), Fisher (1990), and Delaney (1996).

Scruton, writing in particular about romantic love, claims that love exists “just so soon as reciprocity becomes community: that is, just so soon as all distinction between my interests and your interests is overcome” (1986, p. 230). The idea is that the union is a union of concern, so that when I act out of that concern it is not for my sake alone or for your sake alone but for our sake. Fisher (1990) holds a similar, but somewhat more moderate view, claiming that love is a partial fusion of the lovers’ cares, concerns, emotional responses, and actions. What is striking about both Scruton and Fisher is the claim that love requires the actual union of the lovers’ concerns, for it thus becomes clear that they conceive of love not so much as an attitude we take towards another but as a relationship: the distinction between your interests and mine genuinely disappears only when we together come to have shared cares, concerns, etc., and my merely having a certain attitude towards you is not enough for love. This provides content to the notion of a “we” as the (metaphorical?) subject of these shared cares and concerns, and as that for whose sake we act.

Solomon (1988) offers a union view as well, though one that tries “to make new sense out of ‘love’ through a literal rather than metaphoric sense of the ‘fusion’ of two souls” (p. 24, cf. Solomon 1981; however, it is unclear exactly what he means by a “soul” here and so how love can be a “literal” fusion of two souls). What Solomon has in mind is the way in which, through love, the lovers redefine their identities as persons in terms of the relationship: “Love is the concentration and the intensive focus of mutual definition on a single individual, subjecting virtually every personal aspect of one's self to this process” (1988, p. 197). The result is that lovers come to share the interests, roles, virtues, and so on that constitute what formerly was two individual identities but now has become a shared identity, and they do so in part by each allowing the other to play an important role in defining his own identity.

Nozick (1989) offers a union view that differs from those of Scruton, Fisher, and Solomon in that Nozick thinks that what is necessary for love is merely the desire to form a “we,” together with the desire that your beloved reciprocates. Nonetheless, he claims that this “we” is “a new entity in the world…created by a new web of relationships between [the lovers] which makes them no longer separate” (p. 70). In cashing out this web of relationships, Nozick appeals to the lovers “pooling” not only their well-beings, in the sense that the well-being of each is tied up with that of the other, but also their autonomy, in that “each transfers some previous rights to make certain decisions unilaterally into a joint pool” (p. 71). In addition, Nozick claims, the lovers each acquire a new identity as a part of the “we,” a new identity constituted by their (a) wanting to be perceived publicly as a couple, (b) their attending to their pooled well-being, and (c) their accepting a “certain kind of division of labor” (p. 72):

A person in a we might find himself coming across something interesting to read yet leaving it for the other person, not because he himself would not be interested in it but because the other would be more interested, and one of them reading it is sufficient for it to be registered by the wider identity now shared, the we . [ 3 ]

Opponents of the union view have seized on claims like this as excessive: union theorists, they claim, take too literally the ontological commitments of this notion of a “we.” This leads to two specific criticisms of the union view. The first is that union views do away with individual autonomy. Autonomy, it seems, involves a kind of independence on the part of the autonomous agent, such that she is in control over not only what she does but also who she is, as this is constituted by her interests, values, concerns, etc. However, union views, by doing away with a clear distinction between your interests and mine, thereby undermine this sort of independence and so undermine the autonomy of the lovers. If autonomy is a part of the individual's good, then, on the union view, love is to this extent bad; so much the worse for the union view (Singer 1994; Soble 1997). Moreover, Singer (1994) argues that a necessary part of having your beloved be the object of your love is respect for your beloved as the particular person she is, and this requires respecting her autonomy.

Union theorists have responded to this objection in several ways. Nozick (1989) seems to think of a loss of autonomy in love as a desirable feature of the sort of union lovers can achieve. Fisher (1990), somewhat more reluctantly, claims that the loss of autonomy in love is an acceptable consequence of love. Yet without further argument these claims seem like mere bullet biting. Solomon (1988, pp. 64ff) describes this “tension” between union and autonomy as “the paradox of love.” However, this a view that Soble (1997) derides: merely to call it a paradox, as Solomon does, is not to face up to the problem.

The second criticism involves a substantive view concerning love. Part of what it is to love someone, these opponents say, is to have concern for him for his sake. However, union views make such concern unintelligible and eliminate the possibility of both selfishness and self-sacrifice, for by doing away with the distinction between my interests and your interests they have in effect turned your interests into mine and vice versa (Soble 1997; see also Blum 1980, 1993). Some advocates of union views see this as a point in their favor: we need to explain how it is I can have concern for people other than myself, and the union view apparently does this by understanding your interests to be part of my own. And Delaney, responding to an apparent tension between our desire to be loved unselfishly (for fear of otherwise being exploited) and our desire to be loved for reasons (which presumably are attractive to our lover and hence have a kind of selfish basis), says (1996, p. 346):

Given my view that the romantic ideal is primarily characterized by a desire to achieve a profound consolidation of needs and interests through the formation of a we , I do not think a little selfishness of the sort described should pose a worry to either party.

The objection, however, lies precisely in this attempt to explain my concern for my beloved egoistically. As Whiting (1991, p. 10) puts it, such an attempt “strikes me as unnecessary and potentially objectionable colonization”: in love, I ought to be concerned with my beloved for her sake, and not because I somehow get something out of it. (This can be true whether my concern with my beloved is merely instrumental to my good or whether it is partly constitutive of my good.)

Although Whiting's and Soble's criticisms here succeed against the more radical advocates of the union view, they in part fail to acknowledge the kernel of truth to be gleaned from the idea of union. Whiting's way of formulating the second objection in terms of an unnecessary egoism in part points to a way out: we persons are in part social creatures, and love is one profound mode of that sociality. Indeed, part of the point of union accounts is to make sense of this social dimension: to make sense of a way in which we can sometimes identify ourselves with others not merely in becoming interdependent with them (as Singer (1994, p. 165) suggests, understanding ‘interdependence’ to be a kind of reciprocal benevolence and respect) but rather in making who we are as persons be constituted in part by those we love (cf., e.g., Rorty 1986/1993; Nussbaum 1990).

