Philosophy of love and sex

1. Loving the Good, or Just Good Loving?
What is the relationship between the conception of love espoused by Socrates in the Symposium and Augustine’s conception of love? How might Socrates and Augustine best defend their conceptions of love in response to Baier’s criticisms of the misamorist tradition in “Unsafe Love’s”? Are any of the contemporary conceptions of love we have studied compatible with the Platonic and Augustinian conceptions of love? Why or why not?

6. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
What is Nozick’s account of love? How does his account differ from Firestone’s? Of the two accounts, which is the most philosophically defensible? Why? Firestone couples her account of love with a feminist interpretation of freudian psychology to argue that men cannot love. Suppose, however, that we substitute Firestone’s account of love with Nozick’s. With Nozick’s account instead of her own, could Firestone continue to argue that men are incapable of love in a patriarchy? Why or why not?