The Moral Psychology Of Love

This book will explore the moral dimensions of love from the standpoint of political philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

This book brings together new essays that explore the connection between love and reasons. The observation that considerations of love carry significant weight in the deliberative process opens up new perspectives in the classic discussion about practical reasons, and gives rise to many interesting questions about the nature of love’s reasons, about their source and legitimacy, about their relation to moral and epistemic reasons, and about the extent to which love is sensitive to reasons. The contributors to this volume orient questions related to love within the broader context of the contemporary discussion on practical reasons, and move forward the conversation about the normative dimensions of love. Love, Reason and Morality will be of interest to philosophers working on issues of normativity, meta-ethics and moral psychology, and especially those interested in the source of practical reasons and the role of attachments in practical deliberation.

This book offers both an introduction to the methods and language of moral psychology as a philosophical field, and to sadness as an emotion.

In Exemplarist Moral Theory of Linda Zagzebski presents an original moral theory based on direct reference to exemplars of goodness, whom we identify through the emotion of admiration. Using examples of heroes, saints, and sages, she shows how narratives of exemplars and empirical work on the most admirable persons can be incorporated into the theory to serve both theoretical and practical purposes.

Whether we like it or not, boredom is a major part of human life. It permeates and affects our personal, social, practical, and moral existence. In this volume, world-renowned researchers come together to explore a neglected but crucially important aspect of boredom: it’s relationship to morality.

This book explores the ethical and psychological dilemmas connected to the lived experiences of love, uniquely proposing an ethical framework that can be applied in loving relationships. The book provides an introduction to the study of ethics, moral psychology, and ancient philosophy. Examining key themes of love, such as unconditional love, romantic love, anger, desperation, and fairness, this book offers the reader a way to exercise and strengthen their personal critical thinking on ethical dilemmas, especially in relation to loving feelings. The author believes that ethics is the heart of love in the same way as logic is the brain of reasoning; we do not need ethics to love but we can love in a much healthier way if we train our ethical skills to love. After laying the theoretical framework for the book, chapters are organized into themes relating to ethical problems and begin with an exemplary piece from Greek and Latin literature. Using these writings as a starting point, Susi Ferrarello discusses whether it is possible to have a sound ethical theory of love, especially in cases relating to justice, despair, and rage, and demonstrates how this framework can be applied in new and established relationships. Filled with case studies throughout, spiritual exercises are listed at the end of chapters to help the reader increase their understanding of love and their ethical choices surrounding emotional dilemmas. This interdisciplinary book is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students who take classes on ethics, marriage and family therapy, psychology, philosophy, classics, ancient philosophy, and politics, as well as those interested in the ethics of love and emotional decision-making.

Brian Leiter defends a set of radical ideas from Nietzsche: there is no objectively true morality, there is no free will, no one is ever morally responsible, and our conscious thoughts and reasoning play almost no significant role in our actions and how our lives unfold. He presents a new interpretation of main themes of Nietzsche's moral psychology, including his anti-realism about value (including epistemic value), his account of moral judgment and its relationship to the emotions, his conception of the will and agency, his scepticism about free will and moral responsibility, his epiphenomenalism about certain kinds of conscious mental states, and his views about the heritability of psychological traits. In combining exegesis with argument, Leiter engages the views of philosophers like Harry Frankfurt, T. M. Scanlon, and Gary Watson, and psychologists including Daniel Wegner, Benjamin Libet, and Stanley Milgram. Nietzsche emerges not simply as a museum piece from the history of ideas, but as a philosopher and psychologist who exceeds David Hume for insight into human nature and the human mind, repeatedly anticipates later developments in empirical psychology, and continues to offer sophisticated and unsettling challenges to much conventional wisdom in both philosophy and psychology.

This comprehensive and cutting-edge volume maps out the terrain of moral psychology, a dynamic and evolving area of research. In 57 concise chapters, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars explore fundamental issues and current controversies. The volume systematically reviews the empirical evidence base and presents influential theories of moral judgment and behavior. It is organized around the key questions that must be addressed for a complete understanding of the moral mind.