Along these lines, Friedman (1998), taking her inspiration in part from Delaney (1996), argues that we should understand the sort of union at issue in love to be a kind of federation of selves:

On the federation model, a third unified entity is constituted by the interaction of the lovers, one which involves the lovers acting in concert across a range of conditions and for a range of purposes. This concerted action, however, does not erase the existence of the two lovers as separable and separate agents with continuing possibilities for the exercise of their own respective agencies. [p. 165]

Given that on this view the lovers do not give up their individual identities, there is no principled reason why the union view cannot make sense of the lover's concern for her beloved for his sake. [ 4 ] Moreover, Friedman argues, once we construe union as federation, we can see that autonomy is not a zero-sum game; rather, love can both directly enhance the autonomy of each and promote the growth of various skills, like realistic and critical self-evaluation, that foster autonomy.

Nonetheless, this federation model is not without its problems—problems that affect other versions of the union view as well. For if the federation (or the “we”, as on Nozick's view) is understood as a third entity, we need a clearer account than has been given of its ontological status and how it comes to be. Relevant here is the literature on shared intention and plural subjects. Gilbert (1989, 1996, 2000) has argued that we should take quite seriously the existence of a plural subject as an entity over and above its constituent members. Others, such as Tuomela (1984, 1995), Searle (1990), and Bratman (1999) are more cautious, treating such talk of “us” having an intention as metaphorical.

As this criticism of the union view indicates, many find caring about your beloved for her sake to be a part of what it is to love her. The robust concern view of love takes this to be the central and defining feature of love (cf. Taylor 1976; Newton-Smith 1989; Soble 1990, 1997; LaFollette 1996; Frankfurt 1999; White 2001). As Taylor puts it:

To summarize: if x loves y then x wants to benefit and be with y etc., and he has these wants (or at least some of them) because he believes y has some determinate characteristics ψ in virtue of which he thinks it worth while to benefit and be with y . He regards satisfaction of these wants as an end and not as a means towards some other end. [p. 157]

In conceiving of my love for you as constituted by my concern for you for your sake, the robust concern view rejects the idea, central to the union view, that love is to be understood in terms of the (literal or metaphorical) creation of a “we”: this concern for you is fundamentally my concern, even if it is for your sake and so not egoistic. [ 5 ]

At the heart of the robust concern view is the idea that love “is neither affective nor cognitive. It is volitional” (Frankfurt 1999, p. 129). Frankfurt continues:

That a person cares about or that he loves something has less to do with how things make him feel, or with his opinions about them, than with the more or less stable motivational structures that shape his preferences and that guide and limit his conduct.

This account analyzes caring about someone for her sake as a matter of being motivated in certain ways, in part as a response to what happens to one's beloved. Of course, to understand love in terms of desires is not to leave other emotional responses out in the cold, for these emotions should be understood as consequences of desires. Thus, just as I can be emotionally crushed when one of my strong desires is disappointed, so too I can be emotionally crushed when things similarly go badly for my beloved. In this way Frankfurt (1999) tacitly, and White (2001) more explicitly, acknowledge the way in which my caring for my beloved for her sake results in my identity being transformed through her influence insofar as I become vulnerable to things that happen to her.

Not all robust concern theorists seem to accept this line, however; in particular, Taylor (1976) and Soble (1990) seem to have a strongly individualistic conception of persons that prevents my identity being bound up with my beloved in this sort of way, a kind of view that may seem to undermine the intuitive “depth” that love seems to have. (For more on this point, see Rorty 1986/1993.) [ 6 ]

Critics of the robust concern view worry that it offers too thin a conception of love because, by emphasizing robust concern, it understands other features we think characteristic of love, such as one's emotional responsiveness to one's beloved, to be the effects of that concern rather than constituents of it. Thus Velleman (1999) argues that robust concern views, by understanding love merely as a matter of aiming at a particular end (viz., the welfare of one's beloved), understand love to be merely conative. However, he claims, love can have nothing to do with desires, offering as a counterexample the possibility of loving a troublemaking relation whom you do not want to be with, whose well being you do not want to promote, etc. Similarly, Badhwar (2003) argues that such a “teleological” view of love makes it mysterious how “we can continue to love someone long after death has taken him beyond harm or benefit” (p. 46). Moreover Badhwar argues, if love is essentially a desire, then it implies that we lack something; yet love does not imply this and, indeed, can be felt most strongly at times when we feel our lives most complete and lacking in nothing. Consequently, Velleman and Badhwar conclude, love need not involve any desire or concern for the well-being of one's beloved.

This conclusion, however, seems too hasty, for such examples can be accommodated within the robust concern view. Thus, the concern for your relative in Velleman's example can be understood to be present but swamped by other, more powerful desires to avoid him. Indeed, keeping the idea that you want to some degree to benefit him, an idea Velleman rejects, seems to be essential to understanding the conceptual tension between loving someone and not wanting to help him, a tension Velleman does not fully acknowledge. Similarly, continued love for someone who has died can be understood on the robust concern view as parasitic on the former love you had for him when he was still alive: your desires to benefit him get transformed, through your subsequent understanding of the impossibility of doing so, into wishes. [ 7 ] Finally, the idea of concern for your beloved's well-being need not imply the idea that you lack something, for such concern can be understood in terms of the disposition to be vigilant for occasions when you can come to his aid and consequently to have the relevant occurrent desires. All of this seems fully compatible with the robust concern view.

One might also question whether Velleman and Badhwar make proper use of their examples of loving your meddlesome relation or someone who has died. For although we can understand these as genuine cases of love, they are nonetheless deficient cases and ought therefore be understood as parasitic on the standard cases. Readily to accommodate such deficient cases of love into a philosophical analysis as being on a par with paradigm cases, and to do so without some special justification, is dubious.

