A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Universal and Contextual Love of the Nonhuman World?
Authors: Aaltola, Elisa
Editors: Christensen, Anne-Marie S.; Forsberg, Niklas; Rodogno, Raffaele
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication year: 2025
Book title : Contextual Ethics
First page : 263
Last page: 284
ISBN: 978-3-031-97292-8
eISBN: 978-3-031-97293-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97293-5_13
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : No Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97293-5_13
Abstract
Although love is often viewed as a deeply personal and even sentimental emotion, with little to offer for serious societal and moral thought, in fact many significant figures also in Western philosophy have acknowledged the intricate connections between love, politics and ethics. For instance, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch have argued that love allows us to understand “the good,” and that its potentially powerful role should be recognised in political and moral thinking. In this chapter, I will examine two approaches to love: the universalistic depiction of love (offered by for instance Plato and Kant), and the contextual approach to love (favoured by for instance many feminist philosophers). I will argue that whilst the universalistic depiction offers valuable insights into the normative significance of love, the inherently contextual nature of love needs to be acknowledged. Further, I will propose that the epistemic state of “attention,” highlighted by Weil and Murdoch, offers a way to combine the universal and contextual dimensions of love in a manner that helps to illuminate why love is a key moral psychological ingredient of ethics.
Although love is often viewed as a deeply personal and even sentimental emotion, with little to offer for serious societal and moral thought, in fact many significant figures also in Western philosophy have acknowledged the intricate connections between love, politics and ethics. For instance, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch have argued that love allows us to understand “the good,” and that its potentially powerful role should be recognised in political and moral thinking. In this chapter, I will examine two approaches to love: the universalistic depiction of love (offered by for instance Plato and Kant), and the contextual approach to love (favoured by for instance many feminist philosophers). I will argue that whilst the universalistic depiction offers valuable insights into the normative significance of love, the inherently contextual nature of love needs to be acknowledged. Further, I will propose that the epistemic state of “attention,” highlighted by Weil and Murdoch, offers a way to combine the universal and contextual dimensions of love in a manner that helps to illuminate why love is a key moral psychological ingredient of ethics.
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