The Ordinary Concept of True Love

When we say that what two people feel for each other is “true love,” we seem to be doing more than simply clarifying that it is in fact love they feel, as opposed to something else. That is, an experience or relationship might be a genuine or actual instance of love without necessarily being an instance of true love. But what criteria do people use to determine whether something counts as true love? This chapter explores three hypotheses. The first holds that the ordinary concept of true love picks out love that is highly prototypical. The second, that it picks out love that is especially good or valuable. The third, that people distinguish between psychological states that are “real” or not, and that it picks out love that is real. Two experiments provide evidence against the first hypothesis and in favor of the second and third. Implications for real-life disagreements about love are also discussed.

Love, Morality, and Alienation

Is love incompatible with morality? A popular criticism of standard moral theories such as consequentialist theories and Kantian ethics—any theory that holds that the reasons of morality are impartial—is that such theories cannot accommodate the reasons of love. Either the reasons of love are not moral reasons, yet outweigh moral reasons in many situations, or they are moral reasons that are partial, not impartial. Many moral theorists try to retain both impartiality and the special moral nature of partial reasons for close relationships by presenting approaches that justify partial norms on the basis of impartial reasons. These writers are divided on the issue of whether or not such approaches need to be self-effacing. For those who argue that the indirection need not be self-effacing, and that people should be able to step back and evaluate all of their normative commitments, a problem is raised by writers such as Susan Wolf who argue that even considering the possibility of violating a close relationship norm for the sake of morality is problematic to the relationship in question. This article challenges this view of Wolf’s, arguing that, in effect, we can provide justifications for “silencing” when it really is practically appropriate in standard moral theories that do not threaten good relationships.

Romantic Love for a Reason

In contemporary and historical contributions to the philosophy of love there has been considerable resistance to three claims concerning romantic love: (1) Romantic love is assessable for rationality, (2) romantic love is love for a reason, and (3) romantic love is reason-responsive. This chapter argues that these three ideas are intimately tied together. It offers justification for all three claims on the basis of more general considerations of the nature of emotions and evidence in support of the claim that romantic love is best rendered a complex emotion that when felt is truly multimodal. It attributes the property of causing certain internal qualities (e.g., a quickening of the heartbeat) that are experienced through interoception to a person identified through some perceptual or cognitive faculty (e.g., a sight of the beloved). Along the way it identifies some of the main ways in which romantic love differs from other kinds of love, such as friendship love and parental love.

Love and Caring

Is there a principled framework for understanding the distinction between mere caring and love? This chapter critically assesses extant accounts, showing that the distinctive requirements for love that they propose are either insufficient or unnecessary. After identifying and exploring views that describe types of intimacy that suffice, but are too demanding to deem necessary, for love, this chapter develops a more ecumenical proposal for love’s distinctive character that unifies a central insight in the preceding views. On this proposal, the feature that is necessary and sufficient to distinguish love from mere caring is conceived in terms of love’s intimacy as reflected in a specific form of vulnerability. The lover, but not the mere carer, is subject to damage in her sense of herself as an agent leading a meaningful life directly in virtue of being permanently separated from the relevant object or in virtue of that object faring poorly.

Plato, Socrates, and Love

Given the prodigious amount of scholarship on Platonic love, this article explores a different question: the nature of Plato’s love for Socrates as expressed in two dialogues, the Symposium and Phaedo, in which Plato depicts Socrates as surrounded by his lovers and disciples. By paying attention to the “outer frames” of the dialogues, that is, the relationship between the text and the reader, it is argued that Plato’s love for Socrates is displayed not only in his loving depiction of Socrates but also in Plato’s doing philosophy through the character of Socrates; Plato thereby shows what genuine love for Socrates would be like. Moreover, contrasted with the words and actions of other characters in these dialogues, Plato shows himself to be not just one among many of Socrates’ lovers, but in fact the best.

Merleau-Ponty on Love

Although Merleau-Ponty has no sustained account of love, his treatment of it in his early work, especially Phenomenology of Perception and “The Child’s Relations to Others,” allows us to construct one. Moreover, this account allows us to see perceptual and more generally corporeal aspects of love, as well as the distinction between love and infatuation, that often get less addressed in the literature on love. Because of his focus on perception, Merleau-Ponty allows us to understand the experience of our immediate, ongoing, and unreflective relationship to those we love. Because of his account of how our relationships are sedimented in our bodies, he offers us a way to recognize the importance of our interpersonal histories in our corporeal relationships with others. All of this is grounded in a phenomenological method that illuminates aspects of our experience that can be lost to accounts that are less sensitive to our ongoing experience.

Love and Enhancement Technology

Chemical and other interventions into the biological dimensions of love are currently possible and will likely become more powerful in years to come. This chapter explores some of the conceptual issues surrounding what it would mean to change love with biochemical agents, and presents a handful of case studies of individuals and couples who might desire to use such agents as a way of enhancing their love and relationships. The chapter then discusses a number of ethical and other worries that would likely be raised by the development or use of such biotechnologies and offers some tentative responses. Ultimately, it is argued that love-enhancing biotechnology is not just a conceptual possibility, but may already be practically feasible, and is likely in some cases to be morally desirable.

Love and Animals

This chapter presents a defense of the depth and appropriateness of love for and by nonhuman animals in the face of attempts to marginalize both. Objections to the very idea of animal love generally appeal to the dangers of anthropomorphism when the dangers of anthropocentrism are at least as great. Or they appeal to the dangers of sentimentality but, in doing so, require love for or by animals to meet standards that our love for one another often fails to meet. The capacity of animals for grief is offered as a decisive, and well-evidenced, consideration that entails the capacity for love. Creatures who grieve must also be capable of love for that which has been lost.

Love, Value, and Reasons

It is a familiar thought that in friendship and romance, people’s good qualities are reasons for loving them. This chapter clarifies the kinds of reasons—and the forms of reasons-responsiveness and evaluation—at issue. It offers a new model for understanding love as a form of valuing. On this model, love is both a response to reasons and a source of reasons, and the two sets of reasons are complementary parts of a single coherent, interlocking package. On this basis the chapter answers various standard objections alleging that the “qualities view” fails to tie us adequately to our loved ones. Love in friendship and romantic contexts is revealed to be a matter of character in many respects. Some of our most fundamental values are manifested in whom we love, why, and how. Small wonder loving is so important to our sense of ourselves as individuals.​

Love and Time

The connection between romantic love and time has always fascinated lovers, who ask themselves if their love will endure always and forever. And if it does, will it be the same as it is now? This chapter argues that romantic love can indeed endure for a long time without necessarily declining into something like friendship or companionate love. In order to show this, it provides various conceptual tools that can help to understand enduring emotions in general and enduring romantic love in particular, such as the distinctions between acute, extended, and enduring emotions, or between superficial and profound emotions. Finally, it tests this position by applying it to the issues of old age, sickness, and death, as exemplified in Michael Haneke’s film Amour.