Nonetheless, the robust concern view as it stands does not seem properly able to account for the intuitive “depth” of love and so does not seem properly to distinguish loving from liking. Although, as noted above, the robust concern view can begin to make some sense of the way in which the lover's identity is altered by the beloved, it understands this only an effect of love, and not as a central part of what love consists in. [ 8 ]

4. Love as Valuing

A third kind of view of love understands love to be a distinctive mode of valuing a person. As the distinction between eros and agape in Section 1 indicates, there are at least two ways to construe this in terms of whether the lover values the beloved because she is valuable, or whether the beloved comes to be valuable to the lover as a result of her loving him. The former view, which understands the lover as appraising the value of the beloved in loving him, is the topic of Section 4.1 , whereas the latter view, which understands her as bestowing value on him, will be discussed in Section 4.2 .

Velleman (1999) offers an appraisal view of love, understanding love to be fundamentally a matter of acknowledging and responding in a distinctive way to the value of the beloved. (For a very different appraisal view of love, see Kolodny 2003.) Understanding this more fully requires understanding both the kind of value of the beloved to which one responds and the distinctive kind of response to such value that love is. Nonetheless, it should be clear that what makes an account be an appraisal view of love is not the mere fact that love is understood to involve appraisal; many other accounts do so, and it is typical of robust concern accounts, for example (cf. the quote from Taylor above , Section 3 ). Rather, appraisal views are distinctive in understanding love to consist in that appraisal.

In articulating the kind of value love involves, Velleman, following Kant, distinguishes dignity from price. To have a price , as the economic metaphor suggests, is to have a value that can be compared to the value of other things with prices, such that it is intelligible to exchange without loss items of the same value. By contrast, to have dignity is to have a value such that comparisons of relative value become meaningless. Material goods are normally understood to have prices, but we persons have dignity: no substitution of one person for another can preserve exactly the same value, for something of incomparable worth would be lost (and gained) in such a substitution.

On this Kantian view, our dignity as persons consists in our rational nature: our capacity both to be actuated by reasons that we autonomously provide ourselves in setting our own ends and to respond appropriately to the intrinsic values we discover in the world. Consequently, one important way in which we exercise our rational natures is to respond with respect to the dignity of other persons (a dignity that consists in part in their capacity for respect): respect just is the required minimal response to the dignity of persons. What makes a response to a person be that of respect, Velleman claims, still following Kant, is that it “arrests our self-love” and thereby prevents us from treating him as a means to our ends (p. 360).

Given this, Velleman claims that love is similarly a response to the dignity of persons, and as such it is the dignity of the object of our love that justifies that love. However, love and respect are different kinds of responses to the same value. For love arrests not our self-love but rather

our tendencies toward emotional self-protection from another person, tendencies to draw ourselves in and close ourselves off from being affected by him. Love disarms our emotional defenses; it makes us vulnerable to the other. [1999, p. 361]

This means that the concern, attraction, sympathy, etc. that we normally associate with love are not constituents of love but are rather its normal effects, and love can remain without them (as in the case of the love for a meddlesome relative one cannot stand being around). Moreover, this provides Velleman with a clear account of the intuitive “depth” of love: it is essentially a response to persons as such, and to say that you love your dog is therefore to be confused.

Of course, we do not respond with love to the dignity of every person we meet, nor are we somehow required to: love, as the disarming of our emotional defenses in a way that makes us especially vulnerable to another, is the optional maximal response to others’ dignity. What, then, explains the selectivity of love—why I love some people and not others? The answer lies in the contingent fit between the way some people behaviorally express their dignity as persons and the way I happen to respond to those expressions by becoming emotionally vulnerable to them. The right sort of fit makes someone “lovable” by me (1999, p. 372), and my responding with love in these cases is a matter of my “really seeing” this person in a way that I fail to do with others who do not fit with me in this way. By ‘lovable’ here Velleman seems to mean able to be loved, not worthy of being loved, for nothing Velleman says here speaks to a question about the justification of my loving this person rather than that. Rather, what he offers is an explanation of the selectivity of my love, an explanation that as a matter of fact makes my response be that of love rather than mere respect.

This understanding of the selectivity of love as something that can be explained but not justified is potentially troubling. For we ordinarily think we can justify not only my loving you rather than someone else but also and more importantly the constancy of my love: my continuing to love you even as you change in certain fundamental ways (but not others). As Delaney (1996, p. 347) puts the worry about constancy:

while you seem to want it to be true that, were you to become a schmuck, your lover would continue to love you,…you also want it to be the case that your lover would never love a schmuck.

The issue here is not merely that we can offer explanations of the selectivity of my love, of why I do not love schmucks; rather, at issue is the discernment of love, of loving and continuing to love for good reasons as well as of ceasing to love for good reasons. To have these good reasons seems to involve attributing different values to you now rather than formerly or rather than to someone else, yet this is precisely what Velleman denies is the case in making the distinction between love and respect the way he does.

It is also questionable whether Velleman can even explain the selectivity of love in terms of the “fit” between your expressions and my sensitivities. For the relevant sensitivities on my part are emotional sensitivities: the lowering of my emotional defenses and so becoming emotionally vulnerable to you. Thus, I become vulnerable to the harms (or goods) that befall you and so sympathetically feel your pain (or joy). Such emotions are themselves assessable for warrant, and now we can ask why my disappointment that you lost the race is warranted, but my being disappointed that a mere stranger lost would not be warranted. The intuitive answer is that I love you but not him. However, this answer is unavailable to Velleman, because he thinks that what makes my response to your dignity that of love rather than respect is precisely that I feel such emotions, and to appeal to my love in explaining the emotions therefore seems viciously circular.

Although these problems are specific to Velleman's account, the difficulty can be generalized to any appraisal account of love (such as that offered in Kolodny 2003). For if love is an appraisal, it needs to be distinguished from other forms of appraisal, including our evaluative judgments. On the one hand, to try to distinguish love as an appraisal from other appraisals in terms of love's having certain effects on our emotional and motivational life (as on Velleman's account) is unsatisfying because it ignores part of what needs to be explained: why the appraisal of love has these effects and yet judgments with the same evaluative content do not. Indeed, this question is crucial if we are to understand the intuitive “depth” of love, for without an answer to this question we do not understand why love should have the kind of centrality in our lives it manifestly does. [ 9 ] On the other hand, to bundle this emotional component into the appraisal itself would be to turn the view into either the robust concern view ( Section 3 ) or a variant of the emotion view ( Section 5.1 ).

