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Philosophies of Love
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Philosophies of Love

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2024) | Viewed by 3654

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Joseph Rivera

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Theology, Philosophy and Music, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Interests: secularity; political theory; democracy; concepts of the world; theories of the self; time; the philosophical nature of the body; empathy; love; happiness
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The philosophical investigation of love invokes millennia-long conversations stretching from Plato’s Symposium to Kierkegaard and Binswanger in the 19th and early 20th centuries, from Martha Nussbaum to Harry Frankfurt and Jean-Luc Marion in the late 20th century, as well as to more recent studies like Anthony Steinbock’s Knowing by Heart: Loving as Participation and Critique. Inquiries into the intentionality of love, the interpersonal structure of love, the emotional valences of love, the cognitive science of love, and the bodily constitution of love have been the focus of recent articles and monographs, with no consensus reached. The lack of consensus is not a sign of failure, but of fertility and generativity.

This Special Issue invites a multidisciplinary philosophical exploration of the phenomenon of love. Approaches from phenomenology, existentialism, social ontology, literature, poetry, Greek philosophy, and other continental perspectives are welcome. The scope of this Special Issue includes broad metaphysical questions: What is the philosophy of love? How do self-love and love of the other interrelate? Does love necessarily involve sacrifice? Is it unconditional? Are there public or political forms of love? Can one learn or be educated into the phenomenon of love? We encourage analytic or continental perspectives, as well as the examination of early medieval, early modern, and late modern figures. What direction, for instance, thematically, should a philosophy of love explore? These questions only serve the purpose of exemplary queries that are, nevertheless, urgent. Many more dialogues could be opened up in this domain and are welcome to be submitted to the guest editor for consideration. I request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor, Joseph Rivera, via email (joseph.rivera@dcu.ie). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor to ensure a proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Dr. Joseph Rivera
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • love
  • phenomenology
  • philosophical anthropology
  • self/selfhood
  • affection
  • literature

