There is a tradition going back to Plato that there are two aspects of love: when you love another person you desire their good (their fulfillment / well being / happiness) and you also desire to be united with them (in a matter of friendship or Platonic relations this may be just a desire to be in their company, but in romantic love it is a desire to be united with him or her sexually or through eros). The first aspect of love may know no bounds --you may love many people, but in the second aspect of love, that is when (as you note) people can be hurt --in deciding to be with one person, you are deciding not to be with another, and you may decide that if you really love someone (really desire their happiness) you may decide not to seek to be united with him (being in a relationship with some people you love may not be good for anyone).

As for the balance of culture, religion, values, and your individual choice, there is no magic, self-evident set of rules from philosophy! Maybe the one VERY GENERAL point can be made from the history of philosophy: it is (in general) good for persons to make up their own minds when it comes to action and values. With Socrates, philosophy began with asking questions. He thought there was something wrong about going through life without self-examination, without seeking to love wisdom. He and many other philosophers would be very reluctant about an individual making an important choice SIMPLY or ONLY on the grounds of one's culture or religion. Culture and religion can be important matters, and truly valuable, and so many philosophers would simply want you to think carefully about what is or would be good for you and the person you choose to love, while taking culture and religion into account (as they can either be hurtful or helpful, depending).

We wish you every success!

was that documentary about the long island family, where it seemed pretty evidne that the charges were trumped up? (if so, amazing documentary ....) ... anyway i just posted an answer to a question about the possibiilty of truly unconditional love, which seems relevant here ... so check it out, when you have a moment! ...

best, ap

why wouldn't that be conditional: you love the person on hte condition that s/he who she is ... does that imply that if she changes in any way she may not be loveable? true unconditional love would be stronger than that: you love a being because it is a being (not even a kind of being) .... maybe that very strict version is implausible (one can't speak of others but it seems doubtable that any one human being has the capacity for this kind of love) -- is it what (say) committed christians at least strive for (don't now)? -- but weaker versions (eg you love your child no matter how awful he ends up behaving), again i can't speak for others but i know that kind of love can be approximated, as it's clear to me that i love my children even when i'm furious with them over things they do -- such love doesn't mean always feeling lovlingly towards them, of course, just loving them -- but where the limits are, i don't know (if God forbid my kid becomes a murderer, rapist, sociopath....?)

hope that's useful

ap

The evolutionary explanation in terms of genetic fitness (kin selection) goes roughly like this: Grandchildren share 1/4 of each of their grandparent's genes (parents and siblings share 1/2), so genes that help to "code" for traits that lead you to give up X/4 amount of your fitness (your chance of reproductive success) to increase your grandchildren's fitness X amount would spread through the population more than genes that "code" for more selfish behavior. So, all else being equal, we should expect to see selection for genes that lead grandparents to be nice to their grandkids.

Of course, things are messier than this. Such traits won't be selected for in organisms that disperse such that grandparents aren't near their grandkids. Conversely, since grandparents (e.g., in humans) are typically past reproductive age, genes that code for even more generosity might be selected for--that might explain why grandparents spoil their grandkids rotten!

Of course, it would be hard to code for something as specific as "calculate if your action has a benefit to your kin that is greater than the cost to you multiplied by your relatedness to that kin." So, we see heuristics at work: strong emotional bonds with kin, emotions that are triggered less by actual relatedness than by a good proxy for that--e.g., whom you are around a lot. Hence, grandparents (parents) typically love their adopted grandkids (kids) as much as their biological ones.

Now, this somewhat cold genetic explanation may lead us to worry that we love our kids and grandkids for (ultimately) selfish reasons or even that we don't really love them. But that's bad reasoning. I really do love my children and would (I hope) die for them, and it's not for the sake of myself or my genes (whatever that would mean). Rather, the evolutionary explanation (combined with lots of cultural explanation too) accounts for why I am the sort of creature that really loves my children and really sacrifices a lot for them--yes, it really is a sacrifice of other interests and obligations I have. (Compare: suppose the reason we love our kids is because God created us to have the relevant emotions. Would that historical explanation for why we have those emotions mean that we don't really love our children?)

Finally, your first question could be read with a normative, rather than a descriptive "why?" Granted, grandparents do love their grandchildren more than other people's kids (I've just explained why that might be), but should they? I'm inclined to say yes, but it'd take a while to try to justify that answer, especially to someone who's a devout utilitarian and thinks we should just maximize overall happiness: If there's a situation where Grandpa can either save his granddaughter or save five other kids, whom should he save?

Brilliant question, and one that philosophers have struggled with. There is some reason to see Plato and subsequent Platonists as holding the view that our love is always on some property or other, a property that can often be surpassed, and so they run into the problem of why it is one may persist in loving someone even when you come across someone with greater intelligence, generosity, care, beauty and so on. Perhaps one needs to concede to the Platonic tradition that all our loves must begin with properties such as those you mentioned, but these are not abstract properties; they are the properties or qualities of a particular person. And over time (perhaps at our best?) it is the person we love so that when or if such properties are lost, we may still love the person. Whichever position you take, however, I suggest it is difficult to love or even think of a person without thinking or loving of them in terms of some of the properties they have. Some of these properties may now be fixed (e.g. you love someone for their history with you and the past is not changeable) but so many (such as those you list) are indeed contingent.

For a fascinating book on the tension between loving someone for their properties versus an unconditional love of the person her or himself, you might consult Nygren's Eros and Agape.

