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Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

Book Reviews

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The Reasons of Love
Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton University Press, 2004), 110pp., $19.95 (hdbk).

Reviewed by Bruce B. Suttle
Parkland College

Despite its elusive nature, most writers on love concentrate on one or more of four issues: 1) the object of love and whether loved objects are one sort of thing, or diverse (which includes the possible difference between specific and general love); 2) the type of state love is—whether love is a sensation or feeling, an attitude, an emotion, a belief, a volition, a desire, or some combination of these (which could require a distinction between loving and feeling love; 3) the relation between love and desire (which may be answered in the workings out of the previous issue); 4) the relation between love and volition (which has the central question of whether we love something because we value it, or value it because we love it). Of course, then there are the extended issues, such as love and community, love and friendship, the pathologies of love, etc. Furthermore, while most philosophers labor over what the reasons for love might be, they disagree as to whether that quality is a non-relational feature of a person or a thing, something about the object of love in its own right. Finally, we have the likes of Harry Frankfurt, who denies that there are reasons for love. On the contrary, he contends that love is a structure of desires for states of affairs involving the object of one’s love, a particular mode of caring that is not a response to some antecedent reason. And the best and purest form of love is self-love, which Frankfurt distinguishes from selfishness or self-indulgence.

Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love1 is, in one sense, the culmination of his three decades of reflections on love, while, in another sense, it is not an adequate substitute for the careful studying of his earlier papers.2

Frankfurt rejects the traditional moral question of "How should I live?" as most fundamental, for morality provides, "at most only a severely limited and insufficient answer to the question" (7); and, contrary to what is widely presumed, "moral considerations are not necessarily overriding"(8). He replaces the "How should…" question with the non-moral question of "What do I desire?" And the answer "requires us simply to understand what it is that we ourselves really care about, and to be decisively and robustly confident in caring about it"(28).

By its very nature, loving entails both that we regard its objects as valuable in themselves and that we have no choice but to adopt those objects as our final ends. Insofar as love is the creator both of inherent or terminal value and of importance, then, it is the ultimate ground of practical rationality (56).

By stripping the fundamental question of its moral moorings, Frankfurt is able to deny any problems with wholeheartedly loving horrendously bad things, as well as opening the possibility of one being a loving person while "being dreadfully and irredeemably wicked"(98).3

Even though Frankfurt considers what people want or desire the fundamental issue, such a ubiquitous notion he judges "heavily overburdened and a bit limp"(10). To correct this deficiency is one of Frankfurt’s central projects. He sets out to achieve this by articulating three additional notions: "What we care about, what is important to us, and what we love" (11), each warranting distinct consideration. Frankfurt’s explication of these three notions allows him to conclude that there are four necessary conceptual features of love in general. First, what we love is not a set of qualities or a class of things, but a particular object—be it concrete or abstract—that is not merely an instantiation of some universal type. Unlike impersonal caring that is exhibited in one’s charitable concerns where any person in need qualifies, love is personal, specific, and not capable of substitution. Second, our love is disinterested in the sense that we care for our beloved for its own sake, instead of as a means to some ulterior end. The specific beloved becomes important to us because we love it, rather than we love it because it is important to us. Third, when one loves, one identifies with the beloved, not only with what promotes the interests of the beloved, but with the interests themselves. Accordingly, one benefits or suffers depending upon whether those interests are adequately served. Fourth, whether or what one loves is not a matter of one’s beliefs or feelings, but with the configuration of the will that concerns itself with what is good for the beloved. This involuntary commitment to the beloved is something over which one has no control, and is possible even if one dislikes the beloved, even if one has very good reasons not to care for the beloved.4

Given these four defining features of love, Frankfurt maintains that "it is apparent that self-love—notwithstanding its questionable reputation—is in a certain way the purest of all modes of love" (80). This is because self-love is "most likely to be unequivocal and unalloyed…(and accordingly) there is a particularly snug fit between self-love and the conceptually indispensable conditions by which the nature of love is defined" (80). Specifically, 1) the love one has for oneself cannot coherently be considered transferable to an equivalent substitute; 2) self-love is nearly always disinterested, in that it is motivated by no interests other than those of the beloved; 3) with self-love one’s interests and those of one’s beloved are identical; 4) not only is self-love outside of our immediate voluntary control, it is the most natural of all forms of love. Unique to self love, "there can be no discrepancy between the interests of the self-lover and those of the person to whom his self-love is devoted" (82). Yet, "the most rudimentary form of self-love…consists in nothing more than the desire of a person to love" (90).

For Frankfurt, wholehearted love is love without any reverberating subjective uncertainties—solid, secure, and resolute, with clarity of purpose and direction. Self-love that is wholehearted offers the best chance of flourishing, of thriving as persons who are free from perturbation in their caring. To be fortunate enough to love in this confident manner liberates one from the debilitating uncertainty as to how to live, freeing oneself of the fear of floundering in one’s own ambivalence (65). And, although rare, one can love oneself without loving anything else. This form of self-love is simply a desire to love, which no one can help having. Humans are so constituted to love loving (90).

Frankfurt ends his book with words of solace for those few who are unable to love themselves. In view of the requirements for self-love as Frankfurt conceives it, perhaps Iago’s observation would have been a more fitting ending:
Oh, villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself (Othello).

While nicely written and seemingly clear, some readers might be put off, if not bewildered, by Frankfurt’s triadic faculty model of self (mind/feelings/will), especially when the will is reified and described as being in opposition to or unified with the person (45f, 91ff). Others might be disengaged once they realize that Frankfurt neither acknowledges nor criticizes alternative views of love (save Kant in one respect and Augustine in another), and, rather than offering arguments, he makes claims, gives what pass for examples, and leaves it up to the reader to recognize the obvious.

No doubt anyone interested in philosophical psychology or in love particularly will find Frankfurt’s thoughts generally clear, accessible, and enlightening as well as challenging in many respects. But such is not sufficient to warrant the book’s adoption as a text. This has less to do with possible faults in it than to its admitted limited scope (32), given the wide, diverse, and contentious nature of the topic. There is neither an index nor a bibliography.

Endnotes

1. The Reasons of Love is the revised version of the Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Lectures in Philosophy at Princeton University ("Some Thoughts about Norms, Love, and the Goals of Life,") and the winner of the "Professional/Scholarly Publishing Award in Philosophy," Association of American Publishers.

2. Frankfurt’s earlier thoughts on love can be found among the essays in The Importance of What We Care About (1988), Necessity, Volition and Love (1999), and "Some Mysteries of Love," Lindley Lectures (2001).

3. However, a careful reader is likely to notice that on other occasions Frankfurt cites with approval the Christian prescription to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (77), which clearly implies morally admirable qualities of loving.

4. Again, a careful reader will likely be jolted by Frankfurt’s warning that "it is important that we be careful to whom and to what we give our love" (63), given his characterizing love as "not under our direct and immediate voluntary control" (44).

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