Reasons of Love and Relation Between Care and Love Essay The topics for the paper, if you choose to write on Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love are listed bel

Reasons of Love and Relation Between Care and Love Essay The topics for the paper, if you choose to write on Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love are listed below. Choose one essay topic. All the questions are to be answered from a close reading and explication of Harry Frankfurt’s Reasons of Love.

TOPIC ONE: For our author, what is love? (p. 41f, see also p. 79f). What is the role of love in the life of a person? What is “care” and what is its relationship to love? What does he means by “reasons of love”?

OR

TOPIC TWO: Why does our author argue that ‘right-thinking people’ are in error when they suppose “that anyone ought to do better with his love than turn it upon himself”? (p. 68). What is at stake for one’s way of living a human life in this argument concerning self-love and the love of another? How does his way of presenting self-love differ from what the ‘right-thinking people’ present about self-love? Is he correct when he states: “To be wholehearted is to love oneself”? (p. 95)

OR

TOPIC THREE: In Chapter one, section 8, our author develops his argument for his definition of human freedom. Under what condition can a human enjoy “as much freedom as it is reasonable for us to desire”? (p. 20). What is this freedom for Frankfurt and how does it compare, and contrast, with the understanding of human freedom we find in the text of Locke or in that of Rousseau?

**ALL READINGS ARE ATTACHED** The Reasons of Love
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The
Reasons
of Love
H a r r y G. F r a n k f u r t
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2004 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frankfurt, Harry G., 1929–
The reasons of love / Harry G. Frankfurt
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-691-09164-1 (alk. paper)
1. Practical reason. 2. Love. I. Title.
BC177.F69 2004
177?.7—dc21
2003050428
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon
Printed on acid-free paper.?
www.pupress.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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Contents
One
The Question: “How Should We Live?”
1
Two
On Love, and Its Reasons
33
Three
The Dear Self
69
Acknowledgment
101
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The Reasons of Love
One
The Question: “How Should We Live?”
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We have it on the authority both of Plato and of Aristotle that philosophy began in wonder. People wondered
about various natural phenomena that they found surprising.
They also puzzled over what struck them as curiously recalcitrant logical, or linguistic, or conceptual problems that
turned up unexpectedly in the course of their thinking. As
an example of what led him to wonder, Socrates mentions
the fact that it is possible for one person to become shorter
than another without shrinking in height. We might wonder
why Socrates should have been made at all uncomfortable
by such a shallow paradox. Evidently the problem struck him
not only as more interesting, but also as considerably more
dif?cult and disturbing, than it strikes us. Indeed, referring
to this problem and others like it, he says, “Sometimes I get
quite dizzy with thinking of them.”1
Aristotle gives a list of several rather more compelling examples of the sorts of things by which the ?rst philosophers
were led to wonder. He mentions self-moving marionettes
(apparently the Greeks had them!); he mentions certain cosmological and astronomical phenomena; and he mentions
the fact that the side of a square is incommensurable with
the diagonal. It is hardly appropriate to characterize these
things merely as puzzling. They are startling. They are marvels. The response they inspired must have been deeper, and
more unsettling, than simply—as Aristotle puts it—a “wondering that the matter is so.”2 It must have been resonant
with feelings of mystery, of the uncanny, of awe.
Whether the earliest philosophers were trying to fathom
the secrets of the universe, or just trying to ?gure out how
1
Theaetetus 155d.
All of my quotations in this chapter from Aristotle are from his Metaphysics 982–83.
1
2
4 Chapter One
to think clearly about some quite ordinary fact or how to
express some commonplace observation accurately, Aristotle
reports that their inquiries had no further and more practical
goals. They were eager to overcome their ignorance, but that
was not because they thought they needed the information.
In fact, their ambition was exclusively speculative or theoretical. They wanted nothing more than to dispel their initial
surprise that things are as they are, by developing a reasoned
understanding of why it would be unnatural—or even impossible—for things to be any other way. When it becomes
clear that something was only to be expected, that dissipates
whatever sense of surprise it may initially have engendered.
As Aristotle remarks concerning right triangles, “there is
nothing which would surprise a geometer so much as if the
diagonal turned out to be commensurable.”3
I am going to be concerned here with, among other
