Love and its Place in Virtue

Book excerpt: In Love and its Place in Virtue, Christine Swanton argues for an original position on the relations between love and virtue and love and virtue ethics. For this task the distinction between love as an emotion or emotional orientation and virtuous forms of love is central, as is the role of a conception of practical wisdom in virtuous love. How love features in virtue in general, including virtues which are not virtues of love, is the central theme. This book integrates virtue ethics with a renewed interest in the role of love in ethics. Until now virtue ethics and philosophical accounts of love have been separate fields. In Swanton's account of love she argues that there are many criteria for love which feature in various ways in the different forms of love. Central is the distinction between relational love between individuals and lovingness (in its various forms) as a fundamental emotional orientation towards the world as a whole (a Grundstimmung). Love and its Place in Virtue discusses "foundational" love (universal love, self-love and dwelling love), some of the impartial virtues of love, notably universal beneficence, impartial caring and forgiveness, as well as the relation between love and the personal virtue of justice, arguing that though justice is a virtue of respect it should be loving.