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Thesis Frankfurt is right that we don’t love our children for their qualities, and all love works that way

Thamarai Selvi Raman Contributor
· 6 replies · 316 views
Love & friendshipAnalyticJewishCare ethicsHarry FrankfurtNel Noddings#bestowal#frankfurt#i-and-thou#parental-love
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Where it stands

I left accountancy to raise two children, so I have had a lot of time with the evidence.

Harry Frankfurt argues in The Reasons of Love that love is not a response to the beloved's value. It is a form of caring, and caring is what makes the beloved important to us. His model case is a parent's love for a small child, which he treats as the purest kind. A parent does not love a baby because it is exceptional. It mostly isn't. The loving comes first, and the child matters because of it.

I want to go further than people usually do and say this is the model for all love, including friendship and romantic love. Here's why. Every attempt to ground love in qualities runs into the problem that qualities are shareable and love isn't. Every attempt to ground it in the shared history (Kolodny's view) makes it hard to explain love at the beginning of a relationship, before there is any history. Bestowal explains both: love is something we do, not something the beloved earns.

It also explains why love can survive the loss of the very qualities that started it, which every carer of someone with dementia knows.

So my thesis: love is bestowal, all the way down. The qualities are where it often starts, not what it is.

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6 replies

For the thesis 1

  1. Gerrit Venter

    For Contributor

    For. I coached under-16 rugby for thirty years. The boys you end up loving are often not the best players or the nicest kids. You put the hours in, and they become yours. Frankfurt is describing something every coach knows.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Femke Bosman

    Against Fellow

    Against, from care ethics. Bestowal makes love sound like a decision the lover makes alone. Nel Noddings and others describe care as a relation completed by the cared-for's response. A baby's first smile is not irrelevant to how parental love grows. And I worry about the dark side: "you only matter because I love you" is also the logic of controlling relationships. Love that answers to nothing in the other person has no check.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Thamarai Selvi Raman

      Contributor

      Femke, that's a fair worry. But isn't the check supposed to come from elsewhere, from morality, rather than from love? I can love my son and still have to treat him justly.

      Helpful · 2
  2. Sasha Kovalenko

    Against Fellow

    Against the "all the way down". Skovoroda's idea of kinship, srodnist', points the other way: the heart recognises what is already akin to it, so love is finding something, not inventing it. Romantic love especially has a phenomenology of discovery: "it's you". Bestowal fits parents beautifully and fits lovers badly.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Miriam Adler

    Fellow

    Partly for, partly against. Buber would refuse both pictures. In I and Thou the "Thou" is not met through its qualities, which would make it an "It", a bundle of features; that's on your side. But nor is the Thou created by my caring; it is encountered, it addresses me. Love on that reading is neither response to value nor bestowal of it. It's a meeting in which both are changed.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Thamarai Selvi Raman

    Contributor

    I'll concede ground. Bestowal is the best account of parental love and of love that survives loss. Femke's point about mutuality and Sasha's about discovery make me doubt it's the whole story for adults who choose each other. Revised thesis: bestowal is the core of all love, but adult love also answers to something found in the other.

    Helpful · 2