This would really depend on the expectations one's conduct gives rise to. These are initially the expectations that it would be reasonable to have in the society and subculture in question. Thus, if a college student from Montana is spending spring break in Florida and there dating someone from Oklahoma, for example, then the reasonable expectation would be that the relationship is a fling that will not lead to a long-term relationship. On the other hand, if two young Amish people from neighboring villages in Pennsylvania are dating each other, then the reasonable expectation would be that they are contemplating a life-long bond. Most cases obviously are somewhere in-between in that it is somewhat unclear what counts as normal in the relevant context.

It is helpful here that, as the dating proceeds, the two persons may learn a lot about each other and, in particular, about each other's actual expectations. These may differ from the reasonable expectations, which are (roughly speaking) based on statistical probabilities. Our college student from Montana may find to her surprise that her date from Oklahoma is looking for a long-term relationship. That Oklohoma student may harbor the false belief that most college students spending spring break in Florida are looking for a lasting relationship or may harbor the false belief that she and the Montana student share the conviction that dating is meaningful only when there is the firm hope for a long-lasting relationship. Once this dawns on the Montana student, she ought to clarify the situation even if her partner's expectation is, under the circumstances, quite unreasonable. Failing to do this, she would be knowingly misleading the student from Oklahoma.

In other words, it is OK not to tell so long as you have good reason to believe that your partner already understands. In case of doubt, do tell or at least try to find out more about your partner's expectations.

I don't think you are wrong to feel as you do, but then she is a free agent and perhaps regards the relationship as more longdistance than a real relationship. The fact that you would not behave like that is not that relevant, you after all do not live in London and perhaps have little opportunity. What is wrong in any case with a bit of jealousy? Are you sure that she did not tell you this to make you jealous and perhaps the event never really happened.

If you care for her you are bound to feel hurt when you contemplate someone else usurping or sharing your relationship with her, unless you regard her as merely one among many who go in and out of your life. At this stage she is really calling on you to define precisely what relationship in fact you have with her and take it from there.

We could dream up some strange scenario in which I want to be loved by someone - Robin, say - but only because if Robin loves me, this will (somehow!) produce some good result that doesn't benefit me personally. I leave it as an imaginative exercise to construct such a story. But that's presumably not what you have in mind. So let's think about more ordinary cases.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I read the tone of your question as dismissive - as suggesting there's something neurotic or self-absorbed about wanting to be loved. And no doubt there's a real worry here. Being obsessed with what other people think of us isn't healthy and worrying about whether we're loved can be not just neurotic but also a way of making it less likely that we will be. But wanting to be liked or loved can also be an inevitable part of something that it's not at all neurotic. Friendship, most of us find, is a real human good. So is a healthy romantic relationship. So is a warm bond between parent and child. If I like you and would like to be your friend, then part of what I want more or less by definition is for you to like me too. A one-sided "friendship" is no friendship at all. Notice, though: even if I want us to be friends, that doesn't mean the focus of what I want is on me; it can just as well or better be on us.

Still, if our relationship sours because you come not to care about me, that may be painful for me, and few of us get through life without any of that kind of pain. From some point of view, the fact that we can be pained this way may seem weak or unseemly, but I'd use a different word: I'd call it human. Furthermore, this humanness comes with its own good. If I were indifferent to how you felt about me, it's hard to see how you and I could ever hope to enter into the real human good of friendship. And if I were immune to the hurt that can come when a relationship ends, it might be very hard for me to empathize with, support or comfort my own friends and loved ones when that happens to them.

You have probably noticed that I've simply taken something for granted: friendship and other intimate human relations are a good thing. I have indeed taken it for granted. Friendships and romantic relationships can have a sort of instrumental good, of course. With the help of friends, I can get things done that I couldn't just do myself. And if there were no such thing as romantic love or love of parent for child, the race would likely be in danger. But most of us find that loving and being loved - understood broadly - are also good for their own sake. If someone didn't see that, I'm not sure I'd know what to say.

Maybe the person who is marrying for money is really married to money already. While I can understand how one could fall in love with money, I don't think it is a good strategy for happiness and to use the old Kantian language, you would certainly be using your spouse -to-be purely as a means to an end. Now, if you confided to that person that you would not want to marry them were it not for their$, then perhaps that would be something different. But you certainly couldn't honestly promise to love him or her. In most cases, there would be a lot wrong in marrying for money.

Perhaps it is worth pausing to ask: What is it to "philosophize"? What sort of questions or puzzles or worries call for "philosophizing" as a response?

You might say: philosophy is a motley business, embracing Plato's Symposium and Kierkegaard's Works of Love as well as Aristotle's Physics and Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic. We might count too Montaigne's Essays, or Sartre's Nausea. Very different styles of thought, reflected in very different literary forms, but all counting as philosophizing in a broad sense.

Or you might say: we really do need a label for a narrower kind of business (which has always been a key department of philosophy in the broader sense), where we aim to investigate fundamental conceptual questions and foundational assumptions with a distinctive kind of rigour and clarity, depending on sharp conceptual distinctions and tight logical argument, and where the preferred literary form is now the academic paper or monograph written in very cool, analytic, prose. And (like it or not) "philosophy" has come to be used, in some academic circles at any rate, primarily for that narrower sort of enquiry.

Now, we might well think that some topics don't particularly lend themselves to being philosophized about in the second, narrower, sense of philosophy. Or better: philosophizing in that sense isn't the way to answer the questions that really bug us. And some deeply important matters like central questions about love are perhaps examples (which is why philosophers in the narrow sense haven't had much to say). Exploring the varieties of love has been the business of novelists for centuries, of poets for millennia; and then there are the psychologists and anthropologists and social historians and others who widen our understanding. Some of these may be philosophizing in the broad sense -- whatever that quite comes to -- but very rarely in the narrower sense epitomized by modern analytical philosophy. And their writings are none the worse for that. There are some things that you will learn more about from Shakespeare and Tolstoy than from any philosopher in the narrow sense.