draft date: 5/13/2014

Love and Free Will

Aaron Smuts

Abstract
Many think that love would be a casualty of free will skepticism. I disagree. I
argue that love would be largely unaffected if we came to deny free will, not
simply because we cannot shake the attitude, but because love is not chosen, nor
do we want it to be. Here, I am not alone; others have reached similar
conclusions. But a few important distinctions have been overlooked. Even if
hard incompatibilism is true, not all love is equal. Although we have only
minimal control over love, it can be more or less authentic. I develop my
position by considering the fictional trope of love potions and the implications
of a futuristic psychotropic, Lovezac—Viagra for the heart. But I am not as
optimistic as some. Even though free will skepticism would not jeopardize love-
the-feeling, there are reasons to think that loving relationships might not be
immune.

1 Introduction
Many worry that if love were the inevitable result of causal factors that extend
far beyond our control, as hard determinists have it, all instances of love would
be akin to the affection a dog shows its master. A dog has no choice in the
matter: it licks the hand that feeds it. Surely we want more from a spouse.
Robert Kane argues that without libertarian free will, the value of some
important forms of love would be jeopardized.1 Kane is a single voice among a
chorus of pessimists. Susan Wolf worries that love without freedom would be
deficient, hollow.2 Laura Ekstrom thinks that without free will love would be
ungenuine.3 And Peter Van Inwagen argues that free will is necessary for the
best kind of love.4 Their worries have historic precedent. The medieval

1
Kane (1998, p.88) and (2005, pp.76-7).
2
Wolf (1993, p.106). She does not ultimately endorse this concern.
3
Ekstrom (2000, p.12)
4
Van Inwagen (2006, pp.165-7, n.10)

1
Introduction

theologian Peter John Olivi argues that without the liberty of indifference—the
ability to decide between equally attractive options—true friendship would be
impossible.5 Olivi thinks that true friendship must be freely given without
justification. Free will skepticism precludes this. Galen Strawson comes to a
similar conclusion: some forms of love require feelings of gratitude that need the
impossible—robust responsibility.6 W. S. Anglin expresses the concern
succinctly:

If love is ensured or made necessary, whether by the press of a button or by a

natural law or by a possible direct intervention by God, then it is not true love but
mere love-behavior. To have real love between persons, we must have libertarian
free will.7

However, not everyone is worried about the consequences of free will

skepticism.8 Derk Pereboom argues that although our attitudes toward others
would indeed be significantly affected if we accepted hard determinism, the
importance that we accord to love would survive unscathed.9 Similarly, in
response to the pessimists, Tamler Sommers offers a blank stare of incredulity.
He simply sees no cause for concern.10 I agree that the worry has been
overstated, but I concur with qualification.11 My full optimism is restricted to
love-the-feeling, not loving relationships.
Even if love is not freely chosen, not just any love will do. Not all love is
created equally. There is something deeply suspect about love caused by
potions, whether they are surreptitiously administered or self-inflicted. This has
important implications for understanding both the significance of free will and
the morality of the emotions. In addition, we can see the limitations of some of
the leading compatibilist theories by considering our preferences in love. For
instance, John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza hold that even if determinism is
true, we can rightfully be held responsible for behavior that is a result of our
reason-responsive mechanism.12 Perhaps, but such a view cannot properly
account for what we want in love. I argue that although not all kinds of love are
equally desirable, this has little to do with reasons responsiveness. In fact, it has

5
Kaye (2004) develops Olivi's argument.
6
Stawson (2009, p.26) and (2010, pp.270-2).
7
Anglin (1991, p.20).
8
I use the label "free will skepticism" to refer to any position holding that we lack
the freedom necessary for moral responsibility, such as hard determinism and hard
incompatibilism.
9
Pereboom (1997, p.271) and (2001, p.202). Pereboom denies Peter Strawson's
claim that our reactive attitudes are largely invulnerable to free will skepticism.
10
Sommers (2007, pp. 331-3).
11
Arpaly (2006, p.64) suggests that we think of love as a matter of "romantic
necessity." However, her optimism is limited. She seconds Wolf's worry while
defending a Fischer-style compatibilist answer to the threat of free will skepticism. I
reject these solutions later in the paper.
12
Fischer and Ravizza (2000, pp.255-9) sketch a theory of emotional responsibility.

2
Love and Loving Relationships

little to do with responsibility. The problem with love caused by potions is that it
would be inauthentic. We want to love and be loved authentically. And
authenticity is not threatened by free will skepticism.
To set expectations: I will not develop a theory of authenticity here. That
would take at least another paper. But this is not cause for concern. Our
everyday notion will suffice. Any plausible theory must account for my
examples. They are not border-line cases that need theoretical adjudication. No,
they are the core data that a theory of authenticity must respect on pain of
descriptive inadequacy.
My argument proceeds in a few steps. I begin with some preliminary
remarks on the nature of love, where I make an important distinction between
love and loving relationships. Then, in response to a general worry, I argue for
the conceivability of forced love that is nevertheless genuine love. In the
following section, I argue against one reading of Anglin, Kane, Ekstrom, Wolf,
and Strawson. I show that the undesirability of forced love has little to do with
choice. In fact, chosen love would also be undesirable; it would be inauthentic
according to any plausible theory of authenticity. In the final section, I present a
more precise form of the problem that might be driving concern about the
prospects of free will skepticism. Although the value of love is immune to the
rejection of free will skepticism, the value of loving relationships is not so safe.
We cannot directly control our feelings, but most think that we can control, and
thereby be responsible for, how we respond. We might not be able to give our
love, but we can give our loving selves. Free will skepticism threatens the
possibility of this gift.

2 Love and Loving Relationships

In order to assess the implications of free will skepticism, it is not necessary to
defend any particular theory of love, but it is important to make a few things
clear before we begin.
First, I am primarily concerned with romantic love. However, much of what
I have to say will also apply to the love of friends, parental love of children, and
perhaps even love of pets, but not love of fried chicken.13 To love someone
romantically, or to love a friend or a pet, is at least in part to care about them.14
Indeed, some, such as Harry Frankfurt, think that love is a form of caring.15

13
Helm (1995) and Soble (2008, ch.7) provide surveys of theories of love. I will not
be considering putative love of countries or sports teams.
14
It is not just typical; it is essential. Wolf (2010b, pp.14 and 17) agrees. But caring
does not always result in caring behavior. Nor, as Robinson (2005, p.6) notes, does
caring behavior always indicate care.
15
Frankfurt (2004, pp.11, 29) argues that love is a species of care. Newton-Smith
(1989, p.204) includes care on his list of "love-comprising relations." Wolf (2010a,
pp.4, 116) presents an even broader notion of love, a notion closely akin to finding
valuable. Hurka (2001, p.13) defends a yet even broader notion of love as a positive

3
Love and Loving Relationships

Frankfurt might go too far, but this much is clear: It is conceptually incoherent
to think that someone could love another without having any concern for her
well-being.16
Second, we must be careful not to confuse love (or love-the-feeling) and
loving relationships. Nozick complains that much of the literature on the
philosophy of love has mistakenly confused love-the-feeling with what we really
should be talking about, namely, loving relationships.17 Although Nozick is right
to point out the confusion, I think that the problem works in the opposite
direction. By distinguishing between love-the-feeling and love the relationship,
Nozick is principally concerned with marking the difference between infatuation
and love. But he overlooks a range of phenomena. Infatuation is no more love-
the-feeling than is a loving relationship. Infatuation can become love; it might
even coexist with love. But it is not love. Infatuation is closer to fascination than
care. Similarly, although a loving relationship must be grounded in love-the-
feeling, the relationship is not love. Nor is a friendship the same as the love one
feels for a friend. It is important to keep this distinction in mind.18 I will ague
that although free will skepticism does not threaten the value of love-the-feeling,
we should not be quite so optimistic about loving relationships.
The key question is this: Just what is love? Limitations of scope permit little
more than pointing: Love-the-feeling is what's gone when, as the song says,
"you've lost that loving feeling." It's what is missing when someone "just doesn't
feel that way about you." It's what's strengthening when you are "developing
feelings for someone." The notion is so common and so familiar, it is fair to
doubt the sincerity (or the humanity) of anyone who claims to not know what I
am talking about. Having gotten this far in life, I fear that, as Louis Armstrong
said about jazz, if you have to ask what love-the-feeling is then "you ain't never
going to know."
Admittedly, ostensive definitions of this sort are unsatisfying.19 The nature
of love-the-feeling deserves a far more considered answer than I will be able to
provide here. Following others in the literature, I say "feeling" to draw a contrast

orientation toward, though he distinguishes this from romantic love.

