Product Description

This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love.

Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about.

The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes.

Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #380901 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review
A pleasure to read. . . . Its literary qualities . . . resemble the sharp lines and bright colors of a fine Mondrian or the austere elegance of good modernist architecture. . . . Frankfurt has thought long and hard about the issues he addresses. He gives ingenious and original arguments. And he states his position with precision and clarity. . . . I recommend this book very highly to anyone who is interested in moral psychology. It is a comprehensive statement of the mature views of one of the most creative philosophers of his generation. It is likely to provoke fruitful discussion. People outside the rather narrow circle of academic philosophers will find it accessible. It deserves to be widely read.
(Philip L. Quinn Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews )

[Frankfurt] writes clearly and beautifully. His little book provides the rare pleasure of witnessing an agile and sensitive mind grappling with an issue of universal importance.
(Eric Ormsby The New York Sun )

About the Author
Harry G. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include the best-selling "On Bullshit" (Princeton); "Necessity, Volition, and Love; The Importance of What We Care About;" and "Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen: The Defense of Reason in Descartes's Meditations".

Customer Reviews

Absorbing account, flawed conclusions
Self-love is defined as "...a disinterested desire to love unremittingly." According to Frankfurt, self-love is important because it connects and binds us to ourselves. It is through caring that we provide ourselves with volitional continuity, and in that way constitute and participate in our own agency. We need "final ends" that we consider to be worth attaining for their own sake and not only for the sake of other things. Without such purpose, action cannot be satisfying; it is inevitably, as Aristotle says, "empty" and "vain."

Frankfurt's weakness is not what he says, but what he does not say. An indication of this is provided on p.87: "The ignorance and errors of a person concerning what he loves are no obstacle to self-love." Perhaps this is so, but how should one react to a miser who betrays his best friend for money or the obsessive-compulsive who must brush his teeth a hundred times before bed? However ardently I, or all mankind, may desire something, that is no ground for supposing this something to be "good." Indeed, there are bad facets of human nature, and these have to be restrained, mitigated, diverted. They must not be indulged.

Like GE Moore, Frankfurt's choice of values connects with the Bloomsbury ideal of life devoted to love and creativity, and excludes political problems arising from tribalism and scarcity of resources. Frankfurt's individualism is enhanced by the fact that these values are incommensurable, and thus any attempt to prioritize them is inescapably a matter of individual judgement (p.49). Not much use for public policy, but fine, on the other hand, for talented individuals who can agree to differ in their tastes and preferences.

not recomending this book after reading it, is... unthinkable
i recomend this insightful book to anyone who is interested in the question 'how ought i live', (although the book also explores many other related topics concerning freedom and responsibilty). the book,unlike a lot of philosophical texts, is very easy to read if you are not used to reading philosophy, but at the same time maintains a very high standard of argument throughout. If you have read any Frankfurt before this is an essential book to add to your collection as it ties in very nicely with his previous publications expanding on various themes. If you havent, or wish to embrace the question of 'how one ought to live', i cannot think of a better place to start.