The Reasons of Love

by Harry G. Frankfurt

Book Overview

This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691126240
• ISBN13: 9780691126241
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Delightful but dispiriting

The prose of Mr. Frankfurt is in this book as terse, concise and understandable as in previous works ("taking us seriously and getting it right", "on truth"), which does not mean hastily construed, as it is evident from the density of information and the carefulness of the choice of words that he has given long thoughts on the subject he reflects upon. So, as stated in the title of this review, it is delightful to read his essays in general, and this one in particular, which have the added benefit of not being cluttered with countless quotes and references, as so many philosphers today feel compelled to do (a vice specially conspicuous in European thinkers). There are a few of those quotes and references (St. Augustine and Bernard WIlliams come to mind), but always relevant and well serving the purpose of illuminating the main line of argument, instead of calling our attention to the erudition of the author. As for the content, that's the dispiriting fact, as the central thesis of the book is that traditional rationalist philosphies have got it wrong in trying to identify normative reasons that would authoritatively dictate how we should act (and, by extension, how we should live). As he states brilliantly in section 10 of the first chapter, to be able to ascertain the validity of those reasons of how to live we should have previously agreed on what kind of live is (objectively) valuable to pursue, so the whole argument suffers from an unavoidable circularity that makes the intent of finding those reasons (or answer the question they seek to settle rationally) necessarily bound to fail. We'll come back later to the implications of that inability of reason to help us determine the ultimate ends of our lives (which is not in itself original). Mr. Frankfurt contends in the rest of the book that asking for the ultimate reasons to live is getting the causality backwards, as instead of having reasons to care for things as ends in themselves what we find ourselves with is objects of our interests that we care about (being love the higher degree of caring that can exist) which in turn, because of them being important to us, give us reason to act in a certain way. All of that is well and good, and in line with some emotivist descrptions of normativity that can trace it's origins back to Hume (if not further, as it can be argued that Epicurus already held similar views four centuries BC). The more orignal part of the book is developed in the third chapter, where Mr. Frankfurt argues that the higher form of love, and a precondition for truly loving anything (thus truly caring about, and because of that, truly having reasons to act in certain ways) is self-love. I'm afraid I found this part less persuasive than the rest, as the self-love it postulates ends up seeming to be little more than a contrivance to justify having a reason to care for something in the first place (as both from stoic and buddhist stances it could be argued that it would be better for

Love and the Goals of Life

This short, beautifully written book by Henry Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, is based upon lectures Frankfurt delivered in 2000 and 2001 titled "Some Thoughts about Norms, Love, and the Goals of Life." In his book, Frankfurt argues that love and the ability to love give meaning to a person's life and that the purest form of love is, ultimately self-love. By 'love', Professor Frankfurt does not mean romantic love. Rather, he characterizes love as 1. disinterested, 2.personal, 3. involving the self-identification of the lover with the beloved and 4. constraining one's action -- a person loves someone or something because he or she can't help doing so. Frankfurt's book consists of three short chapters. The first chapter, "The Question: How shall we Live?" argues that caring and love, rather than moral behavior, gives meaning to a life and define a person's basic commitments and goals. Professor Frankfurt is not a rationalistic philosopher who extolls the power of reason to set goals. Rather, I think Frankfurt sees love as a matter of an existential commitment -- a person can't help loving what he or she loves. Love is not a question of thinking things through to conclude which subjects and persons merit one's care and concern. The second chapter "On Love and its Reason" elaborates on the opening chapter and offers the four-fold definition of love I have summarized above. Frankfurt points out that the loves of a person define what that person is and give his or her life goals and meaning. What a person loves is prior to reasoning about one's choices, as evidenced, for Frankfurt, by one of the purest and most common forms of love, the love of a parent for his or her young children. In love, ends and means intersect, in that actions taken in furtherance of the interest of the beloved become themselves final goals rather than only insturmental goals. In the final chapter, "The Dear Self", Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is ultimately self-love, rejecting critiques of self-love by philosophers such as Kant. In this chapter, I think, Frankfurt basically equates self-love with self-knowledge. A person who loves himself, for Frankfurt, knows his own mind, knows what he wants and cherishes, and pursues it wholeheartedly without ambivalence. Most people don't know what they want and are plagued by competing goals which restrict severely their ability to love wholeheartedly. Franfurt characterizes such behavior as showing an inability to fully love oneself. In addition to Kant, Frankfurt in this chapter makes insightful references to St Augustine, Kierkegaard, and especially Spinoza. Frankfurt distinguishes again between morality and love as establishing the contours of a meaningful human life. For Frankfurt, a person can love someone or something wholeheartedly and yet be immoral. In addition to the philosophers Frankfurt mentions, I think there are many parallels to existential thought, espec

characteristically rich

This is essentially a book on the nature of practical reason. Frankfurt's central claim is that "the origins of normativity do not lie... either in the transient incitements of personal feeling and desire [as some Humeans would have it], or in the severely anonymous requirements of eternal reason [as some Kantians would have it]. They lie in the contingent necessities of love." In other words, love is "the ultimate ground of practical rationality." The title reflects Frankfurt's main ambition, which is to identify and analyze the type of reasons for action provided by love. On the way to this goal, Frankfurt raises some difficult and important questions: How important is moral theory to the theory of practical reason? How important are moral values to the age-old question of how we should live? What is the nature of love? How does it differ from things like romantic attraction? If practical reason is grounded in love, does that mean that practical reason is essentially selfish? He also provides some fascinating answers--some of which are more elaborately defended than others. To give some examples: He argues, as he has before, that morality is in a sense overrated--at least by theorists of practical reason. Moral concerns and values do not always express what is most important to us; therefore, morality is not always the most important source of reasons for action. He also claims that love is characterized by four essential features. It manifests a disinterested concern for the beloved; it is "ineluctably personal"; it involves identification with the beloved; and it imposes constraints upon the will. Surprisingly, Frankfurt argues that the purest (though not necessarily most admirable or valuable) form of love is self-love. He then goes on to argue that once we properly distinguish self-love from self-indulgence we'll be able to see that self-love is not a form of selfishness. So to ground practical reason in love is decidedly not to explain all deliberation in terms of self-centred calculation. There are moments when it gets a little precious for my tastes, but Frankfurt's work is undeniably honest and deep. It seems driven by a genuine and earnest desire to figure things out--to say something clear, helpful, and even beautiful about things that matter to us. His prose is refreshingly jargon-free. It is certainly a work of analytic philosophy, but he distinguishes himself from many contemporary philosophers by refusing to limit himself to discussions carried on in the latest journals. This means that technical terminology is kept to a minimum, and there is virtually no name-dropping. A reader familiar with the literature in contemporary ethics and practical reason will get more out of this than a novice. But it is a virtue of Frankfurt's work (not just in this book) that anyone sufficiently curious about these matters could read and profit from it. He refers to classic authors such as Aristotle, Kant, St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Spinoza. B