The idea that morality is grounded in love rather than rules sounds appealing but it collapses once applied outside personal relationships. Love is subjective and unevenly distributed. People love their family more than strangers, their country more than foreigners. If morality is only love, then preference and bias become virtue. That is no foundation for fairness in law, politics, or daily life.
Rules and duties exist to correct for partiality. The point of justice is that it applies equally, even when love does not. A judge cannot acquit someone because she loves him, a doctor cannot favour a patient because he is charming. Love without principle too easily becomes nepotism or tribalism. The most brutal conflicts in history were driven by deep love for one’s own group, not lack of it.
Love matters for motivation. It can inspire people to act with kindness. But moral frameworks require more than sentiment. They need universality and consistency, which only rules and duties can provide. Murdoch’s vision mistakes a source of energy for the standard itself. Without shared norms, love does not scale beyond the private sphere.
How does one precisely define love for purposes of defining morality?
The article’s author was very imprecise, defining love and morality in subjective terms relating to one’s personal outlook and perceptions of others.
I’m not at all interested in subjective morality.
The reason most philosophers have defined morality and ethics in terms of duties and obligations is precisely to try to remove subjectivity. I’m not saying anyone has been successful, but other approaches don’t appear to lead towards objective morality.
This concept isn’t actually particularly novel in ethics as the article suggests. I’d argue that Kantian ethics is based fundamentally on the notion of love for mankind, aka treating mankind as the ultimate end for all of our actions. Zizek and a lot of contemporary philosophers also talk about love’s power to transcend ourselves which is instrumental for being more altruistic.
The most common definition in Critical Theory right now for love is a willingness to expend effort for someone else’s wellbeing. Although this can be related to attachment, it can also be decoupled entirely from it, similar to the concepts in The Brothers Karamazov
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I think you can find significantly older version of the same idea ("compassion" in Buddhism, maybe?), but that is an actual quote I can call to mind
The examples are a little flakey. For instance, a “change in perspective” can itself become a form of self-deception in which we choose to ignore or deny or distorts truths that are unpleasant to us. It’s one thing to be charitable and to restrain premature judgements or to recognize some kind of genuine prejudice operating within us. It’s another to be Pollyannish and to deny what you know.
But I didn’t come here to pick apart the article. Rather, I want to address the main thesis which concerns love, morality, and the relation between the two. The author mentions that there is precedent in certain religious traditions to link the two — it fact, you can also see precedent in philosophical thought, like that of the Greeks — but the terms are not really given anything resembling definitions.
So, what is morality? Morality concerns voluntary actions in relation to the good. What makes a good action? One that furthers the actualization of an agent’s nature, which is to say the good of the agent. This is why choosing to eat vegetables is generally morally good, because it provides us with nutrients that sustain and contribute to our flourishing, and morally bad to eat shards of glass, because these act in opposition to our flourishing, incompatible as they are with our metabolism and destructive given the composition of our digestive system. Morality is about the voluntary acts of the agent as they concern the good of the acting agent.
(Now, some may be surprised, given the common framing of moral questions as mostly or entirely concerning “the other”. The key is to understand that human nature is deeply social. To act in ways that are opposed to our social nature is detrimental to us. Thus, for a human agent to murder a human being, the most odious of acts, is for the acting human agent to do severe harm to themselves through the very act of murdering someone. The injustice of the act is deeply corrupting and destructive to the acting human agent.)
Now that we have a definition of what morality is, what is love? Love is a movement toward the good. Love can be classified into two kinds, namely, eros and agape. Eros is ascending love, or the agent’s willing of a good for the sake of his own good. The agent recognizes that he lacks some good that would perfect and actualize him as the kind of thing he is, recognizes it in another, and seeks that good for his sake. The agent seeks to receive. Apage, which in Latin is caritas from which we get “charity”, is descending love, or a willing of the good of the other. The agent seeks to give. Agape is a matter of actualizing the good of the other in some way, but acting for the sake of the good of the other also spiritually actualizes the good of the giver.
So, if morality concerns voluntary actions for the sake of the good, and love is a voluntary movement toward the good, then of course morality is intrinsically concerned with love.
This is pithy but brittle and I believe ultimately wrong. For example, if I wrong someone I hate, and then with a gun to my head I am forced to apologize when I wouldn't otherwise, I am not being moral.
Murdoch is unusual among philosophers in also being a world-class novelist. Her Black Prince is one of my favourites and explores the concepts described in the article.