In contrast to Velleman, Singer (1991, 1994) understands love to be fundamentally a matter of bestowing value on the beloved. To bestow value on another is to project a kind of intrinsic value onto him. Indeed, this fact about love is supposed to distinguish love from liking: “Love is an attitude with no clear objective,” whereas liking is inherently teleological (1991, p. 272). As such, there are no standards of correctness for bestowing such value, and this is how love differs from other personal attitudes like gratitude, generosity, and condescension: “love…confers importance no matter what the object is worth” (p. 273). Consequently, Singer thinks, love is not an attitude that can be justified in any way.

What is it, exactly, to bestow this kind of value on someone? It is, Singer says, a kind of attachment and commitment to the beloved, in which one comes to treat him as an end in himself and so to respond to his ends, interests, concerns, etc. as having value for their own sake. This means in part that the bestowal of value reveals itself “by caring about the needs and interests of the beloved, by wishing to benefit or protect her, by delighting in her achievements,” etc. (p. 270). This sounds very much like the robust concern view, yet the bestowal view differs in understanding such robust concern to be the effect of the bestowal of value that is love rather than itself what constitutes love: in bestowing value on my beloved, I make him be valuable in such a way that I ought to respond with robust concern.

For it to be intelligible that I have bestowed value on someone, I must therefore respond appropriately to him as valuable, and this requires having some sense of what his well-being is and of what affects that well-being positively or negatively. Yet having this sense requires in turn knowing what his strengths and deficiencies are, and this is a matter of appraising him in various ways. Bestowal thus presupposes a kind of appraisal, as a way of “really seeing” the beloved and attending to him. Nonetheless, Singer claims, it is the bestowal that is primary for understanding what love consists in: the appraisal is required only so that the commitment to one's beloved and his value as thus bestowed has practical import and is not “a blind submission to some unknown being” (1991, p. 272; see also Singer 1994, pp. 139ff).

Singer is walking a tightrope in trying to make room for appraisal in his account of love. Insofar as the account is fundamentally a bestowal account, Singer claims that love cannot be justified, that we bestow the relevant kind of value “gratuitously.” This suggests that love is blind, that it does not matter what our beloved is like, which seems patently false. Singer tries to avoid this conclusion by appealing to the role of appraisal: it is only because we appraise another as having certain virtues and vices that we come to bestow value on him. Yet the “because” here, since it cannot justify the bestowal, is at best a kind of contingent causal explanation. [ 10 ] In this respect, Singer's account of the selectivity of love is much the same as Velleman's, and it is liable to the same criticism: it makes unintelligible the way in which our love can be discerning for better or worse reasons. Indeed, this failure to make sense of the idea that love can be justified is a problem for any bestowal view. For either (a) a bestowal itself cannot be justified (as on Singer's account), in which case the justification of love is impossible, or (b) a bestowal can be justified, in which case it is hard to make sense of value as being bestowed rather than there antecedently in the object as the grounds of that “bestowal.”

More generally, a proponent of the bestowal view needs to be much clearer than Singer is in articulating precisely what a bestowal is. What is the value that I create in a bestowal, and how can my bestowal create it? On a crude Humean view, the answer might be that the value is something projected onto the world through my pro-attitudes, like desire. Yet such a view would be inadequate, since the projected value, being relative to a particular individual, would do no theoretical work, and the account would essentially be a variant of the robust concern view. Moreover, in providing a bestowal account of love, care is needed to distinguish love from other personal attitudes such as admiration and respect: do these other attitudes involve bestowal? If so, how does the bestowal in these cases differ from the bestowal of love? If not, why not, and what is so special about love that requires a fundamentally different evaluative attitude than admiration and respect?

Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in the bestowal view: there is surely something right about the idea that love is creative and not merely a response to antecedent value, and accounts of love that understand the kind of evaluation implicit in love merely in terms of appraisal seem to be missing something. Precisely what may be missed will be discussed below in Section 6 .

5. Emotion Views

Given these problems with the accounts of love as valuing, perhaps we should turn to the emotions. For emotions just are responses to objects that combine evaluation, motivation, and a kind of phenomenology, all central features of the attitude of love.

Many accounts of love claim that it is an emotion; these include: Wollheim (1984), Rorty (1986/1993), Brown (1987), Hamlyn (1989), Baier (1991), and Badhwar (2003). [ 11 ] Thus, Hamlyn (1989, p. 219) says:

It would not be a plausible move to defend any theory of the emotions to which love and hate seemed exceptions by saying that love and hate are after all not emotions. I have heard this said, but it does seem to me a desperate move to make. If love and hate are not emotions what is?

The difficulty with this claim, as Rorty (1980) argues, is that the word, ‘emotion,’ does not seem to pick out a homogeneous collection of mental states, and so various theories claiming that love is an emotion mean very different things. Consequently, what are here labeled “emotion views” are divided into those that understand love to be a particular kind of evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object, whether that response is merely occurrent or dispositional (‘emotions proper,’ see Section 5.1 , below), and those that understand love to involve a collection of related and interconnected emotions proper (‘emotion complexes,’ see Section 5.2 , below).

An emotion proper is a kind of “evaluative-cum-motivational response to an object”; what does this mean? Emotions are generally understood to have several objects. The target of an emotion is that at which the emotion is directed: if I am afraid or angry at you, then you are the target. In responding to you with fear or anger, I am implicitly evaluating you in a particular way, and this evaluation—called the formal object —is the kind of evaluation of the target that is distinctive of a particular emotion type. Thus, in fearing you, I implicitly evaluate you as somehow dangerous, whereas in being angry at you I implicitly evaluate you as somehow offensive. Yet emotions are not merely evaluations of their targets; they in part motivate us to behave in certain ways, both rationally (by motivating action to avoid the danger) and arationally (via certain characteristic expressions, such as slamming a door out of anger). Moreover, emotions are generally understood to involve a phenomenological component, though just how to understand the characteristic “feel” of an emotion and its relation to the evaluation and motivation is hotly disputed. Finally, emotions are typically understood to be passions: responses that we feel imposed on us as if from the outside, rather than anything we actively do. (For more on the philosophy of emotions, see entry on emotion .)

