Susan Wolf is the Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work ranges widely over topics in moral philosophy and the philosophy of mind. Before moving to Chapel Hill, Wolf taught at Harvard University, the University of Maryland, and the Johns Hopkins University. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association for 2010–11. Her works include the articles “Moral Saints and “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”, and books including Freedom Within Reason, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters, The Variety of Values, and Understanding Love.
Zan Boag: You’ve been investigating ‘love’ for quite some time. What does love mean to you?
Susan Wolf: I think of love as a relationship or attitude towards another person. You love someone when you care deeply and personally about the person for their own sake. That’s sort of the core of love. It is probably inadequate for keeping it distinct from everything else. But I think if you add anything else, you’ll be narrowing down what counts as love too much.
You’ve delved into love in a number of books that you’ve written, such as The Variety of Values and Understanding Love. What prompted your interest in love as a topic to investigate?
Well, I think since I was a child, I took it for granted that one’s relationship with the people one loves is the most important thing in the world, that that’s the highest priority for living well. Being a philosopher, it seems natural to me to want to investigate what’s most important in my life.
So as a philosopher, you find yourself asking questions about love that maybe you wouldn’t if you were not so interested in being reflective about your life. One big question was how to integrate one’s motivations towards one’s loved ones with morality, morality being closely associated with a principle of impartiality, of treating everyone equally, or at least as well as they deserve. And I don’t take it that my loved ones deserve anything more than anyone else, they’re just my loved ones.
So that was one issue. There’s also a question of well, is one kind of love more important than
