Love as Intimate Identification

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that love is a distinctively intimate form of concern in which we in some sense identify with our beloveds; it is common, moreover, to construe such identification in terms of the lover’s taking on the interests of the beloved. From this starting point, Harry Frankfurt argues that the paradigm form of love is that between parents and infants or young children. I think this is mistaken: the kind of loving attitude or relationship we can have towards or with young children is distinct in kind from that which we can have towards adult persons, as is revealed by reflection on the depth of love and its phenomenology. My aim is to present an alternative conception of the sort of distinctively intimate identification at issue in love, arguing that this account makes better sense of love and our experience of love. Harry Frankfurt claims that the paradigm form of love is that between parents and infants or young children. By contrast, I think infants and young children are not proper objects of love at all—at least not in the sense of “love” that applies to love among adult persons. Ultimately the point is that the sort of attitude or relationship we can have towards or with infants is distinct in kind from the sort of attitude or relationship we can have towards adult persons, and so it is best in our theorizing about these attitudes to call them different things. If only one of these forms of attitude has a claim to be called “love”, I submit it is our attitude towards adults, not that towards infants, which we might instead call “care” or “affection.” Why should we think that love of adults and care of infants are distinct in kind? I shall start by considering Frankfurt’s account of love in more detail, arguing that it leads to an unacceptable account of the nature of intimacy involved in love as well as our experience of love. In arguing for an alternative account of love and its phenomenology, I shall conclude that the kind of love that applies to adults cannot apply to infants as well. 1. Frankfurt and Identification To love someone is to care about him in a certain way. Part of what we need to understand is precisely what that way is and how it differs from other ways in which we might care for someone, such as compassionate concern for disaster 2 Philosophic Exchange, Vol. 40 [2010], No. 1, Art. 2 http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/phil_ex/vol40/iss1/2