The Reasons of Love

Rating:
Summary: A Book to be Almost Unconditionally Loved
Review: Reasons of Love consists of three somewhat revised lectures given at University College London, in 2001. I take these lectures to be a more filled-out analysis of love and caring from his earlier articles, particularly, "Autonomy, Necessity, and Love," "The Faintest Passion," "On the Necessity of Ideals," and "The Importance of What We Care About." In a sense, Reasons of Love might be thought of as the broader applicatory story left out of these earlier essays. While I find myself disagreeing with the how parts of the story are told, it seems that he has picked out something true of the human condition that has generally been disdained, specifically self-love. This is a fascinating piece of moral philosophy and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Book to be Almost Unconditionally Loved
Review: Reasons of Love consists of three somewhat revised lectures given at University College London, in 2001. I take these lectures to be a more filled-out analysis of love and caring from his earlier articles, particularly, "Autonomy, Necessity, and Love," "The Faintest Passion," "On the Necessity of Ideals," and "The Importance of What We Care About." In a sense, Reasons of Love might be thought of as the broader applicatory story left out of these earlier essays. While I find myself disagreeing with the how parts of the story are told, it seems that he has picked out something true of the human condition that has generally been disdained, specifically self-love. This is a fascinating piece of moral philosophy and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Truth in advertising.
Review: The decision by the author to (typically) dismiss romantic love as a defective mode of loving and to look instead to parent-young children relations and ultimately the nature of self love strikes this reader as depressing. Had the author simply written the text in ancient Greek he might have spared me the disappointment of thinking a truly tangled thicket was going to be explored by a master moral psychologist. Love that is freely chosen, freely renewed, and yet optimally persistent through nearly endless variation should I thought have engaged Prof. Frankfurt rather than incurred his suspicions as to its legitimacy. My fascination with agape, Frankfurt's major focus, extends slightly less than that with lawn darts. Since we are going to look so carefully at parent-infant relations as instances of love in its purest human form, perhaps some discussion of parent-adult child relations might have been in order. But again, the latter is a tangled thicket rather than a carefully manicured green. Nice tip at the end to always maintain one's sense of humour.