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 336 KiB  
Article
The Finite Promise of Infinite Love, or What Does It Mean to Love Forever?
by Errol Boon
Philosophies 2025, 10(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10030057 - 13 May 2025
Viewed by 230
Abstract
This paper offers a philosophical account of the specific form of romantic love underlying the ideal of love-based marriages. Rather than examining the institution of marriage, it considers marriage as the promise of infinite love between finite persons. Although this promise may seem [...] Read more.
This paper offers a philosophical account of the specific form of romantic love underlying the ideal of love-based marriages. Rather than examining the institution of marriage, it considers marriage as the promise of infinite love between finite persons. Although this promise may seem irrational, even those who never formally marry still invoke phrases like ‘I love you forever’. In three steps, this paper explores what we could possibly mean by infinite love and how it can be rationally promised throughout a finite life. First, I trace the concept of infinite love back to the metaphysical discussions surrounding the emergence of the love-based marriage among German Idealists and Jena Romanticists. Next, drawing on John Searle’s speech act theory, I examine how the ideal of infinite love can be articulated as a promise. Finally, I turn to early existentialist thought—particularly the notions of passion (Lidenskab, Leidenschaft), repetition (Gjentagelsen, Wiederkehr), and the moment (Øjeblik, Augenblick) as developed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—to justify the meaning of the marital promise. In short, I propose that instead of interpreting the marital promise as a description of an expected reality, we should approach it as a passionate necessity that discloses the world in a fundamentally indeterminate way. By reframing the marital promise in this light, I aim to show that marital love is compatible both with the ideal of personal autonomy and with an alternative conception of rationality and temporality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophies of Love)
19 pages, 201 KiB  
Article
Camerados: Deleuze and Whitman in Love
by Michael Hinds
Philosophies 2025, 10(2), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10020044 - 15 Apr 2025
Viewed by 346
Abstract
This essay seeks to stress the importance of the American poet Walt Whitman to Gilles Deleuze, using how love is variously explored to think about their methods in relationality. I firstly consider how many classic responses to Whitman express division regarding his work. [...] Read more.
This essay seeks to stress the importance of the American poet Walt Whitman to Gilles Deleuze, using how love is variously explored to think about their methods in relationality. I firstly consider how many classic responses to Whitman express division regarding his work. This is indicated by how D.H. Lawrence stresses the satisfactions and exhilarations of reading Whitman but also refers to the sense of embarrassment and shame which readers might experience on doing so, not least because of Whitman’s own apparent shamelessness. For Lawrence, this is exemplified by Whitman’s proclamation that he “aches with amorous love”, as if he were a Deleuzian desiring machine existing only to ache and nothing but. Yet there is no such embarrassment detectable in Deleuze’s responses to Whitman’s work, and his responses are characterized by their insistence that Whitman always insists upon a dimension to experience beyond such conventional desires. He is more than a poet of the body with organs, which in turn enables an understanding of his work as an anticipation of Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs as it was first expounded in Anti-Oedipus. To explore this further, direct and indirect correspondences between Deleuze and Whitman are explored, with particular attention to a range of poems from the 1855 Leaves of Grass. These readings show that if there is a conceptual relationship in their work, their style and syntax are also a way in which they relate thought and action. To triangulate the consideration of the varieties of love that are manifest in Deleuze and Whitman, I use Hannah Stark’s essay on Deleuze and love, showing how different aspects of Deleuze’s writing and thought either consciously or unconsciously relate to the American poet. I reflect upon Deleuze’s claim in his essay on the poet that Whitman’s sustained advocacy of “comradely love” represents a practice of radical relationality, and that this also offers a sense of social and political transformability that is key to both. To provide a final shape to this discussion, I refer to Fredric Jameson’s posthumously published seminars on Deleuze, in which he gives particular attention to the philosopher’s particular interest in American literature. Ultimately, the essay finds that Whitman is given a unique status in Deleuze, one which even threatens to jeopardize his own philosophical system, and that the reason for this may well be love. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophies of Love)
13 pages, 228 KiB  
Article
The Unconditionality of Love: Value, Singularity and Sacrifice
by Felix Ó Murchadha
Philosophies 2025, 10(2), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10020035 - 21 Mar 2025
Viewed by 437
Abstract
This article addresses the question of love’s unconditionality. Drawing mainly on Husserl, Scheler, Arendt, and Patočka, it shows how love is both ubiquitous and unnecessary. There is no limit to what can be loved, but equally, all things can be related to without [...] Read more.
This article addresses the question of love’s unconditionality. Drawing mainly on Husserl, Scheler, Arendt, and Patočka, it shows how love is both ubiquitous and unnecessary. There is no limit to what can be loved, but equally, all things can be related to without love. Love is at once unnecessary and yet constitutive of relations. It is shown that this peculiar characteristic of love is indicative of the fact that in love the object of love is seen in its singular being, and its qualities appear as expressions of that singularity. Love in that sense is transformative of the relation with the love-object, and this transformation becomes manifest in the commitment of the lover to sacrifice, following the call of the beloved. This sacrifice is a ‘sacrifice for nothing’ (Patočka), reflecting the unconditionality of the love-object through a suspension of all instrumentality and exchange relations. This article concludes with a short reading of the ‘good Samaritan’ parable as giving exemplary expression to the unconditionality of love. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophies of Love)
13 pages, 221 KiB  
Article
Phenomenological Remarks on Love-Eros
by Claude Romano
Philosophies 2025, 10(1), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10010022 - 5 Feb 2025
Viewed by 669
Abstract
This article attempts to discuss the phenomenological status of love considered as an erotic phenomenon. Is care a kind of desire? A will? A modality of attention? A feeling? Is it rather an existential attitude towards its object? And in this case, how [...] Read more.
This article attempts to discuss the phenomenological status of love considered as an erotic phenomenon. Is care a kind of desire? A will? A modality of attention? A feeling? Is it rather an existential attitude towards its object? And in this case, how to understand such an attitude? Does Heidegger’s concept of Fürsorge exhaust its nature? It seems necessary to address a specific limitation of fundamental ontology, the equivalency between care and care for oneself, to make room for the possibility of a primary (and not derived) care for another (and also a primary anxiety for another) that seems hardly understandable in Heidegger’s terms. But it also seems necessary to supplement the concept of care with two other “existentials”: unconditional trust and being carried. The article finally examines love as an experience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophies of Love)
12 pages, 197 KiB  
Article
Whom Do I Love When I Love Myself? The Challenge of Narcissism
by Joseph Rivera
Philosophies 2025, 10(1), 6; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10010006 - 12 Jan 2025
Viewed by 1010
Abstract
A central question within contemporary debates about the structure of self-love concerns the place and status of the other. Is self-love identical to, or at least vulnerable to, the accusation of self-absorption and narcissism? Whereas contemporary critiques of self-love argue self-love is in [...] Read more.
A central question within contemporary debates about the structure of self-love concerns the place and status of the other. Is self-love identical to, or at least vulnerable to, the accusation of self-absorption and narcissism? Whereas contemporary critiques of self-love argue self-love is in principle impossible, the present essay suggests that self-love can be integrated with the love of the other at an a priori level. This material a priori, distinct from the Kantian formal a priori, entails resources such as commitment to myself, to the other, and to us as relational unit, as well as to the enforcement of boundaries that protects against acts of injury and abuse instigated against that relational unit; I suggest such resources overcome the charge of narcissism levelled at the very idea of self-love. Prior to that, a brief contextual discussion of key moves about philosophical anthropology, focused on the concept of the monad in Leibniz, Husserl and its extreme repudiation in Jean-Luc Marion, is to be addressed. Finally I assess the intimate relationship between self-love and the love of the other inspired in large part by Augustine’s anthropology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophies of Love)
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