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Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons

Online ISBN:
9780191722387
Print ISBN:
9780199567898
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons

Bennett W. Helm
Bennett W. Helm
Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania
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Published online:
1 May 2010
Published in print:
7 January 2010
Online ISBN:
9780191722387
Print ISBN:
9780199567898
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Recent Western thought has consistently emphasized the individualistic strand in our understanding of persons at the expense of the social strand. Thus, it is generally thought that persons are self-determining and autonomous, where these are understood to be capacities we exercise most fully on our own, apart from others, whose influence on us tends to undermine that autonomy. This book argues that we must reject a strongly individualistic conception of persons if we are to make sense of significant interpersonal relationships and the importance they can have in our lives. It presents a new account of love as intimate identification and of friendship as a kind of plural agency, in each case grounding and analyzing these notions in terms of interpersonal emotions. At the centre of this account is an analysis of how our emotional connectedness with others is essential to our very capacities for autonomy and self-determination: we are rational and autonomous only because of and through our inherently social nature. By focusing on the role that relationships of love and friendship have, both in the initial formation of our selves and in the on-going development and maturation of adult persons, the book significantly alters our understanding of persons and the kind of psychology we persons have as moral and social beings.

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