Wagoner On The Nature Of Love

Love is an important philosophical problem,which has important value to the Christian philosophy,metaphysics and ethics.Robert·E·Waggoner's discussion on love provides us with more views of the nature of love,but his research has not yet attracted enough attention in China.This thesis will make a detailed interpretation of the Wagoner's analysis of six views on love,which are represented by Plato's "erotic love",the "Christian love" of Christian philosophy,the "romantic love" based on romance,Kant and Kierkegaard's "moral love",Sartre and Hegel's "love as power",and finally the "mutual love",of which Aristotle and Irigaray are the representatives.These six viewpoints represent six kinds of different understandings of the nature of love.Based on the detailed interpretation of these viewpoints,this thesis further analyzes Wagoner's own position and research methods.Analysis shows that Wagoner not only has the obvious tendency towards the "relation relativism",but he also grants philosophical significance to the common slogan "love is to find the self in the other".He regards this as the logical starting point of his theory.This thesis has great sympathy on Wagoner's views,and does not believe that there is an absolute,unconditional definition of the connotation of love--there are only other important relative relationships between the subjects of the relationships;and only within these relationships can the connotation of love be properly understood,which is the source of the diversity of love according to Wagoner's view.