Love between Equals: A Philosophical Study of Love and Sexual Relationships PDF
Preview Love between Equals: A Philosophical Study of Love and Sexual Relationships
LOVE BETWEEN EQUALS Also by John Wilson A PREFACE TO MORALITY PREFACE TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION THINKING WITH CONCEPTS WHAT PHILOSOPHY CAN DO Love between Equals A Philosophical Study of Love and Sexual Relationships John Wilson Senior Research Associate Department of Educational Studies University of Oxford First published in Great Britain 1995 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-64274-0 ISBN 978-1-349-24253-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24253-5 First published in the United States of America 1995 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC .. Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-12729-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilson, John, 1928- Love between equals : a philosophical study of love and sexual relationships I John Wilson. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-12729-9 I. Love 2. Sex. I. Title. BD436.W54 I 995 l28'.4-dc20 95--10677 CIP © John Wilson 1995 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act I 988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 04 03 02 01 ()() 99 98 97 96 95 To one who will understand Contents Preface viii Introduction: Hopes and Warnings 1 1 Love as the Child of Want 12 2 Intrinsic Friendship 37 3 Power and Flexibility 61 4 Altruism and Paranoia 81 5 Justice and Communication 105 6 Sex 126 7 The Virtue of Loving an Equal 143 8 The Value of Loving an Equal 162 Check-list for Love 192 References and Further Reading 196 vii Preface Everyone loves something or somebody, and love in some form or other seems to be an inevitable and central part of everyone's life. Most of us, too, either enjoy, or would like to enjoy, some kind of love or friendship or affection with an other person like ourselves, with what I shall call an 'equal'. So my topic is certainly practical enough; and this book is prima rily intended to help people with their practical lives. I believe, and shall try to show in the Introduction as well as throughout the book, that analytic philosophy - roughly, trying to get clear about the concepts involved in loving an equal - can in fact be such a help: indeed, that it is essential to our everyday relationships. Since the general topic, and the particular concepts involved in it - love, equality, friendship, justice, communication and others- are universally acknowledged to be so important, it is remarkable that there is comparatively little philosophical lit erature about them which is both intellectually respectable and accessible to the general reader. There are indeed some strictly academic works (e.g. Montefiore 1973, Scruton 1986) which are certainly 'intellectual' enough, but rather hard go ing for the non-philosophical public; and at the other end of the scale a great number of popular works, of a practical or polemical nature (sometimes both at once), which give advice or sell some sort of line to the reader but may carry little intellectual credibility. To satisfy both these criteria at once is certainly very hard, but that is what I try to do in this book. I am encouraged by the fact that the thing is possible; what are still the two best works in this field, Plato's Symposium (on erotic love) and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Bk. 9, on friend ship), satisfy both; and a good deal of what I shall say rests on their shoulders. Unable to rival such giants, I shall be happy if I can add something to their work and cast it in a form suitable for the modern reader. However, the real difficulty in trying to write something useful on these topics is the temptation to impose one's own preju dices, fantasies, fears or neurotic compulsions on the subject matter. Thus a great deal of the existing literature, in my viii Preface lX judgement, is vitiated by the authors' desire to glorify some particular ideal of love or personal relationships which they then enforce on the basic concepts; or even to impose some sort of philosophical theory on them, often of a fairly elabor ate kind. (Even Plato fell victim to this towards the end of the Symposium.) All I am trying to do (but it is a lot) is just to clarify the relevant concepts: I have nothing to sell. I hope to do so in a style that is, above all, clear, so that it will be more obvious where what I say is wrong. It is perhaps a little disingenuous of me to say that I have nothing to sell. There is, I suppose, some sort of thesis run ning through the book: briefly, the idea that loving an equal is a unitary thing, a form of life which may indeed have differ ent aspects but rests ultimately on a single disposition or atti tude. A great deal that has been thought and written about love seems to me to miss this point, and/ or takes this basic disposition or attitude to be something other than it is. The main problem, as I see it, is to try to understand this disposi tion more fully, rather than to describe and classify different kinds oflove. I must leave it to the reader to determine whether this thesis can be sustained. But even if it cannot, I hope to shed some analytic, non-partisan and non-ideological light on the topic. There is, as I have said, quite a lot of sophisticated philo sophical work in this area; I have tried my best to familiarise myself with it, and (where possible) understand it. But I have not made constant references to it, partly because I do not want to get involved in philosophical polemics, but chiefly because I write primarily for the general reader, though I hope that what I say will be of interest to professional philosophers and psychologists. If I sometimes seem repetitive, this is be cause there are in fact (as I see it) comparatively few concepts involved in this area, but concepts that have to be thoroughly understood: they are logically and psychologically connected with each other, and it is better to make them as explicit as possible, even at the risk of belabouring points with a persist ence which may weary the reader. I would not want, or feel able, even to attempt this if I had not (a) felt a pressingly practical need to do so in my own personal life, and (b) acquired a reasonable competence, or at least a strong interest, in conceptual analysis. For (a), I am X Preface indebted to a great many friends in various types of relation ships, in particular the late Dr Nancy Swift; for (b), to my philosophical mentors, in particular Professor R.M. Hare, and the late Professor Herbert Hart. I am also grateful to many other critics, who have been kind enough to read the manu script and make many helpful comments; particularly to women critics, who have done their best to save me from the worst excesses of male chauvinism. Oxford joHN WILSON
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