What then are we saying when we say that love is an emotion proper? According to Brown (1987, p. 14), emotions as occurrent mental states are “abnormal bodily changes caused by the agent's evaluation or appraisal of some object or situation that the agent believes to be of concern to him or her.” He cashes this out by saying that in love, we “cherish” the person for having “a particular complex of instantiated qualities” that is “open-ended” so that we can continue to love the person even as she changes over time (pp. 106–7). These qualities, which include historical and relational qualities, are evaluated in love as worthwhile. [ 12 ] All of this seems aimed at cashing out what love's formal object is, a task that is fundamental to understanding love as an emotion proper. Thus, Brown seems to say that love's formal object is just being worthwhile (or, given his examples, perhaps: worthwhile as a person), and he resists being any more specific than this in order to preserve the open-endedness of love. Hamlyn (1989) offers a similar account, saying (p. 228):

With love the difficulty is to find anything of this kind [i.e., a formal object] which is uniquely appropriate to love. My thesis is that there is nothing of this kind that must be so, and that this differentiates it and hate from the other emotions.

Hamlyn goes on to suggest that love and hate might be primordial emotions, a kind of positive or negative “feeling towards,” presupposed by all other emotions. [ 13 ]

The trouble with these accounts of love as an emotion proper is that they provide too thin a conception of love. In Hamlyn's case, love is conceived as a fairly generic pro-attitude, rather than as the specific kind of distinctively personal attitude discussed here. In Brown's case, cashing out the formal object of love as simply being worthwhile (as a person) fails to distinguish love from other evaluative responses like admiration and respect. Part of the problem seems to be the rather simple account of what an emotion is that Brown and Hamlyn use as their starting point: if love is an emotion, then the understanding of what an emotion is must be enriched considerably to accommodate love. Yet it is not at all clear whether the idea of an “emotion proper” can be adequately enriched so as to do so.

The emotion complex view, which understands love to be a complex emotional attitude towards another person, may initially seem to hold out great promise to overcome the problems of alternative types of views. By articulating the emotional interconnections between persons, it could offer a satisfying account of the “depth” of love without the excesses of the union view and without the overly narrow teleological focus of the robust concern view; and because these emotional interconnections are themselves evaluations, it could offer an understanding of love as simultaneously evaluative, without needing to specify a single formal object of love. However, the devil is in the details.

Rorty (1986/1993) does not try to present a complete account of love; rather, she focuses on the idea that “relational psychological attitudes” which, like love, essentially involve emotional and desiderative responses, exhibit historicity : “they arise from, and are shaped by, dynamic interactions between a subject and an object” (p. 73). In part this means that what makes an attitude be one of love is not the presence of a state that we can point to at a particular time within the lover; rather, love is to be “identified by a characteristic narrative history” (p. 75). Moreover, Rorty argues, the historicity of love involves the lover's being permanently transformed by loving who he does.

Baier (1991), seeming to pick up on this understanding of love as exhibiting historicity, says (p. 444):

Love is not just an emotion people feel toward other people, but also a complex tying together of the emotions that two or a few more people have; it is a special form of emotional interdependence.

To a certain extent, such emotional interdependence involves feeling sympathetic emotions, so that, for example, I feel disappointed and frustrated on behalf of my beloved when she fails, and joyful when she succeeds. However, Baier insists, love is “more than just the duplication of the emotion of each in a sympathetic echo in the other” (p. 442); the emotional interdependence of the lovers involves also appropriate follow-up responses to the emotional predicaments of your beloved. Two examples Baier gives (pp. 443–44) are a feeling of “mischievous delight” at your beloved's temporary bafflement, and amusement at her embarrassment. The idea is that in a loving relationship your beloved gives you permission to feel such emotions when no one else is permitted to do so, and a condition of her granting you that permission is that you feel these emotions “tenderly.” Moreover, you ought to respond emotionally to your beloved's emotional responses to you: by feeling hurt when she is indifferent to you, for example. All of these foster the sort of emotional interdependence Baier is after—a kind of intimacy you have with your beloved.

Badhwar (2003, p. 46) similarly understands love to be a matter of “one's overall emotional orientation towards a person—the complex of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings”; as such, love is a matter of having a certain “character structure.” Central to this complex emotional orientation, Badhwar thinks, is what she calls the “look of love”: “an ongoing [emotional] affirmation of the loved object as worthy of existence…for her own sake” (p. 44), an affirmation that involves taking pleasure in your beloved's well-being. Moreover, Badhwar claims, the look of love also provides to the beloved reliable testimony concerning the quality of the beloved's character and actions (p. 57).

There is surely something very right about the idea that love, as an attitude central to deeply personal relationships, should not be understood as a state that can simply come and go. Rather, as the emotion complex view insists, the complexity of love is to be found in the historical patterns of one's emotional responsiveness to one's beloved—a pattern that also projects into the future. Indeed, as suggested above, the kind of emotional interdependence that results from this complex pattern can seem to account for the intuitive “depth” of love as fully interwoven into one's emotional sense of oneself. And it seems to make some headway in understanding the complex phenomenology of love: love can at times be a matter of intense pleasure in the presence of one's beloved, yet it can at other times involve frustration, exasperation, anger, and hurt as a manifestation of the complexities and depth of the relationships it fosters.