16
Hamilton (2006) might disagree. He (pp.243-4) notes that some female Scottish
prisoners think that a man does not love a woman unless he beats her. Hamilton
(p.246) suggests that the abusive husbands do not care for their wives. Although he
does not draw this conclusion explicitly, we might think he has identified a case of
love without care. I disagree. This is not a counter-example to my claim that love
conceptually requires care, not unless the women (and not just Hamilton) think that the
abuse shows that the men do not care. I find that highly implausible. I see no reason to
deny that it would be incoherent to think that someone both does not care about you
and loves you.
17
Nozick (1991, p.418). Taylor (1976, pp. 154-155) sketches the distinction.
18
Some do not recognize the distinction. For instance, Greene says that love is a
relationship. More plausibly, Carroll (2010) argues that love is a bond. And ethologists
refer to love among animals as "pair bonding." Similarly, Wolterstorff (1988, p.231,
n.3) considers love to be a mode of attachment.
19
Jollimore (2011, xiii) also relies on an ostensive definition.

4
Love and Loving Relationships

with relationships, but it is important to note that this is in some ways

misleading. Although occurrent feelings of affection are prototypical of love-
the-feeling, certainly love is more than a mere sensation. Love is not merely
occasional, as are many other emotions.20 We are not afraid unless we feel fear,
but we can be in love without feeling anything at that particular moment. Hence,
it might be better categorized as a disposition to have certain feelings.21 I suspect
that this is partly right. Love, as a mode of caring, is a disposition to have
emotions, but it cannot be reduced to a mere disposition. Instead, our emotions
depend on what we care about.22 For example, we only fear for that which we
care about. In general, standard emotions essentially involve evaluations of the
way something we care about stands to be or has been affected.23
Most plausibly, to care about someone or something is to be invested in its
good such that one is emotionally vulnerable in regard to it, disposed to be
motivated to promote its good, and to see it as important.24 Caring seems to

20
Taylor (1976, p.161). Oatley (2004, p.2) lists love as a one of the central
emotions. He considers it to be an example of a type of emotion that he calls a
sentiment, a type distinct from moods and reactive emotions. Similarly, Goldie (2000,
p.12) considers love an emotion that makes manifest the complex, episodic, dynamic,
and structured character of typical emotions. Oakley (1992, p. 11) also uses love as an
example of a paradigmatic emotion. In contrast, Shaffer (1965, p. 170) calls love an
"anomalous emotion."
21
Baier (1991) adopts a similar view. She notes Roberts (1988) as a precedent.
Shand (1914, p.56) agrees, but takes issues with calling love an "emotion complex":
"Love, therefore, cannot be reduced to a single compound feeling; it must organise a
number of different emotional dispositions capable of evoking in different situations
the appropriate behaviour." For similar reasons, Broad (1938, pp.120, 124) denies that
love is an emotion. He also calls it a sentiment. Naar (2013) defends a dispositional
view of love. Oakley (1992, pp.11-15) argues against dispositional views of long-term
emotions. Kraut (1986, p.429) argues that since it typically feels like something to be
in love, it cannot be reduced to desires, judgments, or evaluations.
22
Roberts (1988) forcefully defends a similar view. Helm (2009a) defends a related
claim about concern. Shoemaker (2003, pp.91-93) argues that we can only make sense
of our emotions in light of our cares. But all three appear to accept a dispositional
account of care.
23
As many have noted, emotions seem to require that one care about that which was
or stands to be affected by the object of the emotion. For instance: Taylor (1975, pp.
400-401) notes the connection, as does Stocker (1996, p. 175). Solomon (1980, p.276)
argues that emotions are personal and involved evaluations. Taylor (1985, pp. 59-62)
argues that emotions reveal what we value, what matters to us. They are import-
ascriptions. Roberts (1988, pp. 1888-189) claims that emotions are grounded in
concerns. Shoemaker (2003, pp.91-93) argues that emotions are conceptually
connected to cares. Helm (2009a, pp. 5-6) notes that emotions have a focus, a locus of
concern. Strangely, in his comprehensive and influential taxonomy of the objects of
emotions, De Sousa (1999, ch.5) leaves out the object of our concern. He uses "focus"
differently, to refer to the focus of attention: ex., the snarling dog's menacing teeth.
24
It is out of scope to defend each of these conditions. Trianosky (1988) argues that
one's "refined pleasures" have both cognitive and affective modes. He defends a desire
theory. Arpaly's (2003, pp.84-7) compelling account of care captures these three

5
The Gift of Love

manifest itself in emotional, conative, and cognitive ways. Love is what some
call a sentiment.25 Lacking a better term, I will use "love-the-feeling" to
distinguish this sentiment from loving relationships.
For present purposes, we need not enter deeper into the controversy about
the nature of love. I am confident that we can proceed without having a fully
fleshed out theory of love. My argument merely rests on the relatively
uncontroversial assumption that there is a difference between love-the-feeling
and loving relationships.

3 The Gift of Love

Some worry that free will skepticism threatens love, not merely because we
would be uncomfortable being loved by someone who had no choice in the
matter, but for a more fundamental reason: love is not true love if it is not freely
given.26 This is Olivi's worry. And this appears to be part of Galen Strawson's
concern. The problem is not confined to brotherly love and romantic love; the
worry also extends to the love of God. Anglin argues that love, whether of
persons or of God, must be freely given, otherwise it is not genuine love:

Sometimes we may wish we could just press a button and thereby make someone
love us. Suppose we did. That person would then perhaps show us great signs of
affection and admiration but would they really love us? There is a chance that
they might have decided to love us even if we had not pressed the button but, as
long as they behave as they do because we did press the button, they do not love
us with a genuine love. We have not a lover but a sort of sophisticated appliance
whose behavior resembles that of a lover. The love is not 'true love' if the lover is
made to love the beloved.27

An instructive way to see the force of the problem is to briefly consider a

closely related issue. Among philosophers of religion, there has recently been
some discussion of whether God can coherently command our worship. Many, if

features. Mayeroff's (1971) classic account emphasizes the promotion of the cared-
about. Smith (2005, p.244, n.14) suggests that "certain patterns of awareness are
themselves partially constitutive of caring about something."
25
Shand (1914, p.56), Broad (1954), Rawls (1971, p.487), Green (1997, pp.221-
222), Be'en Zev (2000, pp.82-6), and Deonna and Teroni (2012, pp.113-115) defend
the distinction between episodic emotions and sentiments.
26
There is a related concern that I cannot address here. Some might worry that we
would be inappropriate objects of love if we lacked free will. But I can't see why. We
love pets and children despite the fact that they have, at best, diminished moral
responsibility. And I can't see how freedom could possibly make its way into the
correctness conditions for love. I doubt that there are correctness conditions, but it
there are, freedom isn't clearly one of them. It is out of scope to pursue this issue
further.
27
Anglin (1991, p.20).

