Abstract

In arguing for philosophical attention to be paid to the model of love as an educational concept, I differentiate two common lines of inquiry. Firstly, I draw out the complex sets of emotions and dispositions that are found around certain practices and states of mind, that are frequently perceived as being love. Following this, I then distinguish other approaches as being ‘essentialist’ in the sense that they tend to follow the philosophical precept that the essence of something is what that thing is. Drawing on the insights of Simone Weil, Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas on the concept of ‘disinterest’, I argue that central to the concept of an educational love is the question of ‘When is to give really to give?’ Pursuing such a question, I argue, is the most beneficial route to disclosing the essence of love and maybe its educational centrality