Love (Part 2): How to Love in Such a Way to Satisfy Both Your Wife and Kant and perhaps Bernard Williams Too

In this final part of a two part series on love, I look at a thought experiment by Bernard Williams in which he explores how a Kantian might react when explaining his motivation of why he should save his wife over others in a hypothetical drowning situation. Williams says such an explanation would leave the wife feeling quite cold and unloved. J David Velleman offers a reinterpretation of Kant that allows him to give him a more sweeter, tender explanation to his wife for choosing to save her all the while still fitting tightly into the Kantian framework. Basically, Velleman provides a Kantian construal of love that fits within his rational framework. I think its quite nice.