Is it Better to Love Better Things?

In Tony Milligan, Christian Maurer & Kamila Pacovská (eds.), Love and Its Objects (2015)
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Abstract

It seems better to love virtue than vice, pleasure than pain, good than evil. Perhaps it's also better to love virtuous people than vicious people. But at the same time, it's repugnant to suggest that a mother should love her smarter, more athletic, better looking son than his dim, clumsy, ordinary brother. My task is to help sort out the conflicting intuitions about what we should love. In particular, I want to address a problem for the no-reasons view, the theory that love cannot be rationally justified. Since it seems better to love good people rather than evil villains, it appears that there are indeed reasons for (or, at least, against) love. Is it coherent to talk this way and deny that love can be justified? I think so and will explain how.

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Aaron Smuts
Rhode Island College

Citations of this work

The Amorality of Romantic Love.Arina Pismenny - 2021 - In Rachel Fedock, Michael Kühler & Raja Rosenhagen (eds.), Love, Justice, and Autonomy: Philosophical Perspectives. New York, NY, USA: pp. 23-42.
The Moral Psychology of Love (or How to Think About Love): Introduction.Arina Pismenny & Berit Brogaard - 2022 - In Arina Pismenny & Berit Brogaard (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Love. Lanham, MD 20706, USA: pp. 1-10.

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration.Peter Goldie - 2000 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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