Abstract

I consider a certain ethical quandary that arises upon loving another person in order to reduce one’s loneliness. More specifically, I suppose that there is something right about the Frankfurt School psychologist and social philosopher Erich Fromm’s powerful dictum that an infantile love takes the form of ‘I love you because I need you’, whereas a mature love is typified by ‘I need you because I love you’. On the face of it, it seems that loving another person in order to reduce one’s loneliness would unavoidably be an instance of the infantile form. However, after spelling out this challenge, I advance three responses to it, that is, three ways one could love to reduce one’s loneliness while successfully avoiding an infantile form. One strategy involves drawing a distinction between treating another merely as a means and treating another as a means, a second between reducing loneliness as an end of love and as a constraint on it, and a third between reducing loneliness as a final end and as an intermediate end towards the benefit of the beloved.