There are some parts of London which are necessary and some which are contingent. Everywhere west of Earls Court is contingent, except for a few places along the river. I hate contingency. I want everything in my life to have a sufficient reason. Dave lived west of Earls Court, and this was another thing I had against him.
Ridiculous. Morality is about outcome, not intention, and love is decided retroactively after we experience the outcome of our interactions. I don’t care if you make a decision because you love me. If it’s a bad decision that screws up my future, then it’s still immoral.
I agree to some extent. If you're blinded by your own ignorance or selfishness then intentions seem less important. For example, parents that force their child to study medicine because of their own fixed ideas, depriving them of a happier and more fulfilling life as an artist.
But most people would argue that intention often plays a role. If I buy you a device that - unbeknownst to anyone - has a defect which makes it explode and you lose a limb, I would be incredibly sorry that it happened but the gift wouldn't be an immoral act.
Wow. You are looking for the dead internet everywhere, but here. All these robotic garbage about something so simply human. Get away from the computer a bit.
16 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 23.6 ms ] threadRules and duties exist to correct for partiality. The point of justice is that it applies equally, even when love does not. A judge cannot acquit someone because she loves him, a doctor cannot favour a patient because he is charming. Love without principle too easily becomes nepotism or tribalism. The most brutal conflicts in history were driven by deep love for one’s own group, not lack of it.
Love matters for motivation. It can inspire people to act with kindness. But moral frameworks require more than sentiment. They need universality and consistency, which only rules and duties can provide. Murdoch’s vision mistakes a source of energy for the standard itself. Without shared norms, love does not scale beyond the private sphere.
The article’s author was very imprecise, defining love and morality in subjective terms relating to one’s personal outlook and perceptions of others.
I’m not at all interested in subjective morality.
The reason most philosophers have defined morality and ethics in terms of duties and obligations is precisely to try to remove subjectivity. I’m not saying anyone has been successful, but other approaches don’t appear to lead towards objective morality.
The most common definition in Critical Theory right now for love is a willingness to expend effort for someone else’s wellbeing. Although this can be related to attachment, it can also be decoupled entirely from it, similar to the concepts in The Brothers Karamazov
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I think you can find significantly older version of the same idea ("compassion" in Buddhism, maybe?), but that is an actual quote I can call to mind
But I didn’t come here to pick apart the article. Rather, I want to address the main thesis which concerns love, morality, and the relation between the two. The author mentions that there is precedent in certain religious traditions to link the two — it fact, you can also see precedent in philosophical thought, like that of the Greeks — but the terms are not really given anything resembling definitions.
So, what is morality? Morality concerns voluntary actions in relation to the good. What makes a good action? One that furthers the actualization of an agent’s nature, which is to say the good of the agent. This is why choosing to eat vegetables is generally morally good, because it provides us with nutrients that sustain and contribute to our flourishing, and morally bad to eat shards of glass, because these act in opposition to our flourishing, incompatible as they are with our metabolism and destructive given the composition of our digestive system. Morality is about the voluntary acts of the agent as they concern the good of the acting agent.
(Now, some may be surprised, given the common framing of moral questions as mostly or entirely concerning “the other”. The key is to understand that human nature is deeply social. To act in ways that are opposed to our social nature is detrimental to us. Thus, for a human agent to murder a human being, the most odious of acts, is for the acting human agent to do severe harm to themselves through the very act of murdering someone. The injustice of the act is deeply corrupting and destructive to the acting human agent.)
Now that we have a definition of what morality is, what is love? Love is a movement toward the good. Love can be classified into two kinds, namely, eros and agape. Eros is ascending love, or the agent’s willing of a good for the sake of his own good. The agent recognizes that he lacks some good that would perfect and actualize him as the kind of thing he is, recognizes it in another, and seeks that good for his sake. The agent seeks to receive. Apage, which in Latin is caritas from which we get “charity”, is descending love, or a willing of the good of the other. The agent seeks to give. Agape is a matter of actualizing the good of the other in some way, but acting for the sake of the good of the other also spiritually actualizes the good of the giver.
So, if morality concerns voluntary actions for the sake of the good, and love is a voluntary movement toward the good, then of course morality is intrinsically concerned with love.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Prince_(novel)
Iris Murdoch Under the net, Chatto & Windus, 1954
your comment sounds insane. you live in the now not in the future.
Look up mens rea.
But most people would argue that intention often plays a role. If I buy you a device that - unbeknownst to anyone - has a defect which makes it explode and you lose a limb, I would be incredibly sorry that it happened but the gift wouldn't be an immoral act.