This understanding of love as constituted by a history of emotional interdependence enables emotion complex views to say something interesting about the impact love has on the lover's identity. This is partly Rorty's point (1986/1993) in her discussion of the historicity of love ( above ). Thus, she argues, one important feature of such historicity is that love is “ dynamically permeable ” in that the lover is continually “changed by loving” such that these changes “tend to ramify through a person's character” (p. 77). Through such dynamic permeability, love transforms the identity of the lover in a way that can sometimes foster the continuity of the love, as each lover continually changes in response to the changes in the other. [ 14 ] Indeed, Rorty concludes, love should be understood in terms of “a characteristic narrative history” (p. 75) that results from such dynamic permeability. It should be clear, however, that the mere fact of dynamic permeability need not result in the love's continuing: nothing about the dynamics of a relationship require that the characteristic narrative history project into the future, and such permeability can therefore lead to the dissolution of the love. Love is therefore risky—indeed, all the more risky because of the way the identity of the lover is defined in part through the love. The loss of a love can therefore make one feel no longer oneself in ways poignantly described by Nussbaum (1990).

By focusing on such emotionally complex histories, emotion complex views differ from most alternative accounts of love. For alternative accounts tend to view love as a kind of attitude we take toward our beloveds, something we can analyze simply in terms of our mental state at the moment. [ 15 ] By ignoring this historical dimension of love in providing an account of what love is, alternative accounts have a hard time providing either satisfying accounts of the sense in which our identities as person are at stake in loving another or satisfactory solutions to problems concerning how love is to be justified (cf. Section 6 , especially the discussion of fungibility ).

Nonetheless, some questions remain. If love is to be understood as an emotion complex, we need a much more explicit account of the pattern at issue here: what ties all of these emotional responses together into a single thing, namely love? Baier and Badhwar seem content to provide interesting and insightful examples of this pattern, but that does not seem to be enough. For example, what connects my amusement at my beloved's embarrassment to other emotions like my joy on his behalf when he succeeds? Why shouldn’t my amusement at his embarrassment be understood instead as a somewhat cruel case of schadenfreude and so as antithetical to, and disconnected from, love?

Presumably the answer requires returning to the historicity of love: it all depends on the historical details of the relationship my beloved and I have forged. Some loves develop so that the intimacy within the relationship is such as to allow for tender, teasing responses to each other, whereas other loves may not. The historical details, together with the lovers’ understanding of their relationship, presumably determine which emotional responses belong to the pattern constitutive of love and which do not. However, this answer so far is inadequate: not just any historical relationship involving emotional interdependence is a loving relationship, and we need a principled way of distinguishing loving relationships from other relational evaluative attitudes: precisely what is the characteristic narrative history that is characteristic of love? Again, proponents of the emotion complex view need to provide a clearer, principled account of the relevant kind of pattern of emotional responses constitutive of love.

Why do we love? It has been suggested above that any account of love needs to be able to answer some such justificatory question. Although the issue of the justification of love is important on its own, it is also important for the implications it has for understanding more clearly the precise object of love: how can we make sense of the intuitions not only that we love the individuals themselves rather than their properties, but also that my beloved is not fungible—that no one could simply take her place without loss. Different theories approach these questions in different ways, but, as will become clear below, the question of justification is primary.

One way to understand the question of why we love is as asking for what the value of love is: what do we get out of it? One kind of answer, which has its roots in Aristotle, is that having loving relationships promotes self-knowledge insofar as your beloved acts as a kind of mirror, reflecting your character back to you (Badhwar, 2003, p. 58). Of course, this answer presupposes that we cannot accurately know ourselves in other ways: that left alone, our sense of ourselves will be too imperfect, too biased, to help us grow and mature as persons. The metaphor of a mirror also suggests that our beloveds will be in the relevant respects similar to us, so that merely by observing them, we can come to know ourselves better in a way that is, if not free from bias, at least more objective than otherwise.

Brink (1999, pp. 264–65) argues that there are serious limits to the value of such mirroring of one's self in a beloved. For if the aim is not just to know yourself better but to improve yourself, you ought also to interact with others who are not just like yourself: interacting with such diverse others can help you recognize alternative possibilities for how to live and so better assess the relative merits of these possibilities. Nonetheless, we need not take the metaphor of the mirror quite so literally; rather, our beloveds can reflect our selves not through their inherent similarity to us but rather through the interpretations they offer of us, both explicitly and implicitly in their responses to us. This is what Badhwar calls the “epistemic significance” of love. [ 16 ]

In addition to this epistemic significance of love, LaFollette (1996, Chapter 5) offers several other reasons why it is good to love, reasons derived in part from the psychological literature on love: love increases our sense of well-being, it elevates our sense of self-worth, and it serves to develop our character. It also, we might add, tends to lower stress and blood pressure and to increase health and longevity. Friedman (1993) argues that the kind of partiality towards our beloveds that love involves is itself morally valuable because it supports relationships—loving relationships—that contribute “to human well-being, integrity, and fulfillment in life” (p. 61). And Solomon (1988, p. 155) claims:

Ultimately, there is only one reason for love. That one grand reason…is “because we bring out the best in each other.” What counts as “the best,” of course, is subject to much individual variation.

This is because, Solomon suggests, in loving someone, I want myself to be better so as to be worthy of his love for me.

Each of these answers to the question of why we love understands it to be asking about love quite generally, abstracted away from details of particular relationships. It is also possible to understand the question as asking about particular loves. Here, there are several questions that are relevant:

• What, if anything, justifies my loving rather than not loving this person?
• What, if anything, justifies my coming to love this particular person rather than someone else?
• What, if anything, justifies my continuing to love this particular person given the changes—both in him and me and in the overall circumstances—that have occurred since I began loving him?

These are importantly different questions. Velleman (1999), for example, thinks we can answer (1) by appealing to the fact that my beloved is a person and so has a rational nature, yet he thinks (2) and (3) have no answers: the best we can do is offer causal explanations for our loving particular people. And, as will become clear below , the distinction between (2) and (3) will become important in resolving puzzles concerning whether our beloveds are fungible, though it should be clear that (3) potentially raises questions concerning personal identity (which will not be addressed here).

It is important not to misconstrue these justificatory questions. Thomas (1991) , for example, rejects the idea that love can be justified: “there are no rational considerations whereby anyone can lay claim to another's love or insist that an individual's love for another is irrational” (p. 474). This is because, Thomas claims (p. 471):

no matter how wonderful and lovely an individual might be, on any and all accounts, it is simply false that a romantically unencumbered person must love that individual on pain of being irrational. Or, there is no irrationality involved in ceasing to love a person whom one once loved immensely, although the person has not changed.