things, certain discomforts and disturbances by which
human beings are rather typically beset. These differ both
from the sorts of discomforts and disturbances that may be
caused by logical dif?culties, such as the one Socrates mentions, and from those that tend to arise in response to fea3
Aristotle is talking here, of course, about the Pythagorean theorem.
There is a nice story about this. When Pythagoras made his extraordinary
discovery, he was profoundly shaken by the nearly incredible, and nearly
unintelligible, but nonetheless rigorously demonstrable fact that the
square root of two is not a rational number. He was stunned by the recognition that there is something that, in Aristotle’s words, “cannot be measured by even the smallest unit.” Now in addition to being a mathematician, Pythagoras was the leader of a religious cult; and he was so deeply
moved by his theorem—by its revelation of the mysteriously nonrational
character of mathematical reality—that he ordered his followers in the cult
to sacri?ce a hundred oxen. The story is that, ever since then, whenever a
powerful new truth is discovered, the oxen tremble.
The Question: “How Should We Live?” 5
tures of the world like those on Aristotle’s list. They are more
practical and, because they pertain closely to our interest in
trying to manage our lives sensibly, more urgent. What
presses us to inquire into them is not disinterested curiosity,
or puzzlement, or wonder, or awe. It is psychic distress of
another variety altogether: a kind of nagging anxiety, or unease. The dif?culties we encounter in thinking about these
things may sometimes, perhaps, make us dizzy. They are
more likely, however, to cause us to feel troubled, restless,
and dissatis?ed with ourselves.
The topics to which this book is devoted have to do with
the ordinary conduct of life. They pertain, in one way or
another, to a question that is both ultimate and preliminary:
how should a person live? Needless to say, this is not a
question of only theoretical or abstract interest. It concerns
us concretely, and in a very personal way. Our response to
it bears directly and pervasively upon how we conduct ourselves—or, at least, upon how we propose to do so. Perhaps even more signi?cantly, it affects how we experience
our lives.
When we seek to understand the world of nature, we do
so at least partly in the hope that this will enable us to live
within it more comfortably. To the extent that we know our
way around our environment, we feel more at home in the
world. In our attempts to settle questions concerning how
to live, on the other hand, what we are hoping for is the
more intimate comfort of feeling at home with ourselves.
Philosophical issues pertaining to the question of how a
person should live fall within the domain of a general
theory of practical reasoning. The term “practical reasoning”
refers to any of the several varieties of deliberation in which
2
6 Chapter One
people endeavor to decide what to do, or in which they undertake to evaluate what has been done. Among these is the
particular variety of deliberation that focuses especially upon
problems of moral evaluation. This species of practical reasoning naturally receives, from philosophers and from others
as well, a great deal of attention.
It is unquestionably important for us to understand what
the principles of morality require, what they endorse, and
what they forbid. It goes without saying that we need to take
moral considerations seriously. In my opinion, however, the
importance of morality in directing our lives tends to be exaggerated. Morality is less pertinent to the shaping of our
preferences and to the guidance of our conduct—it tells us
less of what we need to know about what we should value
and how we should live—than is commonly presumed. It is
also less authoritative. Even when it does have something
relevant to say, it does not necessarily have the last word.
With regard to our interest in the sensible management of
those aspects of our lives that are normatively signi?cant,
moral precepts are both less comprehensively germane and
less de?nitive than we are often encouraged to believe.
People who are scrupulously moral may nonetheless be
destined by de?ciencies of character or of constitution to lead
lives that no reasonable person would freely choose. They
may have personal defects and inadequacies that have nothing much to do with morality but that make it impossible
for them to live well. For example, they may be emotionally
shallow; or they may lack vitality; or they may be chronically
indecisive. To the extent that they do actively choose and
pursue certain goals, they may devote themselves to such
insipid ambitions that their experience is generally dull and
without ?avor. In consequence, their lives may be relentlessly
The Question: “How Should We Live?” 7
banal and hollow, and—whether or not they recognize this
about themselves—they may be dreadfully bored.
There are those who maintain that people who are not
moral cannot be happy. Perhaps it is true that being moral
is an indispensable condition for a satisfying life. It is certainly not, however, the only condition that is indispensable.
Sound moral judgment is not even the only condition that
