Zitat
Abstract
What we deeply value or care about at least partially constitutes our identity. If so, we cannot ignore our identity-forming values without abandoning who we are. Naturally, we also care deeply about the persons we love. Thus, we cannot simply ignore what they value. However, what if our own identity-forming values come into conflict with the identity-forming values of the persons we love? In a pluralistic society, in which people’s identities are shaped by different cultural backgrounds, such conflicts arise all too often and not only pose a severe practical challenge for lovers but also a theoretical challenge for theories of love and identity. How exactly can and should such conflicts be analyzed, and is there a theoretical as well as practical chance of resolving them? This chapter addresses these questions and discusses them against the background of three influential philosophical theories of love and their relation to the lovers’ identities, whereas the focus lies on romantic love: (1) individualist accounts, (2) interpersonal accounts, and (3) union accounts. While all three theories are able to analyze conflicts between identity-forming values plausibly, albeit differently, it is argued that attempts at resolving them ultimately hinge on an understanding of both love and identity as something we can actively shape, thus rejecting the prominent idea of romantic love as something that happens to us as well as the analogous essentialist idea of our identity as something we can merely discover but not actively change.