However, as LaFollette (1996, p. 63) correctly points out,

reason is not some external power which dictates how we should behave, but an internal power, integral to who we are.…Reason does not command that we love anyone. Nonetheless, reason is vital in determining whom we love and why we love them.

That is, reasons for love are pro tanto : they are a part of the overall reasons we have for acting, and it is up to us in exercising our capacity for agency to decide what on balance we have reason to do or even whether we shall act contrary to our reasons. To construe the notion of a reason for love as compelling us to love, as Thomas does, is to misconstrue the place such reasons have within our agency.

Most philosophical discussions of the justification of love focus on question (1) , thinking that answering this question will also, to the extent that we can, answer question (2) , which is typically not distinguished from (3) . The answers given to these questions vary in a way that turns on how the kind of evaluation implicit in love is construed. On the one hand, those who understand the evaluation implicit in love to be a matter of the bestowal of value (such as Telfer 1970–71; Friedman 1993; Singer 1994) typically claim that no justification can be given (cf. Section 4.2 ). As indicated above, this seems problematic, especially given the importance love can have both in our lives and, especially, in shaping our identities as persons. To reject the idea that we can love for reasons may reduce the impact our agency can have in defining who we are.

On the other hand, those who understand the evaluation implicit in love to be a matter of appraisal tend to answer the justificatory question by appeal to these valuable properties of the beloved. This acceptance of the idea that love can be justified leads to two further, related worries about the object of love.

The first worry is raised by Vlastos (1981) in a discussion Plato's and Aristotle's accounts of love. Vlastos notes that these accounts focus on the properties of our beloveds: we are to love people, they say, only because and insofar as they are objectifications of the excellences. Consequently, he argues, in doing so they fail to distinguish “ disinterested affection for the person we love” from “ appreciation of the excellences instantiated by that person ” (p. 33). That is, Vlastos thinks that Plato and Aristotle provide an account of love that is really a love of properties rather than a love of persons—love of a type of person, rather than love of a particular person—thereby losing what is distinctive about love as an essentially personal attitude. This worry about Plato and Aristotle might seem to apply just as well to other accounts that justify love in terms of the properties of the person: insofar as we love the person for the sake of her properties, it might seem that what we love is those properties and not the person. Here it is surely insufficient to say, as Solomon (1988, p. 154) does, “if love has its reasons, then it is not the whole person that one loves but certain aspects of that person—though the rest of the person comes along too, of course”: that final tagline fails to address the central difficulty about what the object of love is and so about love as a distinctly personal attitude.

The second worry concerns the fungibility of the object of love. To be fungible is to be replaceable by another relevantly similar object without any loss of value. Thus, money is fungible: I can give you two $5 bills in exchange for a $10 bill, and neither of us has lost anything. Is the object of love fungible? That is, can I simply switch from loving one person to loving another relevantly similar person without any loss? The worry about fungibility is commonly put this way: if we accept that love can be justified by appealing to properties of the beloved, then it may seem that in loving someone for certain reasons, I love him not simply as the individual he is, but as instantiating those properties. And this may imply that any other person instantiating those same properties would do just as well: my beloved would be fungible. Indeed, it may be that another person exhibits the properties that ground my love to a greater degree than my current beloved does, and so it may seem that in such a case I have reason to “trade up”—to switch my love to the new, better person. However, it seems clear that the objects of our loves are not fungible: love seems to involve a deeply personal commitment to a particular person, a commitment that is antithetical to the idea that our beloveds are fungible or to the idea that we ought to be willing to trade up when possible. [ 17 ]

In responding to these worries, Nozick (1989) appeals to the union view of love he endorses (cf. the section on Love as Union ):

The intention in love is to form a we and to identify with it as an extended self, to identify one's fortunes in large part with its fortunes. A willingness to trade up, to destroy the very we you largely identify with, would then be a willingness to destroy your self in the form of your own extended self. [p. 78]

So it is because love involves forming a “we” that we must understand other persons and not properties to be the objects of love, and it is because my very identity as a person depends essentially on that “we” that it is not possible to substitute without loss one object of my love for another. However, Badhwar (2003) criticizes Nozick, saying that his response implies that once I love someone, I cannot abandon that love no matter who that person becomes; this, she says, “cannot be understood as love at all rather than addiction” (p. 61). [ 18 ]

Instead, Badhwar (1987) turns to her robust-concern account of love as a concern for the beloved for his sake rather than one's own. Insofar as my love is disinterested — not a means to antecedent ends of my own—it would be senseless to think that my beloved could be replaced by someone who is able to satisfy my ends equally well or better. Consequently, my beloved is in this way irreplaceable. However, this is only a partial response to the worry about fungibility, as Badhwar herself seems to acknowledge. For the concern over fungibility arises not merely for those cases in which we think of love as justified instrumentally, but also for those cases in which the love is justified by the intrinsic value of the properties of my beloved. Confronted with cases like this, Badhwar (2003) concludes that the object of love is fungible after all (though she insists that it is very unlikely in practice). (Soble (1990, Chapter 13) draws similar conclusions.)

Nonetheless, Badhwar thinks that the object of love is “phenomenologically non-fungible” (2003, p. 63; cf. 1987, p. 14). By this she means that we experience our beloveds to be irreplaceable: “loving and delighting in [one person] are not completely commensurate with loving and delighting in another” (1987, p. 14). Love can be such that we sometimes desire to be with this particular person whom we love, not another whom we also love, for our loves are qualitatively different. But why is this? It seems as though the typical reason I now want to spend time with Amy rather than Bob is, for example, that Amy is funny but Bob is not. I love Amy in part for her humor, and I love Bob for other reasons, and these qualitative differences between them is what makes them not fungible. However, this reply does not address the worry about the possibility of trading up: if Bob were to be at least as funny (charming, kind, etc.) as Amy, why shouldn’t I dump her and spend all my time with him?

