This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic ...
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This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love. Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about. The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes. Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.
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This short, beautifully written book by Henry Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, is based upon lectures Frankfurt delivered in 2000 and 2001 titled "Some Thoughts about Norms, Love, and the Goals of Life." In his book, Frankfurt argues that love and the ability to love give meaning to a person's life and that the purest form of love is, ultimately self-love. By 'love', Professor Frankfurt does not mean romantic love. Rather, he characterizes love as 1. disinterested, 2.personal, 3. involving the self-identification of the lover with the beloved and 4. constraining one's action -- a person loves someone or something because he or she can't help doing so.
Frankfurt's book consists of three short chapters. The first chapter, "The Question: How shall we Live?" argues that caring and love, rather than moral behavior, gives meaning to a life and define a person's basic commitments and goals. Professor Frankfurt is not a rationalistic philosopher who extolls the power of reason to set goals. Rather, I think Frankfurt sees love as a matter of an existential commitment -- a person can't help loving what he or she loves. Love is not a question of thinking things through to conclude which subjects and persons merit one's care and concern.
The second chapter "On Love and its Reason" elaborates on the opening chapter and offers the four-fold definition of love I have summarized above. Frankfurt points out that the loves of a person define what that person is and give his or her life goals and meaning. What a person loves is prior to reasoning about one's choices, as evidenced, for Frankfurt, by one of the purest and most common forms of love, the love of a parent for his or her young children. In love, ends and means intersect, in that actions taken in furtherance of the interest of the beloved become themselves final goals rather than only instrumental goals.
In the final chapter, "The Dear Self", Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is ultimately self-love, rejecting critiques of self-love by philosophers such as Kant. In this chapter, I think, Frankfurt basically equates self-love with self-knowledge. A person who loves himself, for Frankfurt, knows his own mind, knows what he wants and cherishes, and pursues it wholeheartedly without ambivalence. Most people don't know what they want and are plagued by competing goals which restrict severely their ability to love wholeheartedly. Frankfurt characterizes such behavior as showing an inability to fully love oneself. In addition to Kant, Frankfurt in this chapter makes insightful references to St Augustine, Kierkegaard, and especially Spinoza. Frankfurt distinguishes again between morality and love as establishing the contours of a meaningful human life. For Frankfurt, a person can love someone or something wholeheartedly and yet be immoral. In addition to the philosophers Frankfurt mentions, I think there are many parallels to existential thought, especially that of Heidegger, behind Frankfurt's lucid and restrained prose.
This book will appeal to thoughtful readers who want to reflect upon and try to understand their lives and what matters to them. It shows that philosophy remains a meaningful, life-giving endeavor rather than the sterile, academic exercise seen by philosophy's detractors.
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