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Modification of the Analysis of Love The train case points out an interesting flaw, however, in my analysis of love as it is stated. My criteria is that for a relationship to be one of reciprocal love, it must be that both people are good for each other; and how good could it be for one to cause a train to run over his or her spouse? How good were the British officials being to their spouses when, if the story is true, they did not warn them to leave Coventry before the bombing? Yet we might, and I would, still want to say that the officials did love their families and would be loved by them even though they allowed harm to come to them, or allowed potential, yet avoidable, harm to befall them. I wish to insert a necessary modification into my analysis of the ethical
component or dimension of love, one which now can be understood without making
the criteria seem difficult, unwieldy, or unnatural. The clause would exclude
(from being unworthy of love) cases of causing or allowing harm (including even
relatively minor things such as inconvenience or disappointment) to the loved or
loving one if such harm is the result of overriding ethical obligations to
others, or to self, when such overriding obligations are not unnecessarily
brought on in the first place by the one doing the harm. For example, the
Coventry case found those officials in that position; it was not as if they had
known about it ahead of time and intentionally put their families in jeopardy.
Consider the classic antagonistic mother-in-law, daughter-in-law conflict where
each demands One other potential problem with the ethical aspect of the analysis of love is that it is stated in terms of the loving one's good or welfare, not in terms of how it is right to treat them. I spent considerable time earlier showing that improving the welfare or good for the greatest number was not always ultimately the right thing to do, that there could be overriding factors. I am concerned that solely with regard to the loved one alone, and not because of some overriding obligation to another person or group, there might be some action which is right for them, but which diminishes their welfare or benefit, and not just temporarily (as when you have your ill child have an inoculation), but overall. I cannot think of any such cases but I cannot rule out the possibility. An example that comes close is that of punishing a child to teach it necessary behavior that all other means fail to teach. This is not a perfect example because teaching such behavior may be for the child's own good in the long run anyway. At any rate, if there are cases where diminishing another's welfare is still for some reason the right way to treat them (and not just the right way for you to act because you have some overriding obligation to fulfill), then the ethics part of the analysis needs to be understood in terms of the lover's being treated right rather than just having his or her good increased, bad decreased, or greatest amount of good over bad provided. If there are no cases where treating someone right is different from being good for them, then either "good" or "right" will do; but "right" is still the more general term. Hence, the final version of the analysis would read: A loves B if and only if: A and B would love each other if and only if, A loves B and B loves A; that is, if and only if they each had strong feelings of attraction for each other in general, enjoyed and satisfied each other in general, especially in areas of psychological importance (or meaningfulness), and in general did what was right for each other except in cases of overriding obligations to self or others that were not unnecessarily brought on by the one required to fulfill the obligation. The briefer, originally stated version is more easily intelligible, more
readily apparent, and in most cases is equally correct and useful. |
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