A somewhat different approach is taken by Whiting (1991). In response to the first worry concerning the object of love, Whiting argues that Vlastos offers a false dichotomy: having disinterested affection for someone—for her sake rather than my own—essentially involves an appreciation of her excellences as such. Indeed, Whiting says, my appreciation of these as excellences, and so the underlying commitment I have to their value, just is a disinterested commitment to her because these excellences constitute her identity as the person she is. The person, therefore, really is the object of love. Delaney (1996) takes the complementary tack of distinguishing between the object of one's love, which of course is the person, and the grounds of the love, which are her properties: to say, as Solomon does, that we love someone for reasons is not at all to say that we only love certain aspects of the person. Thus, Whiting's rejection of Vlastos’ dichotomy can be read as saying that what makes my attitude be one of disinterested affection—one of love—for the person is precisely that I am thereby responding to her excellences as the reasons for that affection. [ 19 ]

Of course, more needs to be said about what it is that makes a particular person be the object of love. Implicit in Whiting's account is an understanding of the way in which the object of my love is determined in part by the history of interactions I have with her: it is she, and not merely her properties (which might be instantiated in many different people), that I want to be with, it is she, and not merely her properties, on whose behalf I am concerned when she suffers and whom I seek to comfort, etc. This addresses the first worry, but not the second worry about fungibility, for the question still remains whether she is the object of my love only as instantiating certain properties, and so whether or not I have reason to “trade up.”

To respond to the fungibility worry, Whiting and Delaney appeal explicitly to the historical relationship. Thus, Whiting claims, although there may be a relatively large pool of people who have the kind of excellences of character that would justify my loving them, and so although there can be no answer to question (2) about why I come to love this rather than that person within this pool, once I have come to love this person and so have developed a historical relation with her, this history of concern justifies my continuing to love this person rather than someone else (1991, p. 7). Similarly, Delaney claims that love is grounded in “historical-relational properties” (1996, p. 346), so that I have reasons for continuing to love this person rather than switching allegiances and loving someone else. In each case, the appeal to both such historical relations and the excellences of character of my friend is intended to provide an answer to question (3) , and this explains why the objects of love are not fungible.

There seems to be something very much right with this response. Relationships grounded in love are essentially personal, and it would be odd to think of what justifies that love to be merely non-relational properties of the beloved. Nonetheless, it is still unclear how the historical-relational propreties can provide any additional justification for subsequent concern beyond that which is already provided (as an answer to question (1) ) by appeal to the excellences of the beloved's character (cf. Brink 1999). The mere fact that I have loved her in the past does not seem to justify my continuing to love her in the future. When we imagine that she is going through a rough time and begins to lose the virtues justifying my initial love for her, why shouldn’t I dump her and instead come to love someone new having all of those virtues more fully? Intuitively (unless the change she undergoes makes her in some important sense no longer the same person she was), we think I should not dump her, but the appeal to the mere fact that I loved her in the past is surely not enough. Yet what historical-relational properties could do the trick? (For an interesting attempt at an answer, see Kolodny 2003.)

In part the trouble here arises from tacit preconceptions concerning the nature of justification. If we attempt to justify a love in terms of particular historical facts about the relationship, then it seems like we are appealing to merely idiosyncratic and subjective properties, which might explain but cannot justify love. This seems to imply that justification in general requires the appeal to general, objective properties that others might share, which leads to the problem of fungibility. Solving the problem, it might therefore seem, requires somehow overcoming this preconception concerning justification—a task which no one has attempted in the literature on love.

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character, moral | emotion | friendship | impartiality | obligations: special | personal identity | Plato: ethics | Plato: rhetoric and poetry | respect | value: intrinsic vs. extrinsic

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‘Kleo’ Review: Spy vs. a Lot of Other Spies

The archly humorous, high-body-count Netflix series about an ex-Stasi assassin is like “Killing Eve” with a more discernible heartbeat.

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By Mike Hale

“Killing Eve” went off the air in April 2022. “Kleo” came along four months later. The offbeat, darkly comic, cold-war-related spy thriller abhors a vacuum.

The German writers and producers Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf, who created “Kleo” for Netflix, evidently were not afraid of comparisons to the popular “Killing Eve,” which ran for four seasons on BBC America. Kleo Straub (Jella Haase), their East German protagonist, is a lethal assassin with a guileless pride in her abilities, reminiscent of Villanelle, the “Killing Eve” role that brought Jodie Comer an Emmy.

Kleo also comes with her own version of Sandra Oh’s Eve, here a West German cop named Sven Petzold (Dimitrij Schaad) — an operative from the other side who is obsessed with Kleo and whose on-and-off, cat-and-mouse, will-they-or-won’t-they relationship with her is the show’s emotional center. And the two series share a style: the spy caper as darkly humorous fairy tale, shifting between mordant, violent theatricality and mordant, goofy comedy.

But “Kleo,” whose second season premiered last week on Netflix , is its own show, and, depending on your taste, it might be the better of the two. It is lighter and more straightforward in its storytelling and its humor, but just as moving and involving. It doesn’t have the filigree of “Killing Eve,” the same degree of baroque inventiveness, but it is ingenious in its own more casual, more human way.

And it is less of a self-contained hall of mirrors than the earlier show; it benefits from being about something real, even if its relationship to history is stretched to the breaking point. Season 2 returns to the fraught period between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990, with Kleo, the former off-the-books Stasi hit woman, still pursuing a personal mission of revenge that is somehow mixed up with the fate of the two Germanys.

The jokes, the suspense, the melodrama and the violent action of “Kleo” are all contained within a vivid portrait of post-fall Berlin. Everyone is quick to take advantage of the moral and political vacuum, from Thilo (Julius Feldmeier), the spectral techno-music junkie who becomes Kleo’s roommate and confidant, to all the Russian, American and East and West German spymasters who use her for their own purposes. The settings, in Berlin and other Central and Eastern European locales, are always visually absorbing, simultaneously candy colored and brutalist drab.

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