6
The Gift of Love

not most, theists believe that we are obligated to worship God precisely because
he demands it. Depending on the demarcation scheme, the first, or the first two,
of the Ten Commandments explicitly command worship:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol,
whether in the form of anything that is in heaven, or that is on the earth beneath
or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for
the iniquity of parents, to the third and forth generation of those who reject me.28

Similarly, from the second page until the page before the last, the Koran
repeatedly warns of the dismal fate—“grievous punishment” (2:5) of “the
Destroying Fire” (104:4)—in store for unbelievers who fail to worship Allah.
The Koran could not be more emphatic: “They have incurred God’s most
inexorable wrath. Ignominious punishment awaits the unbelievers” (2:90).29
In every major monotheistic religion, God demands worship.30 But we
might ask: Can one coherently command worship? Clearly, one can be
intimidated into supplication by a bully, but it is not so clear that one can force
the sincere attitudes that are essential to worship.31 It seems that love for God
must arise voluntarily. At least, Campbell Brown and Yujin Nagasawa think so:

Worship is, just like love or admiration, always voluntary. It is logically

impossible for one reluctantly or unwillingly to worship anything. One might
pretend to worship God by following certain religious rituals, but that does not
mean that one actually worships God.32

Of course, one might have strong second-order desires not to worship, say,
because the reigning political regime executes devotees of one's chosen god.
With second-order desires not to worship one may find persistent worshipful
attitudes extremely troubling, but continue to worship nonetheless. In this way,
one might worship reluctantly. But this is not the sense that Brown and
Nagasawa have in mind. They are primarily concerned with whether one could
sincerely worship something because it commands worship. And they are likely
right to conclude that we cannot love or worship something out of mere

28
Exodus 20:3-5. I take it that a multi-generational threat against rejection is for all
practical purposes a demand.
29
The Koran (2003).
30
We also find the command to worship in the New Testament: Matthew 4:10 and
Revelation 19:10, 22:9.
31
I assume a distinction between the attitude of worship and rituals of paying
tribute. For the sake of simplicity, I also assume that the attitude of worship is a species
of love or at least necessarily involves love.
32
Brown and Nagasawa (2005, p.142). Similarly, Pugmire (1998, pp.124-129)
argues that love must be spontaneous to be genuine.

7
The Gift of Love

compliance with a demand.33 That would be akin to confusing a tax with a gift.
Although Brown and Nagasawa might be right that it is psychologically
impossible to worship unwillingly, it is not so clear that it is metaphysically
impossible. Other than our lack of direct control over our attitudes, we might ask
if there is any reason why we could not be properly responsive to such a
demand? Is it genuinely incoherent? Must love or worship be voluntary? Must
it be a gift, as Olivi and Anglin claim? It seems not.
To see why, consider the last stanza of Sappho’s poem “Hymn to
Aphrodite.” In this poem Sappho invokes the goddess Aphrodite to help her win
the affections of a young woman. In a fantasy of optimism, Sappho imagines the
arrival of the goddess, willing to grant her every wish. Aphrodite speaks: “Who,
O / Sappho, is wronging you? / For if she flees, soon she will pursue. / If she
refuses gifts, rather she will give them. / If she does not love, soon she will love
/ even if unwilling.”34 Perhaps not in the sense that Brown and Nagasawa have
in mind, but it is perfectly coherent to think that one can be made to love
unwillingly—that is, one could be made willing. It is not incoherent to think that
one could be made to love a person or, even, God.
Although one might not have the power to make oneself worship another
out of mere compliance with a command, it is perfectly conceivable that, like
fabled love potions or the will of Aphrodite, something could have the power to
impart whatever the attitudes, emotions, and desires that constitute worship to
another. By having the ability to affect another’s psychological states, something
could have the power to make itself the object of another’s worship. Certainly a
deity with the power to create the universe could have the power to make mere
mortals feel intense awe, admiration, respect, love, and most anything else. If it
is coherent to think that Aphrodite could make her victims love, then surely God
could make anyone worship through "irresistible grace," or a "holy rape of the
soul."35 If so, genuine worship does not have to be voluntary.
The problem for Brown and Nagasawa is not simply that genuine worship
does not have to be voluntary, but that worship cannot be voluntary. More
generally, it is hard to see how any kind of love could be voluntary. Sure, one
can decide to be kind or generous, but one cannot decide to feel love.36 We can
no more decide to love than we can decide to be hungry. The control we do have
is limited and indirect. We can try to arouse our appetites, but we cannot decide
to be hungry. Aphrodite is a personification of the source of desire, drawing
attention to our pronounced lack of control over our feelings. Without direct

33
Blaauw (2005) takes issue with Brown and Nagasawa’s claim that one could not
come to worship something out of compliance with a demand. He argues that although
we lack direct control, we might have sufficient indirect control of our attitudes to
purposely induce worship. Burch (1989, p.246) develops a similar suggestion.
34
Sappho (2006, p.497).
35
I have seen the phrase attributed to Jonathan Edwards, but it appears to be the
coinage of R. C. Sproul.
36
For instance, Murdoch (2010, p.26) gives an example of a person who decides to
try and change her evaluative stance toward her daughter in law.

8
The Gift of Love

control over our attitudes, it is hard to see how they could ever be voluntary in
any meaningful sense. The reason why it is incoherent to demand love is not
because love must be voluntary; the opposite is the case: It is incoherent to
demand love, since no one has the ability to comply.37 And it is precisely for this
reason that love cannot be a gift. Thirst is no more a gift to water than love is a
gift to the beloved.
Although correct, this conclusion is stronger than what is needed to reply to
the pessimist: a moderate claim will suffice. Regardless of whether or not we
can sometimes love voluntarily, all that matters here is that we do indeed often
love nonvoluntarily. And we do so often. Happily, parents do not have to decide
to love their children. Their love is nonvoluntary, but it is genuine love. We
should conclude that it is metaphysically possible that something could have the
power to make others love it. Imagine meeting Sappho’s lover, who exhibits all
the symptoms of being in love and, further, she frequently announces her
feelings. We would rightly think that Sappho and her lover were very much in
love. This is not mere love-behavior, as Anglin suggests. If the two lovers attest
that the feelings they share are profound, it is not clear why we would need to
revise our assessment if we came to find out that Aphrodite’s intervention is
what caused the girl to fall for the tenth muse. No, the way one falls in love does
not change the fact that one is in love. Generations of readers have not been
fundamentally confused by the effects of the love potion featured in A
Midsummer Night's Dream. Although a mere demand will not suffice, it is safe
to say that one could have the power to make others love. If so, love does not
have to be a gift.
But one might object that there is something perverse in this kind of love. In
the third act of A Midsummer Night's Dream, after Puck has misapplied love-in-
idleness, Oberon exclaims:

What have you done? Thou hast mistaken quite

And laid the love juice on some true-love's sight.
Of thy misprision must perforce ensue
Some true-love turned, and not a false turned true.38

Oberon does not dispute that Lysander now loves Helena and has all but
forgotten Hermia; nevertheless, Oberon makes a suggestive distinction between
true and false love. I will return to this distinction in the next section, but for
now, it is important to note that perverse or not, the way one comes to love
another does not change the ultimate response. True or false, it is love either
way. Love-the-feeling does not have to be a gift.

37
Kant (1958, p.67; sec. 13) agrees: "Love out of inclination cannot be
commanded." Richard Taylor (2000, p.314) concurs: "Love, as a feeling, cannot be
commanded, even by God, simply because it is not up to anyone at any give moment
how he feels about a neighbor or anything else." Sankowski (1978) objects. As does
Liao (2007).
38
A Midsummer Night's Dream 3.ii.90-94.

