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Final meeting of the SU22 Ethics Reading Group
July 17, 2022 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
The ethics reading party is coming to an end, alas. The final meeting will be this weekend (5:30pm 17 July on Zoom), and the focus this time will be on moral psychology. Organizer Yahui Chen will lead participants through a discussion of David Velleman‘s paper ‘Love as a moral emotion‘. Here is an abstract:
Generally, love and morality are assumed to differ in spirit. The moral point of view is impartial and favors no particular individual, whereas favoring someone in particular seems necessary for love. Love and morality are therefore thought to place conflicting demands on our attention, requiring us to look at things differently, whether or not they ultimately require us to do different things. This article will argue that love is a moral emotion precisely in the sense that its spirit is closely akin to that of morality.The question is not whether two divergent perspectives can be accommodated but rather how these two perspectives converge. The way to bring love into convergence with morality is not to stop thinking of morality as impartial but to rethink the partiality of love. This article will juxtapose love and Kantian respect in a way that is illuminating for both. We can resolve some problems in our understanding of love by applying the theory of value and valuation that Kant developed for respect. Yet, this application of Kant’s theory will show that its stern and forbidding tone is just that—a tone in which Kant stated the theory rather than an essential characteristic of the theory itself, which is in fact well-suited to matters of the heart.
Don’t miss this last opportunity to join along and think through these implications of love, morality, and duty.