Stump, Eleonore - Love, By All Accounts

12/01/2006

Proceedings and Addresses of the APA

Author briefly reviews the three general approaches to the nature of love. The responsiveness account, the volitional account, and the relational account. Each has faults:

Responsiveness account: the features possessed by the beloved are also possessed by others, undercutting the non-substitutivity of love. Also love may alter when the intrinsic features of the beloved alter.

Volitional account: the will to love a the beloved could be equally applied to anyone else, for no good reason one way or another. Example: I do love you, but for no good reason.

Relational account: we value a relationship, a history, a connection, ongoing and interactive-- but Dante doesn't satisfy this account, since he loved Beatrice from afar and also had a wife Gemma Donati, who lived in another town (that he made no efforts to be close to). [This 'Dante Argument' is a poor reply to the relational account.]

Author turns to Thomas Acquinas' account of love, which is two-fold:

1) the desire the objective good of the beloved
2) the desire for union with the beloved

To desire the objective good of the beloved: you don't always know what you're desiring, since it is an objective matter what the good of the beloved is. This could mean that you think you love A, but you actually don't.

'Union' isn't well defined in Acquinas, but author argues that it provides for multiple 'offices of love', because different unions are appropriate due to different relational and intrinsic aspects of the beloved and the lover. Ex: friend, lover, parent. It also makes it possible to abuse an office of love by desiring a union that is outside of the appropriate office. Ex: incest, molesting priests

Self-love means you want to be integrated (union) and that you want the best for yourself.

The claim is that this account responds to much of the difficulties earlier found. The lover can list intrinsic/relational aspects of the beloved that fit into an office of love, and the volitional account is satisfied in spirit, since at it's backbone is the desire for the good of another.

Finally, this can give an account of forgiveness as trying to find an appropriate office of love.