9
Oberon's Worry

4 Oberon's Worry
Although it is coherent to think that one could be made to love, it seems that
something is not quite right about love gained through incantations or heavenly
machinations. The difficulty is in saying just where the problem lies. Most of us
share Oberon's intuition that there is something deficient about loved earned
through potions.39 But what exactly is the deficiency? Kane argues:

Anglin may be going too far in suggesting that love which is merely the result of
instinct or biological determination could not be real or authentic love.40 A
mother's love or romantic passion would be quite real instances of love, even if
determined. But there is nevertheless a point to his remarks. There is a kind of
love we desire from others—parents, children (when they are old enough),
spouses, lovers, and friends—whose significance is diminished, as he says, by the
thought that they are determined to love us entirely by instinct or circumstances
beyond their control or not ultimately up to them. [. . .] To be loved by others in
this desired sense requires that the ultimate source of others' love lies in their own
wills.41

By the phrase "their own will" Kane has in mind an incompatibilist

notion—a will of their own making, for which they are ultimately responsible.
Accordingly, Kane might suggest that what seems suspect about love garnered
from potions is that it is not freely chosen by the lover. But this is not a
promising suggestion. Assuming that people have free will, we do not think that
unwilled actions are freely chosen.42 As noted above, the problem is that love
does not appear to be the product of will. We typically say that we “fall” in love,
and we do not choose to fall; typically, it just happens to us.43 Kane admits as
much, but he makes reference to a somewhat obscure notion of another type of
love that is given. Unfortunately, it is difficult to grasp what exactly he has in
mind. In the previous section I raised a problem for the claim that love could be
a gift. It is not clear how one can give something that one does not have to give.
Regardless of the type of love at issue, we do not have enough control over our
loving feelings to meaningfully say that they are ours to give. We cannot give
what we do not have: I cannot give you a sunrise. Nor, for similar reasons, can I

39
Given the rest of the play it is likely that Oberon is drawing a contrast between
reciprocated and non-reciprocated love. But his response gives us pause to consider the
other ways in which love earned through potions might be deficient.
40
Note that Kane seems to conflate real and authentic, but these are subtly different
notions. The term "genuine" ambiguously refers to both. One might feel actual (or real)
love, but the love might not be authentic.
41
Kane (1998, p.88).
42
Van Inwagen (2006, pp.165-7, n.10) disagrees.
43
Solomon (2001) disputes this claim. He argues that falling in love is a process,
where, at each step, or at least the early ones, lovers can decide whether or not to
continue the descent. For recent defense of the view that there are normative reasons
for love, see: Adams (1999, pp.160-171), Keller (2000) and Kolodny (2003).

10
Oberon's Worry

give you my love.

Kane would most plausibly respond to this objection by arguing that we can
be ultimately responsible for our decisions even if we do not exercise libertarian
free will at the moment of deciding. Our decisions need only be attributable to
our character. If we are ultimately responsible for our character, we can be
responsible for the decisions attributable to who we are.44 Kane could say
something similar about love. Mature love is threatened by free will skepticism
because we want to be the object of love that is the outgrowth of an agent-of-its-
own-making. We want feelings that are tied to the patterns of evaluation,
preferences, and other aspects of someone's character for which they are
ultimately responsible. Free will skepticism rules this out.
There is something to this suggestion, but it is a bit too high concept to be
plausible. It is not a simple matter to link what we want in love to thoughts
about ultimate responsibility. Kane admits that this is not something we look for
in parental love, but he never explains why he thinks that mature love is special
in this regard. I suspect that no explanation is forthcoming, because I doubt that
many people really want this. As for those who do, I cannot see how they can
get what they want, not even if we have libertarian free will. The central
problem is that the connection between love and character formation is a long,
opaque causal path. Surely the consequences of any self-forming event on our
propensities to love will be very hard to control, to say the least. I do not have a
clue how to shape myself so that I will be disposed to love a particular person or
even a particular kind of person.45 And I am not sure anyone does. Perhaps
super-duper neuroscientist of the future will give us the key, but, at best, our
tendencies to love are crudely controllable.46 And they have been that way for all
of human history.
The consequences of character formation on our predilections in love are
largely unforeseeable, as they are most plausibly the distant transient effects of
an opaque process. And most plausibly people are not responsible for the
unforeseeable distant consequences of their actions. If I flap my arms and
through a mysterious causal process a tsunami results, wiping out a village in
East Asia, surely I am not responsible in any meaningful sense. If faced with
two incommensurable options, I freely decide to take a job in Austin rather than
Denver and this eventually makes me disposed to love slackers rather than rodeo
toughs, I am not more responsible in any meaningful way for my future feelings
than had I lacked free will in my choice of home towns.
At this point, we have no reason to think that Kane is right, at least not

44
Kane's explanation follows the model of Sankowski (1997). Mawson (2011,
pp.98-100) follows. Hurka (2001, p.167) objects.
45
Wilson (1989, p.558) compares trying to make oneself love another to trying to
make oneself afraid of tables. In either case, it's not clear how to proceed.
46
Kraemer (2009, p.78), Pugmire (1998, pp.25-6 and 124-128), and Murdoch (2010,
p.17) discuss cases of proto-inculcated love. But trying to be a little less critical and a
little more forgiving of a particular person is not to love. And it is not a self-forming
event. None of these cases provides a compelling counter-example to my claim.

11
Oberon's Worry

about love-the-feeling. Love-the-feeling cannot be a product of one’s will for the

same reason that it cannot be a gift: We simply do not have sufficient control
over our love to give it or will it, to others. Further, it is not clear that anyone
wants to be loved as an outgrowth of a person's character for which she is
ultimately responsible. Does this even cross anyone's mind? Even if it does, it is
not clear that it should. Just because love might be the far distant result of free,
character forming acts does not mean that the person can be meaningfully
responsible for the feeling. The connection is too obscure. No one can have what
Kane suggests we want.47
Those who are optimistic about the prospects of love in the face of free will
skepticism appeal to similar considerations. When we reflect on our loving
feelings, whether for our romantic partners, children, or even our pets, choice
does not come to mind. We simply love. Sommers comes to a similar
conclusion, drawing a comparison between the etiologies of the love that our
spouses and our pets feel for us:

Of course childhood and adult experiences, in conjunction with heredity, have

resulted in the love husbands and wives feel for one another. Why on earth would
that undermine the genuineness of the feeling itself? Many of us feel reciprocal
love for our dogs and form this deep bond without in any way viewing their love
as a freely given gift. We know that the dogs' love for us is a result of our having
cared for them, played with them, walked them, fed them since they were
puppies. [. . .] We know this and we do not care. We still love them, and we view
their love for us as genuine.48

Pereboom comes to the same conclusion.49 He sees no reason to think that adult
romantic love would be threatened by free will skepticism.50
I agree that a limited optimism about love-the-feeling is warranted, but
there is undeniably something to Oberon's complaint. Not all love is equally
valuable. Perhaps Kane is not too far off the mark. Although we might not be
able to say that love should always be freely chosen, we still want to say that

47
There is a related issue in the literature on moral responsibility: Would the
adoption of what Peter Strawson calls the "objective attitude" jeopardize love? Some
Strawsonians think so. See Abramson and Leite (2011) for a Strawsonian view of love.
Shabo (2012a and 2012b) argues that the objective attitude precludes resentment, and
you can't love someone you can't resent. Due to limitations of scope, I cannot address
this issue here. Following Hume (1975, pp.101-103, E.VIII.II.79-81), Pereboom (2001,
pp.199-207) to some extent, and Strawson (1997), I don't think that the acceptance of
free will skepticism would result in our adopting the objective attitude. Our attitudes
just aren't that malleable. Besides, people even resent and take personal the actions of
animals. But few think that animals are morally responsible. So I simply don't see
cause for worry. But, again, I cannot pursue this issue here. It would require another
article to do it justice.
48
Sommers (2007, p.332).
49
Pereboom (1997, p.271; 2001, pp.202-4; and 2002, pp.486-7).
50
Arpaly (2006, p.64) is optimistic, but on semi-compatibilist grounds.

