Love and Justice: a Paradox?

Abstract

Three claims about love and justice cannot be simultaneously true and therefore entail a paradox: (1) Love is a matter of justice. (2) There cannot be a duty to love. (3) All matters of justice are matters of duty. The first claim is more controversial. To defend it, I show why the extent to which we enjoy the good of love is relevant to distributive justice. To defend (2) I explain the empirical, conceptual and axiological arguments in its favour. Although (3) is the most generally endorsed claim of the three, I conclude we should reject it in order to avoid the paradox.

Unrequited Love, Self-victimisation and the Target of Appropriate Resentment

“…I am willing to go even further than her, and suggest that, if such a need is indeed very significant and its frustration entails great emotional suffering, or an inability to function well in some central spheres of life, then inequalities in how well we are loved are concerns of justice. 4 (Brownlee 2013;Gheaus 2017). Like Carlsson, I also believe that no one can owe us romantic love, and hence a failure to return romantic love cannot in itself be a breach of duty.…”

“…This could mean that there is an agent of justice that is called to do something to ameliorate the situation: For instance, states may bear a duty to create the conditions in which romantic love can flourish, such as ensuring that all are educated, from a young age, about the virtues and perils of personal relationships; and that people have sufficient free time to dedicate to the cultivation of loving relationships. In addition, it may mean that states bear a duty to create social environments sufficiently inclusive to optimise the chances that everybody is able to give and receive romantic love(Gheaus 2017; Brownlee 2020). But it could also mean that we are dealing with a failure of justice understood in a purely evaluative sense, as the description of a state of affairs, rather than in a directly normative sense -that is, as generating a duty for a particular agent(Gheaus 2013).5 Although, arguably, there can be a breach of duty if the reason for failing to return love is an objectionable attitude towards the lover.…”

Feasibility and social rights

“…This fact is a particular issue for social rights because, in many places, they also infer rights to relationships: social interactions characterised by relational emotions such as friendship, love, and/or romance. Traditionally, relational emotions have not been seen as “commandable” in the way needed to be eligible for duties (Gheaus, 2017; Kant, 2017; Liao, 2006) – if this is true, then it seems as if there could be no duty to provide another with a personal relationship, given the unfeasibility of doing so at will. As a result, it might be that social rights are specially unfeasible – and therefore non-rights – given the claims they aim to realise, irrespective of how important such things are for individuals’ interests.…”

Jugend, romantische Liebe und das gute Leben

“…Romantische Liebe während der Jugend ist nicht unmittelbar der Verteilung durch den Staat zugänglich, da es sich nicht um ein entsprechendes materielles Gut handelt, aber der Staat hat dennoch mehrere Interventionsmöglichkeiten, die beeinflussen, ob und wie romantische Liebe während der Jugend möglich ist, und daraus folgend hat er diese Interventionen auch gerecht zu setzen. Anca Gheaus etwa hat argumentiert, dass Liebe ein Gut der Gerechtigkeit ist, insofern diese für ein gutes Leben wichtig ist und der Staat ihre Verteilung beeinflussen kann (Gheaus 2017). Dies gilt auch für Jugendliche.…”