Question What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna

Accepted:
January 3, 2006

Comments

Not quite sure I get this one: If the relationships you have in mind are not one-sided, then neither description you have provided is entirely accurate...right? So it is difficult to pin down here exactly what you are asking. Is the "someone you love" someone who also loves you back--but does not seem to love you as much as the "someone who love you a lot"? And on the basis of exactly what do you determine that one loves you less, and one loves you more?

As much as I might wish to urge you most of all to choose to love--to love as much and as completely as you can--on the ground that loving grounds greatness in one's life far more than does being loved, I am also inclined to a degree of caution here. Loving another who is incapable of loving in return will not bring greatness to one's life; it will bring only misery. Loving another who merely "likes" one in return is barely better. Your specific circumstances in life are also significant--is the love you are talking about also connected to other significant needs you have (for example, does your livelihood depend upon it in some way)? Loving and being loved are terribly important--but prudence also applies in all good judgments.

At any rate, I suppose I have already answered the ethical aspect of your question: In my view, loving has greater value (all other things equal) than does being loved. Neither one satisfies all of the conditions by which Aristotle characterizes the gretest good for humankind--but loving seems to me to come closer, as something that is realized in actions, and as more nearly self-sufficient.

Would you prefer to be the one who is good but everything thinks is bad, or the one who is bad but everyone thinks is good? Would you prefer to be the one who loves (but is not loved in return as much or at all), or the one who is loved (but does not return the love as much or at all)? Both questions are hard to answer--which is to say that it is not obvious that it is preferable to be the one who is loved but does not love in return.

Question What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna Accepted:January 3, 2006

Question What is ethical and right - Going for someone you love or for someone who loves you a lot? (Assuming that none are one sided relationships.) - Paenna

Accepted:
January 3, 2006