12
Oberon's Worry

love should be authentic—a genuine outgrowth of oneself, one's major

commitments, and goals. We might not be able to effectively shape ourselves in
such as way as to control our love, but we do think it makes sense to assess its
authenticity. For one’s feelings and attitudes to be authentic, they must be, in
some important sense, one’s own.51 Unlike Kane, I do not think that this will
require ultimate responsibility. Just as my hand is part of who I am even though
I am not responsible for its shape, so too it seems are my stubborn and persistent
attitudes.52 One might reflectively repudiate such attitudes, but their
recalcitrance strongly suggests that they are more authentic than our
disawoval.53
For present purposes, we do not need to decide on the correct theory of
authenticity; our prereflective understanding of the concept will be adequate.54
Regardless of the best theory of authenticity, it is clear that love caused by
potions and spells would be inauthentic, or "false" as Oberon calls it. And we
rightfully value authenticity in love. I will quickly make the case here and then
develop the argument in more detail in the next section.
Consider two worlds: The first world is much like our own. People fall in
love and decide to pursue the objects of their love without divine intervention.
The second world differs in one crucial way: Rather than allowing people to fall
in love with whomever they please, a panel of cupids makes the decision for the
soon-to-be lovers. Immediately following the verdict, they fire a love-laced
arrow that makes the target fall in love with whomever the cupids decide.
Overall, the amount of happiness in the two worlds is the same. Perhaps the
second world is even more joyful, since the wise cupids might make better
match-makers than the normal mechanisms of our fallible human hearts.
Nevertheless, my intuitions are clear: The first world is a better place to live. It
is a better world. Even if the cupids always make the same decision, deciding on
the same object of love that their first-world counterparts would have selected,
the second world is less desirable.
Admittedly, things are not so clear when the amount of happiness in the two
worlds becomes pronounced. If the cupids were perfect match-makers who's
every decision leads to a "match made in heaven," and if the normal

51
This is controversial. Frankfurt (1992), Helm (1996), and Bratman (2001) offer
competing accounts of the authenticity of desires.
52
I am not offering this as a theory of authenticity. I merely suggest that
stubbornness and persistence are hallmarks of authentic desires. Neither may be
necessary, nor do I claim they are jointly sufficient.
53
This will likely require case-by-case adjudication. Blum's (1980, pp. 174-185)
theory of the "moral self" is an attempt to capture the importance of recalcitrance and
persistence while allowing for disawoval. I do not think it is wholly successful, but he
recognizes the complexity of individual cases.
54
Sumner (1996, pp.167-71) provides a good introduction to theories of
authenticity. Following Christman (1991), he divides the theories into end-state and
historical accounts. Betzler (2009) attempts a different division, that between internal
and external accounts. Christman (1989, ch.1) provides an excellent overview of the
terrain. Salmela (2005) defends a theory of emotional authenticity.

13
Five Love Stories

mechanisms of our fallible human hearts were even worse than they appear to
be, the cupidian world would be a far happier place. It would be so much
happier that some would indeed welcome the pluck of Cupid's bow. But the
inauthenticity is still a pro tanto defect, compensated but not irradicated.
We judge the first-world—the world absent of paternalistic cupidian
interference—as better than the second, at least when both are at roughly the
same level of happiness. This shows that we value authenticity in love. We
might balk at the paternalism as well, but authenticity is the ultimate concern.
Although we might be irritated to find that cupids were arranging chance
meetings, causing temporary blindness, and going to great extremes to increase
the likeliness that we would come to love their choice of mates, direct
manipulation of our sentiments is far worse. Concerns about authenticity exceed
those about paternalism.

5 Five Love Stories

In the previous section I suggested that what might be driving the worry about
love caused by potions and button pressings is a concern about authenticity. I
offered a brief example of a world where love is governed by paternalistic
cupidian interference. Here I offer a set of contrasting examples in support of the
claim that we value authenticity in love, and that freedom is not the issue, at
least not when it comes to love-the-feeling.
Consider two brief love stories:

Story 1: Normal love. The usual story: Two people meet, fall in love, and
live happily ever after.

Story 2: Tristan and Iseult. An unusual story: Tristan and Iseult accidentally
share a bottle of love potion spiked wine on a balmy afternoon. The effect is
permanent: "They who drink of it together love each other with their every
single sense and with their every thought, forever, in life and in death."55

On a plausible interpretation, much of our literary history from Sappho to

Shakespeare suggests that the instances of love in Stories 1 and 2 are similar in
nearly every respect. Love potions, whether in the guise of Cupid's arrow,
Aphrodite's powers, or magical philtres, are a metaphor for normal love—
capturing both our passivity and the depth of the psychological changes brought
on by the sudden onset of love. If we accept the traditional take, we might
indeed think that Story 2 is much like normal love. This would pose a problem
for my claim that we value authenticity in love, since neither the love of Tristan
nor that of Iseult is authentic in any plausible sense.
Although the fictional trope of love potions aptly highlights certain aspects

55
Bedier (1994, pp.41-2).

14
Five Love Stories

of normal love, we should not conclude that love earned through potions is free
from defect. Consider an additional love story:

Story 3: Not so Romantic. Someone loves you because of a potion you

slipped in their drink. The effect is permanent.

Story 3 is frightening, criminal. It appears to support intuitions contrary to

what one might draw from merely considering the previous two narratives. If
normal love is no different than love caused by a potion, why would it matter
who administers the potion? But it does. Surely, there is something suspect
about getting people to love you by slipping drugs into their drinks. The first
explanation that comes to mind is that it is a clear violation of someone's
autonomy to slip them a love potion.56 Drugging someone is a form of
manipulation. And manipulation violates autonomy. But this is not the only
problem.
We need not appeal to autonomy to get at a significant problem with Story
3. There is another important difference between Stories 2 and 3: If Tristan had
intentionally slipped the potion in Iseult's drink, we would question his love. We
would rightly wonder whether Tristan genuinely loves Iseult if he was willing to
alter her psychology to such an extent. It would be awkward to say that he
wanted Iseult to love him, since the resulting love would not clearly be hers.
When we want to be loved, ideally we want to be loved authentically.57 To make
this clear, consider a fourth love story:

Story 4: Deciding to Love. Someone takes a potion in order to love you.

They wanted to love you, but just couldn't. So they took a potion. The effect
is permanent.

Story 4 helps isolate the concern. It shows that it is not autonomy we desire,
but authenticity.58 Reflecting on Story 4 is downright depressing. We do not
want someone to love us as the result of a potion. It would be little consolation
to learn that our beloved freely decided to gulp down a beaker full of the foul
smelling stuff. Many would rather discover that their beloved was unwittingly
drugged than that she drugged herself voluntarily. Freely chosen love from a
potion would be deficient. The deficiency is one of authenticity.
One might worry that the concern is the permanency of the love in Story 4,
not the inauthenticity. One might think the problem is that the lover cannot go
back. But I doubt that this is the concern. Our revulsion at Story 4 does not stem

56
It is a violation of autonomy in the sense that Arpaly (2003, p.120) calls
"normative, moral autonomy."
57
Similarly, Soble (1990, pp.149-153) argues that the problem with love earned
through potions is that it doesn't stem from our natural responses.
58
Singer (1995, pp.135-6) argues that we want to be loved by an autonomous
person, but that this does not require free will. But what he calls "autonomy" sounds
more like authenticity.

15
Five Love Stories

from the fact that the effect is permanent. It is not that we worry about the
irrevocability of the decision, since Story 5 is even worse:

Story 5: Lovezac. The same as the previous, except the person must take a
daily dose of a drug called Lovezac in order to continue loving you. When
your beloved goes off her meds, her love quickly fades and is gone by noon.

