Loving and What to Love

Abstract

In many ways this third part of the book is the most difficult to write. To some extent this is because there is very little good philosophical literature which deals with love and personal relationships (I take this to be symptomatic of the one-sided view of morality criticised earlier); but more importantly because it is, in fact, not at all clear what sort of things a philosopher can usefully say about these topics. I am not sure what a full or proper treatment of them would look like, and in any case cannot attempt it here; but perhaps enough can be said which will at least open up some of the important questions.