Many Shades of Love in Kant

Kant is usually considered a cold moralist who does not give any importance to feeling and emotions. In this paper I show that Kant has a place for love although he uses this word in different meanings through his work. I will analyze the use and meaning of five different uses of the term love: self-love, practical love, love as affect, love as passion, and sexual love. I show that Kant has a place for love in his theory, in a plurality of shades and meanings, going from the practical love to romantic love. Some of their expressions are meaningful for the moral life, such as practical love, some are not. Kant portrait romantic love as a silly affect, sometimes as a dangerous passion who can even call for medication. And about sex, he claims that it is nothing but the use of the other as a means, which may obtain a higher juridical status if this use is reciprocal, in the case of marriage.

Keywords:

Love , sympathy , Affect , passion , Sex