Nozick and Westlund

1. Nozick and Westlund Philosophy of Love and Sex

2. Nozick • Love in general • Romantic love • Differences from other kinds of love • Why bother?

3. Love in general • Extension of well-being (eudaimonia, happiness, etc) • What affects the beloved (good or bad) directly affects the lover • Not merely through feelings

4. Romantic love • Components: • Infatuation: overcoming the barriers • Transformation • Affirmation • Sexuality

5. Romantic love:Transformation into a “we” • Negotiation, trepidation, commitment • Extension of well-being • Pooling of autonomy

6. Transformation into a “we”:Pooling of autonomy • Decisions not made alone • Desire for mutual possession • Keeping the other independent and not subservient due to care for other’s well-being • Want to possess the other as one possesses one’s own identity • Query: But don’t we have existential control over that? • Couplehood, ideally with public recognition • “having a new identity, an additional one”

7. Pooling of autonomy:What is an identity • Alertness • Loss of identity is like end of life • Division of labor—not doing things so that other can • Not seeking to trade-up • Literally a new entity?

8. Effects of transformation:Should one trade up? • Investments of time and energy • Specialization • The feeling that there is only one other person for one becomes true • [This only makes sense with commitment—otherwise too risky. –ARP] • To trade-up is to destroy an identity that is one’s own • We would like our beloved to be better, but not to have a different, better beloved

9. Effects of transformation:Can one trade up? • No, because that would destroy one’s identity (and then how would one be better off?) • Objection: But people do sometimes, alas, destroy their identities • No, because seeking to destroy the identity shows one doesn’t identify with it, and hence it’s already broken

10. Differences from other kinds of love • Friendship has a common purpose but not a common identity • Friendship involves sharing for the sake of sharing • Cannot have more than one joint identity

11. Why bother? • Not simply because of benefits to self. That’s not how lovers think. “There is a difference between wanting to hug someone and using them as an opportunity for yourself to become a hugger” (p. 80). • Fun, excitement of new identity • One does not judge a shift in identity by how it affects a pre-shift person • [Leap of faith? – ARP]

12. Westlund • Sharing of ends • Dangers of fusing ends: • Appropriation of the other’s ends • The other is now accountable to us for the fulfillment of her goals, because her goals are ours • Servility • Embarking on shared life, with an argumentative structure of gaining shared reasons, is constitutive of marriage • Conversation requires distinct centers of responsibility • [Deep assumption: We create reasons and goals for ourselves, and this is at the center of what is important for life. Is that so? – ARP]

13. Sex and reproduction • Basically nothing about children in either story • And very little about sex • How do romantic relationships and marriage differ from spiritual brotherhood?