is indispensable in evaluating courses of conduct. Morality
can provide at most only a severely limited and insuf?cient
answer to the question of how a person should live.
It is often presumed that the demands of morality are inherently preemptive—in other words, that they must always
be accorded an overriding precedence over all other interests
and claims. This strikes me as implausible. Moreover, so far
as I can see, there is no very persuasive reason to believe that
it is so. Morality is most particularly concerned with how our
attitudes and our actions should take into account the needs,
the desires, and the entitlements of other people.4 Now why
must that be regarded as being, without exception, the most
compelling thing in our lives? To be sure, our relationships
with other people are enormously important to us; and the
requirements of morality to which they give rise are therefore
undeniably weighty. However, it is dif?cult to understand
why we should assume that nothing can ever, in any circum4
There are, of course, other ways to construe the subject matter of
morality. However, de?ning it as concerned with our relationships to others—rather than in a more Aristotelian mode, say, as concerned with the
ful?llment of our essential nature—has the advantage of making especially
salient what many people ?nd to be the deepest and most dif?cult issue
with which moral theory has to contend: namely, the seemingly inescapable possibility of con?ict between the claims of morality and those of
self-interest.
8 Chapter One
stances, count more heavily with us than those relationships,
and that moral considerations must invariably be accepted as
weightier than considerations of all other kinds.
What misleads people in this matter may be the supposition that the only alternative to accepting the requirements
of morality consists in greedily permitting oneself to be
driven by self-interest. Perhaps they assume that when
someone is reluctant to submit his behavior to moral constraints, it must be that he is motivated by nothing more
elevated than a narrow desire for some bene?t to himself.
This might naturally make it seem that even though there
are circumstances in which morally proscribed conduct may
be understandable, and maybe even forgivable, that sort of
conduct can never be worthy of admiration or of genuine
respect.
However, even quite reasonable and respectable people
?nd that other things may sometimes mean more to them,
and make stronger claims upon them, than either morality
or themselves. There are modes of normativity that are quite
properly compelling but that are grounded neither in moral
nor in egoistic considerations. A person may legitimately be
devoted to ideals—for instance, aesthetic, cultural, or religious ideals—whose authority for him is independent of the
desiderata with which moral principles are distinctively concerned; and he may pursue these nonmoral ideals without
having his own personal interests in mind at all. Although
it is widely presumed that moral claims are necessarily overriding, it is far from clear that assigning a higher authority
to some nonmoral mode of normativity must always be—in
every circumstance and regardless of the pertinent magnitudes—a mistake.
The Question: “How Should We Live?” 9
Authoritative reasoning about what to do and how to
behave is not limited to moral deliberation. Its scope extends, as I have suggested, to evaluations in terms of various
nonmoral modes of normativity that also bear upon the conduct of life. The theory of normative practical reasoning is
therefore more inclusive, with respect to the types of deliberation that it considers, than moral philosophy.
It is deeper as well. This is because it embraces issues
pertaining to evaluative norms that are more comprehensive
and more ultimate than the norms of morality. Morality does
not really get down to the bottom of things. After all, it is
not suf?cient for us to recognize and to understand the moral
demands that may properly be made on us. That is not
enough to settle our concerns about our conduct. In addition, we need to know how much authority it is reasonable
for us to accord to those demands. Morality itself cannot
satisfy us about this.
There may be some individuals for whom a commitment
to being morally virtuous is a categorically dominant personal ideal. Being moral is, under all conditions, more
important to them than anything else. Such people will naturally accept moral requirements as unconditionally overriding. That is not, however, the only intelligible or the only
appealing design for a human life. We may ?nd that other
ideals and other measures of value attract us, and that they
recommend themselves to us forcefully as reasonable competitors for our controlling allegiance. Accordingly, even
after we have accurately identi?ed the commands of the
moral law, there still remains—for most of us—the more
fundamental practical question of just how important it is to
obey them.
3
10 Chapter One
When philosophers or economists or others attempt to
analyze the various structures and strategies of practical
reasoning, they generally draw upon a more or less standard
but nonetheless rather meager conceptual repertoire. Perhaps the most elementary as well as the most indispensable