The love in Story 5 is even more superficial than that earned from a
permanent, self-afflicted dosage. Love caused by a daily dose of Lovezac would
appear to be even less authentic than that had from a permanent potion. The
permanent potion would become part of the steady disposition of the recipient.
Despite its aberrant causal history, it would have the hallmarks of authenticity:
stubbornness and persistence.59 In Story 4, after a while you might be able to
ignore how your beloved came to love you. Not so in Story 5. Just imagine
having to look at the bottle in the medicine cabinet each morning.60
The important thing to note is that even though the choice is revisitable in
Story 5, thereby making the love more free in a sense, it is even less desirable
than the love in Story 4. Only a heartless monster would want to be loved this
way. Regardless, stories 4 and 5 give us good reason to think that we do not
value freedom in love. Quite the opposite: Freedom can jeopardize the value of
love.61 Lovezac cannot give us what we want, precisely because it is subject to
the putative freedom of the will.
The key difference between normal love and love had from Lovezac is the
authenticity of the feelings. Earlier I dismissed Kane's suggestion that we want
love to be the outgrowth of a person's character for which they are ultimately
responsible. I suggest that ultimate responsibility has little to do with what we
want in love. And even if we did want ultimate responsibility, we could not have
it, since the path between character formation and love is unclear at best. But
Lovezac shortens the route. If we have free will, Lovezac would give us the
ability to be ultimately responsible for our sentiment. The fact that we do not
want this kind of love gives us an additional reason to think that Kane's
emphasis on ultimate responsibility is mistaken. At the same time, it shows that
the other half of Kane's suggestion is accurate. We want love that is the
outgrowth of who the person is. Rather than ultimate responsibility, we want
authenticity in love. What we lack is a clear account of what makes an emotion
authentic.
It is far out of scope to develop a theory of the authenticity of emotion here,
but it is worth noting that our concerns about Lovezac are not answered by

59
This gives us reason to think that stubbornness and persistence are not sufficient.
Either way, I do not want to deny that one-off reactions can be authentic.
60
In other ways the love in story 5 might be more authentic, at least the daily desire
to love is. It has the hallmarks of authenticity.
61
This supports some kind of anti-libertarian position about the emotions. It is not
so much about responsibility for the presence of emotions that matters, but about how
much they are our own.

16
Five Love Stories

compatibilist theories of responsibility.62 Neither Frankfurt-style not Fischer-

style compatibilism explain the difference between love caused by potions and
normal love.63 This gives us further reason to think that responsibility is not
behind the repulsion to Story 5.
Consider Frankfurt's early higher-order theory: although his theory is
principally concerned with action and desire, we might think that it could give
us some insight into the emotions as well.64 A theory in the same spirit might
hold that an emotion is authentic if one forms a higher-order desire about the
emotion—that one desires to be having the emotion. Or, closer to Frankfurt's
formulation, we might say that an emotion is authentic when it gives rise to
desires that we desire to be effective in action. Since love can be plausibly
described as a set of desires, we have a workable theory of authenticity in love.
The problem is that this theory gives us no way to explain the deficiency of love
earned through Lovezac. Perhaps we would be responsible for the love if we
were responsible for taking the pill, but it would not be authentic. Here
responsibility and authenticity come apart, just as they plausibly come apart in
the case of a persistent desire that one actively disavows. Someone might mount
a plausible defense of a higher-order theory of authenticity, but I am not
optimistic.65 Until then, unless we think that we are irrational in our repulsion to
Story 5, we should look for another theory of the authenticity of emotion.

62
There are few clean suggestions in the free will literature for what might count as
an authentic emotion. Schechtman (2004) distills two. Most of the discussion is
focused on emotional responsibility. Although authenticity and responsibility overlap,
they are not the same issue, as I might be responsible for an inauthentic emotion, such
as love had from a pill. Pugmire (1998, pp.112-115) considers a drug for resolving
workplace disputes called Amity. He argues that spontaneity is key to the genuineness,
or what I'm calling the authenticity, of emotions.
63
I do not mean for this to be an exhaustive list.
64
Frankfurt (1971).
65
Making recourse to the notion of higher-order desires, Frankfurt (1999c) argues
for an intellectualized theory of care. But I'm not sure that we are talking about the
same thing, since his theory admittedly implies that animals do not care for their
young. Shoemaker (2003. p.93 n.13) also accepts this implication. Seidman (2010,
p.306, n.4) and Jaworska (2007, pp. 557, 561, 564, and 567) accept a similar
implication. But this looks like a reductio. I suspect that Frankfurt confuses being
"committed to" with "caring." Tappolett (2006) is likewise suspicious. Frankfurt (p.
160-161) argues that care "essentially consists" in "having and identifying with a
higher-order desire." Yet, he goes on (pp. 161-162) to note that that one might not be
able to help caring about what one cares about, one might find it silly, one might wish
one didn't care, and one might not even realize what one cares about. I doubt that his
theory is compatible with these observations, but I must forgo further discussion. The
theory is too obscure and too complicated to deal with here. A reconstruction of his
account as a theory of authentic care is out of scope. For such an attempt, see Velleman
(2002). He argues that Frankfurt offers a theory of authenticity. Arpaly (2003, pp.121-
124) classifies Frankfurt's theory as an authenticity theory of autonomy. Shoemaker
(2011, pp.610-612) defends a similar care theory of attributability (or authenticity). It
is out of scope to sort out these claims here.

17
Five Love Stories

Frankfurt's later theory of responsibility puts an emphasis on identification

and wholeheartedness. Roughly, it holds that we are responsible for actions
springing from desires that we wholeheartedly identify with.66 One might think
that such a theory could help us distinguish between normal love and Lovezac-
induced love. Unfortunately, this suggestion fails as well. It does not reduce our
repulsion if the person taking Lovezac in Story 5 wholeheartedly identifies with
the resulting loving feelings. Imagine that when they miss a dose, they do not
feel repulsion; they simply do not care about you any more. It is not as if they
feel ill will when off their meds. When they take the pill, the love returns. They
welcome the love wholeheartedly. But this does not make the situation any more
palatable. I suppose it is nice that they want to love you. It is nice that they
would like the relationship to flourish. But they do not love you, at least not
without taking a pill. Love had from Lovezac is undesirable regardless of
whether or not the person taking the drug identifies with her attitude.67
Similarly, Fisher-style views fail to account for the deficiency of the love in
Story 5. Fisher and Ravizza sketch a rough theory of emotional responsibility.
Somewhat like Kane's suggestion, they offer a tracing account: "All that we
require is that the condition result (in an appropriate way) from an agent's
exercise of guidance control."68 Roughly, the theory is that we are responsible
for emotions that can be traced back to causal processes which pass through our
reasons-responsive mechanism.
This suggestion comes closer to a plausible account of what it takes to be
responsible for an emotion (or concern), but it fails to give us a theory of
authenticity. Putting aside the question of what counts as an appropriate causal
history, the problems are three-fold. First, some emotions (and concerns) do not
pass through our reasons-responsive mechanisms of guidance control.69 Many
authentic emotional reactions (and concerns) appear to be pre-rational. At least
this appears to be the case with love and many other forms of care.70 Hence, it is
not clear that all authentic reactions will be so traceable.71 So, even if the theory
is correct about responsibility, it is far too under-inclusive to be a theory of
authenticity. Second, and more important, we have reason to doubt the basic
claim. If we are not responsible for emotions when they occur, it is not clear
how we could be responsible for them simply because they stem from earlier
events where we exercised guidance control.72 Even if we could be said to be

66
Frankfurt (1998 and1999b).
67
This gives us good reason to reject, what Schechtman (2004) calls, self-control
style theories of authenticity.
68
Fisher and Ravizza (2000, p.257).
69
If so, this would also be a problem for Smith's (2005) attributionist theory of
responsibility. Shoemaker (2011) agrees. It is out of scope to pursue this objection
further.
70
Deonna and Teroni (2012, pp.113-115) argue that love and other sentiments
cannot be justified as can standard emotions.
71
Arpaly (2006, p.63) makes the opposite claim.
72
Hurka (2001, p.167) raises a similar objection to Sankowski (1977). Oakley

