Midterm Examination

Midterm Examination

Midterm Preparation

Largely because students in prior and recent incarnations of this course found the use of Large Language Models (ChatGPT, etc.) irresistable, this semester we are transitioning from take-home essay examinations to in-class essay examinations. To formulate the examination, I will ask three of the following six essays, verbatim, on the exam. You will be provided ample space to write your answers to the three selected questions. You will have the entire class period Thursday, 3/6, to write your essays. Please note that no notecard, notes, readings, or screens will be permitted during the exam.

Six Possible Questions

1. I Just Want to be Loved! Is that so Wrong?

Each of the speakers in The Symposium has something to say about what love is, and in doing so they give different, though not necessarily contradictory, answers to the question, why do we seek romantic love? In other words, it is one thing to understand what love is, quite another to understand why we desire it so strongly. For example, Pausanius would argue that we seek (higher) love because it leads us to greater human excellence: The Ancient Greeks, note, valued almost nothing more than the idea of fostering human excellence or virtue. Aristophanes, on the other hand, argued that we seek love because we seek the other half of us from which we were split by the gods.

Explain why we seek romantic love according to Socrates, Augustine, Firestone, and Nozick. Setting theory aside for a moment, why do you seek, or why have you sought, romantic love? Which theory (of all those we've considered) comes closest to the reasons you are able to give? Explain your answer.

2. Don't Turn on the Red Light

In what ways is Theano's advice consistent with (supported by) Firestone's account of love and her critique of the expression of love in a patriarchy, and in what ways is Theano's advice inconsistent with (not supported by) Firestone's account and critique? Is Theano's advice worthwhile today or have things changed so much that her advice should be rejected? What hasn't or has changed, as the case may be? In what ways might the feminist critique of marriage--that it is nothing more than a form of legalized prostitution--be true or false today? Of all the theories of love we have considered this semester, from ancient to contemporary times, which one best justifies the common view that marriage is the necessary outcome of romantic love? Conversely, which theory is most directly incompatible with this view? Explain your answers.

3. Our Better Half

We argued in class that the fanciful, maybe also fantastic story Aristophanes tells in the Symposium is too readily dismissed as absurd insofar as it captures deeper truths about the experience of romantic loving, truths any short list of which might include,

  1. Not having a lover can often leave us feeling incomplete or insufficient (witness the pathetic incels movement.)
  2. Not having a lover is frequently accompanied by feelings of longing and desire for what is apparently missing in our lives.
  3. Falling in love feels very much like having discovered that perfect fit to our puzzle piece, somehow completing us or making us whole.
  4. Being in love makes us feel powerful, perhaps even invincible.
  5. Losing a lover, whether by disaster (death) or betrayal (cheating), feels like having a part ripped from us, leaving us staggered and wounded.

Take all of these as givens by Aristophanes. That is, just assume that they are true regardless of whether you agree with them or not. If they are true, then, it must be possible for a theory of love to explain why they are true without resorting to bizarre or implausible mythology in the process. Of the contemporary theories of love we have considered--Singer, Firestone, Nozick, Baier, and Frankfurt, specifically--which one best explains (justifies, rationalizes, or would otherwise predict or entail) these presumed facts? Precisely how does the theory justify each of the above truths? Are there points on which the justification is lacking? How might you revise the theory to better justify these truths?

4. 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?

5. The Elephant in the Room

We have argued that most of the accounts of love we've considered this semester at best get only part of the story of love right. In particular, we argued that many theories of love give a necessary, but not sufficient, condition on love. For example, recall Firestone's account whereby love is a state of mutual vulnerability. It may be true, then, that

If X loves Y, then X and Y are mutually vulnerable to one another.

Indeed, let us just simply grant for the sake of argument that love implies mutual vulnerability. That is, let us grant that mutual vulnerability is a necessary condition on love. It seems another and much more difficult proposition to accept that mutual vulnerability implies love. That is, mutual vulnerability does not also seem to be a sufficient condition on love, since it seems false to say that

If X and Y are mutually vulnerable to one another, then X loves Y.

To show this, all we need is an example where we have mutual vulnerability, but no love. Give such an example to show that Firestone has at most captured a small part of the phenomenon of love. Can you conduct similar analyses for Singer, Nozick, Baier, and Frankfurt? If so, do so. If not, do you think the theory indeed fully accounts for love? Why or why not?

6. Incompatible Claims?

Frankfurt claims that

  1. We have freedom of the will.
  2. Our wills are determined by what we care about.
  3. We care about what we love.
  4. What we love is outside our immediate control.

These claims appear to be mutually incompatible. That is, it seems they cannot all be true together. Yet Frankfurt is a careful philosopher, so we must ask, is there a way to understand these claims so they are compatible? If so, how? If not, why not?