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The Reasons for Love.

Article Excerpt
Frankfurt, H. G. (2004). The Reasons for Love. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 100 pp., ISBN 0-691-09164-1, $19.95 (Hardcover).

"How should we live?" "How should we conduct ourselves?" These are the perennial philosophical questions with which Harry Frankfurt begins his very valuable and illuminating little gem of a book. Only by attempting to answer these questions can we hope for a "more intimate comfort of feeling at home with ourselves" (p. 5). These questions, Frankfurt tells us, "fall within the domain of a general theory of practical reasoning" (p. 5). A theory of moral reasoning is less relevant to settling the question of how we should live than a theory of practical reasoning. "People who are scrupulously moral may nonetheless be destined by deficiencies of character or of constitution to lead lives that no reasonable person would freely choose. They may have personal defects and inadequacies that have nothing much to do with morality but that make it impossible for them to live well" (p. 6). The most morality can offer us is a "limited and insufficient answer to the question of how a person should live" (p. 7). Moral deliberation does not help us much regarding how to conduct ourselves in everyday life. "Morality does not really get down to the bottom of things" (p. 9). Even after figuring out the imperatives of moral laws, we still have to decide whether or not to follow such commands.

A theory of practical reasoning focuses on the things "we care about" or the things "we regard as important to ourselves" or, again, the things we "love" (p. 11). In designing and managing our lives, we take into account, consciously or unconsciously, confusedly, contradictorily, or clear-mindedly, what we care about, what we regard as import to us, what we love. We are guided or propelled (driven) by what we want, which things we want more than other things, what we consider to be valuable in itself and not simply something to pursue as a means to something else.

The degree of our uncompromising commitment to what we care about lends a "thematic unity" to our lives. It gives us a sense of "stable continuity." It bestows "coherence" upon our desires. It strengthens our will and determination. It fuels our "purposeful initiatives." It "connects and binds us to ourselves" (p. 17). It provides us with "volitional continuity" and strengthens our sense of "agency."

The degree of our uncompromising commitment to what we care about depends, at least in part, on our capacity for reflexivity: Our ability to stand back and take stock of ourselves--our attitudes, desires (motives), and thoughts. We can then decide which desires...

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