of these limited resources is the notion of what people
want—or, synonymously (at least according to the somewhat
procrustean convention that I shall adopt here), what they
desire. This notion is rampantly ubiquitous. It is also heavily
overburdened, and a bit limp. People routinely deploy it in
a number of different roles, to refer to a disparate and unruly
assortment of psychic conditions and events. Moreover, its
various meanings are rarely distinguished; nor is there much
effort to clarify how they are related. These matters are generally left carelessly unde?ned in the blunt usages of common sense and ordinary speech.
As a result, our understanding of various signi?cantly
problematic aspects of our lives has tended to remain partial
and blurred. The standard repertoire of concepts is handy,
but it does not provide adequately for the clari?cation of
certain very important phenomena. These phenomena must
be brought into sharper focus. Therefore, the usual array of
conceptual resources needs to be enriched by the articulation
of some additional notions. These notions, too, like the notion of desire, are both commonplace and fundamental. To
an unfortunate extent, however, they have been neglected.
4
It is frequently insuf?cient to identify the motives that
guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our
thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various
things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explana-
5
The Question: “How Should We Live?” 11
tory to say that there is something we care about, or—in a
phrase that I shall employ (perhaps a bit willfully) as closely
equivalent to this—something we regard as important to
ourselves. In certain cases, moreover, what moves us is an
especially notable variant of caring: namely, love. In proposing to expand the repertoire upon which the theory of practical reason relies, these are the additional concepts that I have
in mind: what we care about, what is important to us, and
what we love.
There are signi?cant relationships, of course, between
wanting things and caring about them. Indeed, the notion
of caring is in large part constructed out of the notion of
desire. Caring about something may be, in the end, nothing
more than a certain complex mode of wanting it. However,
simply attributing desire to a person does not in itself convey
that the person cares about the object he desires. In fact, it
does not convey that the object means anything much to him
at all. As everyone knows, many of our desires are utterly
inconsequential. We don’t really care about those desires.
Satisfying them is of no importance to us whatever.
This need not be because the desires are weak. The intensity of a desire consists in its capacity to push other inclinations and interests out of the way. Sheer intensity, however,
implies nothing as to whether we really care about what we
want. Differences in the strengths of desires may be due to
all sorts of things that are quite independent of our evaluative
attitudes. They may be radically incommensurate with the
relative importance to us of the desired objects.
It is true, of course, that if we happen to want something
very badly, it is natural for us to care about avoiding the
discomfort that we will suffer should our desire be frustrated.
From our caring about this, however, it does not follow that
12 Chapter One
we care about satisfying the desire. The reason is that it may
be possible for us to avoid the frustration in another way—
that is, not by obtaining the desired object but by giving up
the desire instead; and that alternative may appeal to us
more. People sometimes quite reasonably attempt to rid
themselves entirely of certain desires, rather than to satisfy
them, when they believe that satisfying the desires would be
unworthy or harmful.
It will not help to augment the notion of what people
want by ranking their desires in an order of preference. This
is because a person who wants one thing more than another
may not regard the former as being any more important to
him than the latter. Suppose that someone who needs to kill
a little time decides to do so by watching television, and that
he chooses to watch a certain program because he prefers
it to the others that are available. We cannot legitimately
conclude that watching this program is something that he
cares about. He watches it, after all, only to kill time. The
fact that he prefers it to the others does not entail that he
cares more about watching it than about watching them, because it does not entail that he cares about watching it at all.
Caring about something differs not only from wanting it,
and from wanting it more than other things. It differs also
from taking it to be intrinsically valuable. Even if a person
believes that something has considerable intrinsic value, he
may not regard it as important to himself. In attributing intrinsic value to something, we do perhaps imply that it would
make sense for someone to desire it for its own sake—that
is, as a ?nal end, rather than merely as a means to something
else. However, our belief that having a certain desire would
not be unreasonable does not imply that we ourselves actu-
The Question: “How Should We Live?” 13
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