Summary Of Eleonore Stump's Analysis Of Love

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We are boats subject to the tides and currents of our emotions. Strong and powerful emotions have been the ignition fueling countless social movements as well as horrid tragedies. Emotions are as unpredictable as they are complex. Implementing Eleonore Stump’s analysis of love as well as the arguments for eliminating anger by Owen Flanagan and the Stoic philosophers, the new sentient robots should not be given the ability to experience human emotions because of their characteristics of destructiveness and unpredictability.

Eleonore Stump argues that love is the desire for the objective good and union with the beloved. Stump comes to this view by first dissecting the relational, volitional and responsiveness accounts of love. Stump uses the example of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice as proof that the relational account for love is flawed. According to the relational account, Dante Alighieri did not love Beatrice because he had no real relationship with her and only admired her from afar. This unbelievable for Stump, as she believes Dante clearly had strong feelings for Beatrice that are not being measured or acknowledged by the relational account (Stump, 2006). Stump then shifts her focus on the main problem with the volitional account, which is that there is no reason assigned to loving someone. According to the volitional account, love gives us reasons to act, but leaves the cause of love as a mystery. This means that someone could love another person for no clearly defined