Love and Attachment

Abstract

It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be noninstrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, "what, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?" In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them.

Interpersonal connection

“…A clear understanding of the relationship between interpersonal connection and attachment therefore enables us to avoid two extremes. On the one hand we can agree with Wonderly's claim that insofar as love involves attachment it is not purely altruistic and that this is a good thing (Wonderly, 2017). After all, when we are attached to someone, we pursue connection with the attachment‐figure, at least in part, because we think connecting with them as being good for us.…”

“…Wonderly correctly acknowledges that engagement with attachment figures is good for us insofar as they afford us security and that being deprived of this kind of engagement is bad for us insofar as it involves being deprived of such security. However, Wonderly infers from this that attachment is an egoistic, “essentially self‐interested attitude”: “We may care about others for their sakes”, Wonderly (2017, p. 243) writes, “but we are attached to others for our own”.…”

Grief, Continuing Bonds, and Unreciprocated Love

“…Unreciprocated love, even if it is authentic love, may then still be construed as a “lesser” type of love insofar as it gives a passive role to the loved person. The idea that a genuine object of personal love can be a treated as a disinterested and passive object of concern has been criticized by many philosophers of love (Ebels‐Duggan 2008; Foster 2009; Helm 2010; Wonderly 2017; McKeever 2019). If we were to treat the dead as such, this would present an important disanalogy between paradigmatic loving relationships and any continued connections we bear to the dead.…”

The Syndrome of Love

“…Let's begin by looking at those cases that tend to animate other theories of love. Some commentators focus on the love between romantic partners to theorize about romantic love (e.g., Giles 1994;Green 1997;Nozick 1989;and Wonderly 2017), while others focus on romantic love along with the love between close, non-romantic friends to theorize about interpersonal love (e.g., Abramson & Leite 2011;and Jollimore 2011). In opposition to this, however, is Harry Frankfurt's (2001: 6;2004: 43) insistence that parental love for children offers the most illuminating paradigm for theorizing about love.…”