Write an essay about understanding love.
The topics for the paper, if you choose to write on Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love are listed below.
Choose one essay topic. All the questions are to be answered from a close reading and explication of
Harry Frankfurt’s Reasons of Love.
TOPIC ONE: For our author, what is love? (p. 41f, see also p. 79f). What is the role of love in the life of a
person? What is “care” and what is its relationship to love? What does he means by “reasons of love”?
OR
TOPIC TWO: Why does our author argue that ‘right-thinking people’ are in error when they suppose
“that anyone ought to do better with his love than turn it upon himself”? (p. 68). What is at stake for
one’s way of living a human life in this argument concerning self-love and the love of another? How
does his way of presenting self-love differ from what the ‘right-thinking people’ present about self-love?
Is he correct when he states: “To be wholehearted is to love oneself”? (p. 95)
OR
TOPIC THREE: In Chapter one, section 8, our author develops his argument for his definition of human
freedom. Under what condition can a human enjoy “as much freedom as it is reasonable for us to
desire”? (p. 20). What is this freedom for Frankfurt and how does it compare, and contrast, with the
understanding of human freedom we find in the text of Locke or in that of Rousseau?
word limit:1900