The Medicalization of Love and Narrow and Broad Conceptions of Human Well-Being

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24 (3):337-346 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Would a “medicalization” of love be a “good” or “bad” form of medicalization? In discussing this question, Earp, Sandberg, and Savulescu primarily focus on the potential positive and negative consequences of turning love into a medical issue. But it can also be asked whether there is something intrinsically regrettable about medicalizing love. It is argued here that the medicalization of love can be seen as an “evaluative category mistake”: it treats a core human value as if it were mainly a means to other ends . It is also argued that Earp et al’s closing argument can be seen as involving another evaluative category mistake: it treats an object of desire and practical interest as if it mainly were an object of scientific contemplation and theoretical interest. It is concluded that, to relate love to health and well-being in a more satisfying way, we should construe the latter two in broader ways, whereby love is itself a component or element of human flourishing

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Medicalization of Love.Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg & Julian Savulescu - 2015 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24 (3):323-336.
Love: a history.Simon May - 2011 - New Haven: Yale University Press.
Nehamas on beauty and love.Berys Gaut - 2010 - British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (2):199-204.
Love’s Vision.Troy Jollimore - 2011 - Princeton University Press.
Love Troubles: Human Attachment and Biomedical Enhancements.Sven Nyholm - 2014 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2):190-202.
The Dance of Love.Peter Murphy - 2002 - Thesis Eleven 72 (1):65-90.
Love: gloriously amoral and arational.Nick Zangwill - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (3):298 - 314.
Self Love.Stephen David Ross - 2010 - International Studies in Philosophy Monograph Series:129-152.
Love or the Black Sun of Personal Relationships.Lubomir Lamy - 2011 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 41 (3):247-259.
Love.Bennett W. Helm - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-08-04

Downloads
80 (#190,806)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Sven Nyholm
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München

Citations of this work

The Quantified Relationship.John Danaher, Sven Nyholm & Brian D. Earp - 2018 - American Journal of Bioethics 18 (2):3-19.
The Medicalization of Love.Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg & Julian Savulescu - 2016 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25 (4):759-771.
Love and romantic relationship in the domain of medicine.Chrysogonus M. Okwenna - 2023 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 26 (1):111-118.
Pettit on Love and Its Value: A Critical Assessment.Sven Nyholm - 2018 - Moral Philosophy and Politics 5 (1):87-102.

View all 7 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
The Quality of life.Martha Nussbaum & Amartya Sen - 1993 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 57 (2):377-378.
The Medicalization of Love.Brian D. Earp, Anders Sandberg & Julian Savulescu - 2015 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 24 (3):323-336.

View all 6 references / Add more references