Card 6.19 · Root VI — The Philosophy of X Family
Philosophy of Love and Friendship
Do you love someone for their qualities, or for being them?
This question asks what love is, what justifies it, and what kind of relation friendship is.
On this card
Where it sits
Under VI. Philosophy of X. Borders 3.2.5 Care ethics, 1.3.2 Personal identity, 6.23 Philosophy of emotion.
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The rival answers
| Position | Love is |
|---|---|
| Quality theory | A response to valuable properties of the beloved |
| Relationship theory | Grounded in the shared history, not in properties |
| Bestowal theory | Not a response to value but a conferring of it |
| Union theory | The formation of a shared identity or joint life |
| Robust concern | Caring about the beloved's wellbeing for their own sake |
| Aristotelian friendship | Three kinds — utility, pleasure, and virtue — only the third complete |
Where do you stand?
Do you love someone for their qualities, or for being them?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato | c. 428–348 BCE | Greek | Eros as ascent toward beauty itself |
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Three kinds of friendship; the friend as another self |
| Confucius | trad. 551–479 BCE | Chinese | On a relational reading, relationships and role obligations are constitutive of personhood |
| Ibn Hazm | 994–1064 | Islamic | The Ring of the Dove; a detailed phenomenology of love |
| Harry Frankfurt | 1929–2023 | Analytic | Love as bestowal; caring makes things important |
| Niko Kolodny | — | Analytic | Love as grounded in relationship |
| Martin Buber | 1878–1965 | Jewish | I–Thou against I–It: love as encounter with a whole person rather than use of an object |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Love & friendship:
- Frankfurt is right that we don’t love our children for their qualities, and all love works that way 6 replies
- Aristotle’s account of friendship is still the best one we have 5 replies
- In the five Confucian relationships, friendship is the odd one out. Why is it there? 5 replies
- Reading group: Ibn Hazm’s The Ring of the Dove, four weeks through al-Andalus 5 replies
- Is love a choice, or something that happens to us? 4 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Love & friendship
Connections
→ 3.2.5 · ↔ 1.3.2, 6.23, 3.2.3, 6.21 · ◇ quality theory, bestowal theory, union theory · ○ Axial Age; Islamic golden age; Modern; Table 4
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 311.