The article’s author was very imprecise, defining love and morality in subjective terms relating to one’s personal outlook and perceptions of others.
I’m not at all interested in subjective morality.
The reason most philosophers have defined morality and ethics in terms of duties and obligations is precisely to try to remove subjectivity. I’m not saying anyone has been successful, but other approaches don’t appear to lead towards objective morality.
However I do that Virtue ethics is not terribly objective. You could argue endlessly about what the virtues are
If you ask me, that's a pretty convenient definition of morality for them.
I have bad news for you. That's all there is.
Objectivity can be found in science because eventually you find the universal, unbreakable rule that determines whatever you're studying. No such thing exists in morality, since it's a subjective human invention.
The most common definition in Critical Theory right now for love is a willingness to expend effort for someone else’s wellbeing. Although this can be related to attachment, it can also be decoupled entirely from it, similar to the concepts in The Brothers Karamazov
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and most important commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I think you can find significantly older version of the same idea ("compassion" in Buddhism, maybe?), but that is an actual quote I can call to mind
You can certainly try to be more loving, but it is still love. It requires a change in yourself.
The real point is that the point of commandments is to facilitate love, and they should be interpreted in that light.
Murdoch seems to be making a descriptive statement about what we as humans mean by morality. She is claiming that when people say something is moral, what they're really saying between the lines is that it's borne out of attentive love to other people.
You also raised the concept of compassion is Buddhism - I think this is probably closer to Murdoch's ideas.
Nice review here: https://youtu.be/s3UOXnv2YsU?feature=shared
But I didn’t come here to pick apart the article. Rather, I want to address the main thesis which concerns love, morality, and the relation between the two. The author mentions that there is precedent in certain religious traditions to link the two — it fact, you can also see precedent in philosophical thought, like that of the Greeks — but the terms are not really given anything resembling definitions.
So, what is morality? Morality concerns voluntary actions in relation to the good. What makes a good action? One that furthers the actualization of an agent’s nature, which is to say the good of the agent. This is why choosing to eat vegetables is generally morally good, because it provides us with nutrients that sustain and contribute to our flourishing, and morally bad to eat shards of glass, because these act in opposition to our flourishing, incompatible as they are with our metabolism and destructive given the composition of our digestive system. Morality is about the voluntary acts of the agent as they concern the good of the acting agent.
(Now, some may be surprised, given the common framing of moral questions as mostly or entirely concerning “the other”. The key is to understand that human nature is deeply social. To act in ways that are opposed to our social nature is detrimental to us. Thus, for a human agent to murder a human being, the most odious of acts, is for the acting human agent to do severe harm to themselves through the very act of murdering someone. The injustice of the act is deeply corrupting and destructive to the acting human agent.)
Now that we have a definition of what morality is, what is love? Love is a movement toward the good. Love can be classified into two kinds, namely, eros and agape. Eros is ascending love, or the agent’s willing of a good for the sake of his own good. The agent recognizes that he lacks some good that would perfect and actualize him as the kind of thing he is, recognizes it in another, and seeks that good for his sake. The agent seeks to receive. Apage, which in Latin is caritas from which we get “charity”, is descending love, or a willing of the good of the other. The agent seeks to give. Agape is a matter of actualizing the good of the other in some way, but acting for the sake of the good of the other also spiritually actualizes the good of the giver.
So, if morality concerns voluntary actions for the sake of the good, and love is a voluntary movement toward the good, then of course morality is intrinsically concerned with love.
“What makes a good action? One that furthers the actualization of an agent’s nature, which is to say the good of the agent.”
Ergo, the nature of the agent.
One of the worst parts of humanity is that we’re bad to those close to us in the name of far away, nebulous benefits.
Iris Murdoch Under the net, Chatto & Windus, 1954
your comment sounds insane. you live in the now not in the future.
The only reason I can imagine you’d add this to the convo is if you feel like having a cohesive philosophy of ethics necessarily enables you to live a moral life with no immorality. IMO even with perfect philosophical understanding, you can still end up acting immorally. It’s always a possibility and no philosophy will ever save you from that.
If we believe in intention, then how can we ever understand all the examples of people that had good intentions but still ended up acting immorally? We can argue they’re lying or that their intentions weren’t pure enough for our taste, but there absolutely will be cases that don’t fall into those two categories. Also, even with all our philosophy, psychology, and experience, we have no idea what their internal world was like. We might as well just be reading tea leaves.