18
Five Love Stories

indirectly responsible, this would not make the reaction authentic. Lovezac
shows as much. By taking a pill one might be responsible for one's inauthentic
love. Third, and most important for present purposes, the theory faces the same
difficulty as Kane's suggestion. The connection between character forming
events (or, here, those where we exercise guidance control) and complex
emotional responses (or concerns) such as love is long and opaque. And we
typically do not think that people are responsible, in the relevant sense, for the
far distant transient effects of their actions.
I agree with at least part of the Fischer-style explanation. The problem is
that Lovezac-induced love would not be our love. This is precisely because it
has the wrong causal history. I do not know what the right kind of causal history
is, but this is not a problem for my explanation. I need not specify the contours
of the right causal history to say that Lovezac-love does not have it. The fact that
Lovezac-love has the wrong kind of history is a constraint on any plausible
theory of the right kind. Perhaps we might come to reject this claim, but the
burden is on the side of the opponent.
Nevertheless, someone might worry that my suggestion implies that
happiness from Prozac would not be ours either.73 At least it would not be
authentic. Indeed, I think such happiness is not authentic.74 Why would it be?
But then why would happiness resulting from chemical changes as a result of
exercise be ours, assuming that the effects are the same?75 This is a difficult
problem. If I were developing a theory of authenticity, I would need to solve it.
But we need not settle the issue here, since the changes resulting from Lovezac
are even more dramatic than those attributed to Prozac. Lovezac does not merely
improve our mood and make us more confident, it makes us feel affection
toward a particular other.76 The dramatic consequences of such a change make
the inauthenticity far easier to detect. If going for a jog had such profound
psychological effects, most everyone would avoid exercise. It would be
terrifying. With Lovezac we have such a difference in degree that it constitutes a
clear difference in kind. Hence, the possible implications of Lovezac for the
authenticity of the effects of Prozac should give us no pause. It is clear that
Lovezac induced love is inauthentic.
If there is any doubt, here is an additional reason to think that psychological

(1992, chs.4) defends a related claim.

73
Following others in the literature, I am using "Prozac" as a label for any type of
drug fabled to have similar effects. It is important to note that the empirical literature
does not substantiate the effectiveness of Prozac. See: Kirsch (2010). Whittaker (2010)
argues that the legend is a product of fraudulent marketing by Eli Lilly and its
employees in the APA.
74
Elliot (1998) voices this concern about Prozac.
75
Levy (2007, pp.106-8) raises this query. Dimeo (2001), for instance, supports the
empirical claim about exercise. But Levy confuses mood modifications with
pronounced emotional and personality changes. The analogy between Prozac and
exercise is false.
76
Further, it is not clear that moods can be authentic.

19
Loving Relationships

changes resulting from a pill would be inauthentic: Drug induced psychological

states are not fitting objects of pride or esteem.77 Imagine a courageous deed
performed by a coward who ingested a bit of liquid courage. The drug does not
make him merely rash or foolhardy; rather it allows him to overcome his
excessive fear. We might be thankful that he took the drug and saved the day,
but we certainly do not think that he should be admired for his courage, apart
from what little it might have taken to ingest the drug. The apparent explanation
is that the courage is not his own. Liquid courage is inauthentic courage.78 It
might sometimes be better than none, but it is not the kind we want to have. In
this respect, liquid courage is better than Lovezac-induced love, for love had
from a pill is often worse than no love at all. You might encourage a parent who
could not love her child to take such a pill, but only those with hearts of coal
could be satisfied with this kind of love.
At this point, I will rest my case. We have several good reasons to think that
it is not responsibility but authenticity that we desire in love-the-feeling. And we
have no reason to think to think that we are mistaken. So, assuming that
authenticity does not require freedom of the will, the value of love-the-feeling is
not threatened by free will skepticism.
I turn now to assess the implications of free will skepticism for loving
relationships.

6 Loving Relationships
Consider an exchange between a husband and wife: He asks, "Why did you
marry me?" She answers, "Because I love you." He replies, "I know, but why
did you marry me?" This is an excellent question. The fact that we love someone
might give us excellent reason to be with that person—to pursue a loving
relationship. But it is not decisive. To blindly follow the heart is the maxim of
fools.
So far, I have confined the discussion to love-the-feeling, but this is not the
entire story. We must also consider the prospects of our relationships if free will
skepticism is true. The development of a relationship involves numerous

77
Following Hume's account of pride, Oakley (1992, ch.5) argues that we need not
be responsible for aspects of ourselves in order for them to be fitting of esteem and
disesteem. Similarly, Adams (1985) argues that although we might not be deserving of
punishment for involuntary states, we can be fitting of reproach. Blum (1980, ch.8)
provides a defense of a slightly weaker claim. They disagree on whether reproach is a
form of blame. Beardsley (1960) develops a related line of thought.
78
Here responsibility and praiseworthiness seem to come apart. He is responsible
for saving the day, but not praiseworthy. The case of Diomedes in the 5th book of the
Iliad complicates this picture. Diomedes rightly feels proud of his courage on the battle
field, but Athena breathed that courage into him. However, this is not simple liquid
courage, since we are told that Athena gives him the courage of his father—
presumably, the source of most human courage.

20
Loving Relationships

choices, as does its maintenance. Some trap their partners through dependence,
but this is clearly not desirable. It is far better to be loved by someone who
chooses to be with you without coercion or onerous constraint—to be loved
freely. Although our feelings are not under our direct control, it seems that the
choice to act on our feelings is. This is what is at stake. If this is what is driving
the worry about the prospects for love if free will skepticism is true, then
perhaps the worry is well-founded.
Now we can see that Anglin's worry partly tracks a significant source of
concern. There is indeed a sense in which love can be gift. Anglin claims that
love resulting from the pressing of a magic button would not be genuine love;
true love must be freely given. I have offered reasons to think otherwise. We
have no reason to think that forced love would be any less real, even though it
would be inauthentic. And more important, we cannot give someone our
feelings, in the sense that we cannot effectively summon them. The problem
with Anglin's button pressing example is that it focuses on the genesis of the
feelings. Given our pronounced lack of control over our feelings, we will find no
gifts at their wellsprings. However, we can indeed give our feelings in another
sense. We can give our loving self to another by deciding to act on our love. By
pursuing and maintaining relationships we can offer our love as a gift to the
beloved. Free will skepticism threatens the possibility of this gift. Hence, we
have good reason to worry that the value of loving relationships would be
threatened by free will skepticism.79
An example will help us assess the significance of the worry. Once again,
consider the story of Tristan and Iseult: A loyal knight and friend of King Mark,
Tristan is tasked to retrieve the soon-to-be queen, Iseult the Fair. Her mother
worries that Iseult will be unhappy in an arranged marriage, so she asks Iseult's
nursemaid to serve a love-potion spiked wine to the king and queen immediately
after the marriage ceremony. On the long, hot journey home Tristan and Iseult
become thirsty. They find a bottle of wine hidden in the nursemaid's quarters,
open it, and drink—thereby unwittingly consuming the love potion. They
immediately fall madly in love. For the rest of their lives they engage in all
manner of risky infidelities.
Although the story is a touching account of the importance love has to those
who are deeply in love, we should not think that normal love and the love of
Tristan and Iseult are the same in all important respects. To see why, imagine a
slightly different version of the romance: If we were to alter the story such that
Tristan and Iseult did not drink a potion, but merely fell in love on the boat ride
home and decided to have an affair, our reaction would change considerably. It
would be hard to think of Tristan as anything but despicable—a disloyal traitor.
And Iseult? Well, Iseult! We have plenty of names for her kind.80

79
Again, I am principally concerned with the consequences of free will skepticism,
or hard incompatibilism. If we can be robustly responsible in the absence of libertarian
free will, as compatibilists have it, then the value of loving relationships would not be
threatened by a denial of libertarian free will.
80
Consider "I am Love" (Guadagnino, 2009) for an alternative assessment.

