Love as a Guide to Morals

155 Pages·2012·0.8 MB·English

by  Andrew Fitz-Gibbon

LOVE AS A GUIDE TO MORALS
VIBS
Volume 249
Robert Ginsberg
Founding Editor
Leonidas Donskis
Executive Editor
Associate Editors
G. John M. Abbarno Steven V. Hicks
George Allan Richard T. Hull
Gerhold K. Becker Michael Krausz
Raymond Angelo Belliotti Olli Loukola
Kenneth A. Bryson Mark Letteri
C. Stephen Byrum Vincent L. Luizzi
Robert A. Delfino Hugh P. McDonald
Rem B. Edwards Adrianne McEvoy
Malcolm D. Evans J.D. Mininger
Roland Faber Peter A. Redpath
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Arleen L. F. Salles
Francesc Forn i Argimon John R. Shook
Daniel B. Gallagher Eddy Souffrant
William C. Gay Tuija Takala
Dane R. Gordon Emil Višňovský
J. Everet Green Anne Waters
Heta Aleksandra Gylling James R. Watson
Matti Häyry John R. Welch
Brian G. Henning Thomas Woods
a volume in
Ethical Theory and Practice
ETP
Olli Loukola, Editor
LOVE AS A GUIDE TO MORALS
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon
With a Guest Foreword by
Barry L. Gan
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Cover photo: www.dreamstime.com
Cover Design: Studio Pollmann
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3530-0
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0805-5
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Printed in the Netherlands
Ethical Theory and Practice (ETP)

Olli Loukola
Editor

Other Titles in ETP

Michael H. Mitias. Friendship: A Central Moral Value. 2012. VIBS 239
True love in every moment praises God.
Longing love brings a sorrow sweet to the pure.
Seeking love belongs to itself alone.
Understanding love gives itself equally to all.
Enlightened love is mingled with the sadness of the world.
But selfless love bears an effortless fruit,
working so quietly even the body cannot say
how it comes and goes.

Mechtild of Magdeburg

Love’s hidden life is in the innermost being, unfathomable,
and then in turn is in an unfathomable connectedness with all existence.

Søren Kierkegaard
For Larry Ashley,
Mentor,
Good Friend,
Squash Player, and
Philosopher’s Philosopher
CONTENTS

Editorial Foreword xiii
OLLI LOUKOLA

Guest Foreword xv
BARRY L. GAN

Preface xix

A CT I Love and Morality 1

A CT II Love’s Complexity 13

ACT III Love’s Appearance: Eros 31

A CT IV Love’s Appearance: Friendship, Affection, and Agape 53

ACT V Love-Itself 69

ACT VI Love’s Practice 91

ACT VI I Epilogue 109

Endnotes 111

Bibliography 127

About Author 133

Index 135
EDITORIAL FOREWORD

Ethical questions are the primary questions of human existence. No matter
what else we do in our lives, sooner or later, ethical issues arise seriously af-
fecting our relationships, choices, and actions. At the same time, the language
of ethics contains an illusion of straightforwardness and immediate under-
standing. Just as is the case with ordinary language, most of us are fully com-
petent to use it, capable of expressing ourselves through it, and getting things
done with it, sometimes debating, other time agreeing. Ethics are integral to
who we are.
The paradigmatic mode for ethical language and discussion was set by
Socrates with his dialectical method some two and a half thousand years ago.
The Socratic dialogues contain the same deceptive illusion of easiness,
straightforwardness, and simplicity. They are comfortably readable and un-
derstandable with no prior philosophical expertise, and surely—as historians
have shown—Plato wrote them with this goal in mind. Yet this apparent sim-
plicity never diminished their value as philosophical texts in any manner, and
as we all know, the dialogues were, in fact, the starting point of the philo-
sophical enquiry of morality of our civilization.
This appearance of straightforwardness of ethical issues sometimes
cloaks the fact that answers to ethical dilemmas are hardly ever easy to find.
Moreover, it gives layperson no indication of the fact that philosophical ethi-
cal inquiry is a highly specialized, technical, and abstract skill, a techné.
Thus, the illusion of easiness of ethical discussion is deceptive indeed. Ethical
enquiry begins from the various human projections, reflections, and view-
points concerning ethical life. In this examination, it utilizes a variety of tech-
niques, empirical and theoretical data, conceptual analysis and argumentation,
and a range of methods and frames of reference. It is just this sort of ethical
inquiry is the explicit goal of this special series, Ethical Theory and Practice
(ETP), where this book is now published; that is, to describe, examine, and
analyze ethical issues through the understanding afforded to us by the various
academic disciplines. It is an enormously rich field of inquiry, bordering at
the far extremes of theory and practice.
The volume at hand, Love as a Guide to Morals, represents the goal of
ETP par excellence. At face value, it is highly readable, enticing, and fasci-
nating, following the best traditions of philosophical writing; yet at the same
time, it contains careful argumentation, detailed analysis, and enlightening
insights in the very same vein as the best of ethical inquiries. Text such as this
one would simply not be possible without thorough familiarity of ethical is-
sues, their philosophical underpinnings, and the methods used in their study.
Thus, the illusion of easiness of ethical discussion still prevails, but here, as in
best philosophical dialogues, the discussion is interwoven within the rich and
multifaceted fabric of our history, philosophy, and civilization. The easiness