Love and Justice: a Paradox?

What is it about?

Almost everybody believes that there cannot be a duty to love and that all matters of justice are matters of duty. If both claims are true, than theories of justice must remain silent about the relative extent to which people love and are being loved by others. And yet, love has a lot of value - both instrumental and non-instrumental. Moreover, how much and how well we are loved - especially, but not only when we are children - matters a lot for our future opportunities. For this reason, it seems that theories of distributive justice ought to say something about the relative extent to which people love and are being loved by others. The paper explores the inconsistencies in how we think about justice and love.

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Why is it important?

There has been some recent discussion among philosophers about the possibility of a duty to love. Some have argued that such a duty exists, and, moreover, that the duty is owed to particular recipients - specifically, that children have a right to be loved. These philosophers claim there is a duty to love because we are in better control of our emotions that it is usually thought to be the case. Granting this, it still seems that a duty to love is absurd, if the non-instrumental value of love depends on it being outside of the lover's control (at least to some extent). This is plausible: to be a confirmation of the individual worth of the beloved, love should not be entirely the result of the lover's conscious decision. I conclude that there can be at most a duty to try to love - that is, to put in place those conditions under which love is more likely to appear and endure. Whether or not there can be a duty to love is important for understanding children's claims of justice.