21
Loving Relationships

The puzzle is to account for what marks the difference between the two
versions of the romance. A plausible suggestion is that it has to do with the
overwhelming strength of the desires induced by the potion. We are told that the
potion induces dangerous, overwhelming desires. This absolves Tristan and
Iseult of responsibility for their actions, since we could not reasonably expect
them to behave differently. Ferdinand Shoeman would concur.81 He argues that
we are not blameworthy for our desires, but how we respond to them. Whether
or not a desire is induced or arises from normal mechanism is irrelevant to our
culpability. Regardless of whether we are responsible for our desires themselves,
we are certainly responsible for how we decide to act on them. But we cannot be
blameworthy for acting on incapacitating desires—those that "render the agent
helpless within the range of actions covered by the desire."82 Tristan and Iseult
were indeed rendered helpless by the desires induced by the love potion.
Accordingly, they are not responsible for their outrageous infidelities. If
responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise, Tristan and Iseult are
absolved. The authors of the story certainly agree, seeing that Iseult passes an
ordeal, thereby proving that she has not offended God.
Hence, one might argue that the important difference between normal love
and the love of Tristan and Iseult is not so much in the source of the desires, but
in their strength. Tristan and Iseult were helpless. Typically, we are not. We are
inclined, but not necessitated to give our loving selves. However, if free will
skepticism were the case, all relationships would be necessitated. This would
threaten the value of all loving relationships.
Indeed, if free will skepticism were true, we might not be able to draw a
distinction between the culpability of Tristan and Iseult in the actual story and in
the imagined revision where they simply fall in love without the aid of a potion.
But what does this tell us of the value of their love? Does this show us that
loving relationships would be deficient in the absence of free will? It is not at all
clear that it does. Sure, given his pronounced lack of control, it is hard to see
how Tristan could be thought to give his love to Iseult. But apart from the
inauthenticity of his desire, how exactly is the relationship deficient? Many find
the story perfectly charming.
One might try to motivate the charge of deficiency by asking us to imagine
another drug, a peculiar kind of inhibition remover called, say, Defrigitol.83 A
dosage of Defrigitol makes the patient incapable of not acting on their love. It
does not induce love; it merely makes one powerless to resist their influence.
Putting aside worries that anyone on Defrigitol would be a swooning lush, the

81
Blum (1980), Adams (1985), and Oakley (1992) argue that there are different
kinds of moral evaluation, not all of which require responsibility. We might think that
someone is the fitting object of reproach or disesteem for their desire, even if we do no
think they are blameworthy. Watson (2004, p.269 n.24) notes that these evaluations are
somewhat akin to aesthetic judgments, but are moral assessments nonetheless.
82
Shoeman (1978, p.299). Sankowski (1977, p.838) also endorses the principle of
alternate possibilities, but he applies it to emotions as well as actions.
83
Saunders (2011) presents a fantastic array of similar psychotropic drugs.

22
Conclusion

idea that our spouse needs to take such a drug to resist leaving is very
unattractive. Hence, we might think that we do indeed value freedom in love.
But we should not draw such a hasty conclusion. Much more needs to be
said about the scenario. Why, for example, would the person taking Defrigitol
want to leave if she went off her medication? That is cause for concern. Surely,
few relish the idea that their lovers want to leave. The same worry haunts
scenarios in which one has a partner trapped by dependence. It is not the lack of
freedom, but a worry about the absence of love that is behind the unease. If we
revise the example so that the person taking Defrigitol merely has trouble
expressing affection, then the scenario becomes less repugnant, but it also looses
its effectiveness as an intuition pump.
The problem for the pessimist is that it is difficult to concoct an example
that isolates a concern about freedom but does not also offend against
authenticity or raise doubts as to the very presence of love. In order to motivate
the worry, we need a clear case where the relationship is deficient because of a
lack of freedom. The closest we might come is a Buridan-style situation with an
external controller: Balthazar is equally in love with two women, who love him
in turn. As expected, the problem is that neither is willing to share him with the
other. He cannot decide between them. Sympathetic to his predicament, the local
alchemist administers a dose of Deciditol, making Balthazar decide to give his
love to one of the two. In a case like this, it is not clear that the value of the
relationship would be threatened any more than had he flipped a coin. Either
way, the beloved will certainly suffer a bruised pride. But this does not have so
much to do with the manner of the decision, as with the fact that he loved
someone else equally. Had Balthazar freely decided to give his love to one of
the women because she had a greater inheritance, this would not improve things.
It is not freedom, but the degree of the loving feelings that would worry
Balthazar's beloved.
At this point, lacking a clear cause for concern, optimism appears to be
warranted. Although loving relationships are the site of a greater degree of
choice than loving feelings, we lack good reason to think that they would be
victims of free will skepticism. Relationships are certainly more vulnerable than
loving feelings, but it is not clear that they would suffer. We should be less
confident in this conclusion than that of the previous section, but at this point a
general optimism is justified.

7 Conclusion
In this paper, I argue that we should not fear for love if free will skepticism is
true. We might have difficulty justifying our practices of praise and blame if we
came to deny free will, but we would not have to worry about love. We neither
expect nor desire love to be free. In fact, freedom can jeopardize the value of
love. When we want to be loved, we want to be loved authentically. Happily,
free will skepticism does not pose a clear threat to the authenticity of love.

23
Conclusion

My core argument is based on an example of a deficient instance of love. I

ask us to contemplate a nightmare: Imagine discovering that your beloved loves
you because she takes a daily dose of a psychotropic called Lovezac. This is a
nauseating scenario. I see no reason to think that our repulsion to Lovezac-
induced love is irrational. Much of my effort is spent trying to account for the
deficiency. I argue that such love is undesirable because it is inauthentic.
I begin my discussion by trying to head off a worry—the worry that forced
love could not be genuine love. In reply, I argue that love caused by the powers
of Aphrodite, Cupid, love potions, or futuristic psychotropics could indeed be
genuine, in the sense of real. Our literary tradition attests to the truth of this
claim. The problem is not that love must be a gift, as Anglin suggests; love
cannot be a gift. You cannot give love, in the sense of proffering the feeling,
since we lack sufficient control over our feelings. Yes, we can exercise a crude
veto power and engage in various forms of mood setting, but this does not give
us meaningful control over our loving feelings. Without such control, love
cannot be a gift. This helps immunize love-the-feeling to free will skepticism,
since it is impossible to jeopardize a power that we do not have.
Although forced love would be genuine (i.e. real) love, it is not the kind of
love we desire. We want to be loved authentically. It is not that we want love to
be the outgrowth a will of the lover's own making, or anything so high concept.
But we do want love to be the outgrowth of the lover. I neither explain how
one's predilections in love are related to who one really is, nor do I offer a theory
of authenticity. Each of these topics would require at least another paper. Here, I
rest content with our prereflective notion of authenticity. Since the inauthenticity
of Lovezac-induced love is clear, it needs no theoretical adjudication; rather, the
construction of a theory of authenticity must take the inauthenticity of Lovezac
as a core datum.
As I noted at the beginning, my optimism is somewhat limited, though it is
clearly strong. Although I am not as confident in the immunity of loving
relationships as I am in that of loving feelings, we have no compelling reasons
to worry. Loving relationships do help make sense of the notion of a gift of love.
We can give our loving selves to our beloved. In this way, we may be said to
offer our love as a gift. This gift is vulnerable to free will skepticism. But it is
not clear why its loss would threaten the value of love. Even if we could not be
responsible for entering and maintaining our relationships, we could get what we
want when we want to be loved, regardless of the truth of free will skepticism.84

84
I thank Noël Carroll, Chris Grau, and Shaun Nichols for feedback on an earlier
draft of this paper.

24
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