Love first

How should we respond to the humanity of others? My dissertation argues that the fundamental answer is love, defending and carrying out the beginnings of a love-first approach to ethics. The ideal of love for all (agape) has religious origins, and in my first chapter, I show that it can be detached from this religious context and still serve as a foundation for ethics. Ordinary love we have for friends and family is subject to "outward pressure": in our love for the few, we find reason to love all. I explain how we can make sense of such love, even love for those we have not met, in terms of the neglected phenomenon of "plural love," as when we love the members of our family, as such. The problem with agape is not that it is impossible but that it conflicts with the good of selective love. In light of this conflict, I argue that we should treat agape as an ideal to be approximated.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• White, Patrick Quinn.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kieran Setya.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124091

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124091