Love, Friendship and the Self

The book begins with a lengthy, detailed and informatively critical introduction which considers and rejects a variety of current alternative accounts of love (the account of love as union, the robust‐concern account, and versions of the accounts of love as valuing based on either bestowing value or appraising value). This part of the project is particularly significant because it sets out the terms of what we should be looking for in the account of love that is to follow, and what pitfalls and mistakes ought to be avoided in setting it out. First, Helm aims to develop an account of love which retains the notion of intimacy so characteristic of love as opposed to more general compassionate concern, without, however, collapsing into an egocentric view according to which intimate concerns are grounded in one's own interests (by taking one's interests as fully identified with the interests of the loved one). The task here is to give an account of love as having intrinsic value, one which maintains the intimate and personal account of love's nature, without, however, accepting the problematic egocentric view which seems to make love a matter of prudential considerations

Economics · Epistemology · Friendship · Identification (biology) · Philosophy of love · Sociology · Task (project management) · Value (mathematics) · Variety (cybernetics) · Computer Science · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil