Introduction

Love and morality are generally assumed to differ in spirit. The moral point of view is impartial and favors no particular individual, whereas favoring someone in particular seems like the very essence of love. Love and morality are therefore thought to place conflicting demands on our attention, requiring us to look at things differently, whether or not they ultimately require us to do different things.

The question is supposed to be whether a person can do justice to both perspectives. Some philosophers think that one or the other perspective will inevitably be slighted – that a loving person cannot help but be inattentive to his moral duty, while a fully dutiful person cannot help but be unloving. Other philosophers contend that a person can pass freely between these perspectives, tempering either with insights drawn from the other and thereby doing justice to both.

A Problem for Kantian Ethics

The latter arguments have been especially effective when pressed by consequentialists. Consequentialism makes no fundamental demands on an agent's attention: it says that an agent ought to think in whatever way would do the most good, which will rarely entail thinking about how to do the most good. Although the consequentialist standard is impartial and impersonal, its satisfaction allows, and probably requires, partial and personal attention to individuals.

Kantian moral theory cannot efface itself in this fashion, because it makes fundamental demands on an agent's practical thought.