Do all people deserve to be loved? To be able to answer such a question, we must first understand its meaning. So first, what is love? The common view regarding love meets Plato’s view on it quite nicely. His view as elaborated in his dialogues Phaedo and Symposium is that love for someone or something is a type of desire. Specifically it is a desire for beauty. Yet by desiring a certain person or thing, we must also desire its conservation, its protection, and its general wellbeing – by which I simply mean, lack of pain or its non-destruction. If on the contrary, we want a certain thing or person to change, that would necessarily mean that we want it to be different from the way it is, implying that we do not love it, at least as it is. Defining love in this way does satisfy a common belief on the subject, which is that if someone truly loves you then they will accept you as you are and will not desire your alteration. Counting all this in, then, my initial question could be rephrased as: Do all people deserve to be desired just as they are?
Evidently, the term ‘deserve’ is an ethical term. If person A does deserves thing B, then it is morally correct for A to have B. So in order to answer our question, we must now also find out what we morally ought to desire. The question then becomes: is it morally right for all people to be desired just as they are?
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The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.