Against Beneficence: A Normative Account of Love

Ebels-Duggan, Kyla

doi:10.1086/592310

Cited by 53 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…I learned this point from Ebels-Duggan (2008). Ebels-Duggan actually holds a slightly stronger view than the one I am offering here: that you should grant presumptive epistemic deference as well as practical authority to the value of your partner's ends.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The authority of God and the meaning of the atonement

Davis

2014

Rel. Stud.

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Substitution and satisfaction theories of the atonement connect suffering or punishment to the possibility of forgiveness. I argue that even the most sophisticated versions of these theories cannot explain why the atonement was necessary. Instead, I suggest that the meaning of the atonement is in establishing the authority of God. God's authority, on this view, is analogous to the authority of a parent or friend. Christ's experience changed God to make him more like his children, and thereby to share a relationship of authority with them. On this proposal, the atonement is an act of divine humility.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The authority of God and the meaning of the atonement

Davis

2014

Rel. Stud.

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“…I wouldn't want to say that these people are failing, whether through their own fault or not, to respond to reasons their relationship gives them, let alone call their love into question; they simply haven't established a relationship in which the particularity of their children plays a part. Kyla Ebels‐Duggan argues that the beneficence in terms of which Frankfurt defines love is an appropriate attitude when directed at infants and persons whose agency is in some way impaired, but that among mature, competent agents, ‘love directs us to share in each other's ends, doing things with each other’ (Ebels‐Duggan : 156). Altruistic love may sometimes be appropriate even in that demographic—consider, for example, whether the kin of a sane, rational but thoroughly evil individual should share his ends out of love.…”

Section: Frankfurt: Love Sans Cognitive Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Defense of Trait‐Based Love

López

2016

European J of Philosophy

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It is widely believed that a person's traits can function as reasons for loving her. (Many a metropolitan rag, for instance, carries lonely hearts ads that attest to this belief with their laundry lists of coveted characteristics.) Notable contemporary work in the philosophy of love has taken the rejection of this premise as its point of departure. As far as I can tell, none of that work has engaged with a careful philosophical exposition of the view under discussion. In the following pages, I will defend the idea of trait‐based love against three of its critics and one of its advocates. I will discuss work on this topic by Harry Frankfurt, Niko Kolodny and David Velleman, arguing that their criticisms fail and that the alternatives they offer to trait‐based love create more difficulties than they solve. What these authors have in common is a deflationary approach to love that reduces it to a beneficent disposition, a valuing relationship and a visceral form of moral regard, respectively. I will compare these to the multiplex, nuanced depiction of trait‐based love in Plato's Symposium. While it is plausible that love can motivate a beneficent disposition, develop in relationships and entails moral regard, I will argue that the attempt to reduce it to any of the foregoing fails. Frankfurt, Kolodny and Velleman reject trait‐based love in part because they think it would differ in unacceptable ways from the love most of us practice. Plato advocates the cultivation of a love that in some respects resembles the picture of trait‐based love the contemporary authors balk at. However, unlike those critics, he appreciates that trait‐based love need not resemble the ideal he proposes. His richer view of love accounts for elements such as need and feeling that the contemporary thinkers are driven to implausibly bracket as distractions. As I will try to show, the most compelling criticisms of Platonic love do not tell against its responsiveness to the loved one's traits. I will argue that trait‐based love is consistent with an intuitive picture of love and that this commonsense approach is more defensible than competing views in these texts. These authors' disagreements about what can count as reasons for love are bound up with the differences in what each takes love to be. Thus, in the course of arguing for trait‐based love, I will critically assess their various proposals as to the nature of love.

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“…My aim in this essay is to refine and defend this thought that the decision ought to be left to the friend whose end it is. In certain circumstances of disagreement between friends, doing what one judges right or best will count as Cocking and Kennett 1998, Frankfurt 1999, Kolodny 2003, Raz 1989, Scheffler 2001, and Westlund 2009 There is a dispute in the literature about the practical reasons close friendship gives rise to: Frankfurt (1999) argues that they are reasons to promote the friend's well-being, while Ebels-Duggan (2008) argues that they arise out of sharing in your friend's ends. Though I side with Ebels-Duggan, I expect that these views are not very far apart, once we understand a person's well-being as including, in large part, the realization of their ends.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Good Friend Will Help You Move a Body: Friendship and the Problem of Moral Disagreement

Koltonski

2016

The Philosophical Review

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On the shared-ends account of close friendship, proper care for a friend as an agent requires seeing yourself as having important reasons to accommodate and promote the friend's valuable ends for the friend's own sake. However, that friends share ends doesn't inoculate them against disagreements about how to pursue those ends. This essay defends the claim that, in certain circumstances of reasonable disagreement, proper care for a friend as a practical and moral agent requires allowing your friend's judgment to decide what you are to do, even when you disagree with that judgment (and even when the judgment is in fact mistaken). In these instances, your friendship can make it the case that you may not act on your own practical and even moral judgments because, at those times, you have a duty as their close friend to defer to their judgments. As a result, treating your friend properly as a responsible agent can require that you assist them in committing what may in fact be serious moral wrongs.

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Against Beneficence: A Normative Account of Love

Cited by 53 publications

References 7 publications

The authority of God and the meaning of the atonement

The authority of God and the meaning of the atonement

In Defense of Trait‐Based Love

A Good Friend Will Help You Move a Body: Friendship and the Problem of Moral Disagreement

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