The whole function of treating ethics this way is to provide reassurance to everyone that they don’t need to worry about screwing everything up… but it’s just reassurance. You need reassurance because your anxiety is valid. There’s no philosophical framework or purity of heart that can save you from making a bad decision that does more bad than good. You just have to do the best you can.
Look up mens rea.
Edit: also, let’s be very clear: the point of law is to decide whether or not someone should be punished; not to decide whether or not someone is immoral. Those are two separate things.
But most people would argue that intention often plays a role. If I buy you a device that - unbeknownst to anyone - has a defect which makes it explode and you lose a limb, I would be incredibly sorry that it happened but the gift wouldn't be an immoral act.
nelox•5mo ago
Rules and duties exist to correct for partiality. The point of justice is that it applies equally, even when love does not. A judge cannot acquit someone because she loves him, a doctor cannot favour a patient because he is charming. Love without principle too easily becomes nepotism or tribalism. The most brutal conflicts in history were driven by deep love for one’s own group, not lack of it.
Love matters for motivation. It can inspire people to act with kindness. But moral frameworks require more than sentiment. They need universality and consistency, which only rules and duties can provide. Murdoch’s vision mistakes a source of energy for the standard itself. Without shared norms, love does not scale beyond the private sphere.
frereubu•5mo ago
"Loving attention: a kind of just, patient, generous attention to others. This, she thinks, is what will improve the moral quality of our vision and put us in touch with reality as it truly is. Loving attention, she insists, is central to morality, and that is because it draws us out of ourselves towards the object of love, overcoming our habitual tendency to turn inward."
JimmyBuckets•5mo ago
It is possible to hold love for everyone, in any situation, regardless of the circumstances. Of course no one is perfect and so just because something is possible does not mean it always occurs. But this is not the point.
The point is that the origin of morality is love. In the absence of the experience of love, it is possible to approximate the correct behaviours to imitate it, but it is a pale and brittle imitation of real love-derived action and most often descends into immorality under pressure or nuance.
The modern justice system is a fantastic example of this. It doesn't work in any but the most extreme cases - and even then there is an argument to be made against it. Locking people up like animals doesn't improve society or help the offenders. It provides a temporary relief to victims but even that is hollow. Punishing children has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective for correcting behaviour. Why we think adults are different is a simply a lack of love.
nelox•5mo ago
The justice system is far from perfect, but dismissing it as a “brittle imitation” overlooks what it prevents. Most people are not saints. Universal love may be possible in theory, but history shows that in practice societies without enforceable norms often descend into cycles of revenge, corruption, or rule by the strongest. Systems of law are crude, but they are better than trusting every individual to embody unconditional love.
Rehabilitation and restorative justice models do exist, and they align with the spirit of love by seeking repair rather than punishment. But they are still structured by rules. Without those, there is no guarantee of fairness or safety. Love can inspire moral action, but rules are what make morality workable in communities of imperfect humans.
JimmyBuckets•5mo ago
However, to respond to your point:
I do agree that rules are an important component. But I would argue that rules only work insofar as culture supports them, and indeed may only be a codification of the underlying values already present. t Thus I would argue that the culture in which those rules are embedded is what is of importance. And thus we come back to love.
lucyjojo•5mo ago
nelox•5mo ago
lucyjojo•5mo ago
how would you define morality?
layer8•5mo ago
esafak•5mo ago
State your case for this absurd rule. To paraphrase Hitchens, that which is asserted casually can be dismissed casually.
osullivj•5mo ago
roenxi•5mo ago
Philosophers have pretty much torn love apart as a basis for an ethical framework. It is true we're all very biased and love plays a role in how we perceive but morality has to be based on slightly more objective concepts like fairness, evidence and precedence that we have a chance of evaluating consistently when our feelings change.
osullivj•5mo ago
JimmyBuckets•5mo ago
How we raise our children, the values we enshrine in our culture and the skills we prioritize are levers through which we can move substantially closer to a practical love-derived morality.
Saying that we haven't achieved something cannot be used as evidence of its impossibility, as much as we would like to.
I agree that in stressful moments people can fail to live up to an ideal. And in those cases it is useful to rely on rubrics. But the article in question is about the origin of morals. And thus I say again, the origin of morality, whether intuited, codified or otherwise, is love.
The main point is that love isn't an emotion. When love is present it can be felt in the body, but it also modifies thought.
dumah•5mo ago
osullivj•5mo ago