Egoistic Love of the Nonhuman World? Biology and the Love Paradox

Abstract

ABSTRACT Love of nonhuman animals and nature is often presumed to have positive moral implications: if we love elks or forests, we will also better appreciate their moral value and treat them with more respect and care. This paper investigates perhaps the most common variety of love – here termed ‘the biological definition of love’ – as applied to other animals and nature. Introducing the notion of ‘the love paradox’, it suggests that biological love of other animals and nature can also have deeply negative and anthropocentric moral consequences, due to the self-directedness and biases inherent to it. The need for more other-directed definitions of love is underlined.