Presentations (Communicative Events)

Introductory Remarks

Pollack, Robert; Konner, Joan; Lehman, Robert

Love is a moral value; it's also a great slogan. The problem, of course, is that like all slogans, it lacks nuance. Selfless love of the stranger is a moral value for sure, but is self-love a moral value? Love of the family, yes, but love of the familiar? How about love of other species, even at the expense of our own? The problem with nuance is that it bores people. The purpose of this symposium is to work against that boredom, so that we and the academic world in the largest sense may begin to renew ourselves as a voice worth listening to. If love is a moral value—and I think it is—then the success of this symposium will be in finding a way for this university to discuss moral values, by transcending the current paradigm of loveless objectivity that has gone so far in making our voices irrelevant to so many people.

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Also Published In

Title
Love and Its Obstacles
Publisher
The Center for the Study of Science and Religion

More About This Work

Academic Units
Center for the Study of Science and Religion
Published Here
February 28, 2013

Notes

Love and Its Obstacles is the proceedings of a symposium held on November 7, 2004, at Low Memorial Library, Columbia University, New York. The symposium was organized by the Center for the Study of Science and Religion as part of the Love Studies Project, a two-year exploration of the subject of love in a university setting, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute. View Joan Konner's website at http://joankonner.com/.