Instructions: After reading “Love’s Bond”write an essay answering the below questions.  Make sure that you support your responses by offering paraphrased corroboration from the text or examples from your own life. Your response should be no longer than 3 typewritten pages and should be submitted through the course website. Your essay should be a cohesive composition with complete paragraphs and sentences (not numerically organized answers), with proper spelling and punctuation, and satisfying all of the homework formatting requirements.

1.Explain what Nozick thinks is common to all types of love.  Do you agree with his view?  Why or why not?

2.Describe the we of romantic love.  What exactly are the characteristics or the we?  Why does Nozick think that the notion of “trading up” is incompatible with romantic love and the we?

3.How does non-romantic friendship differ from romantic love on Nozick’s account?  Do you agree with Nozick’s characterization of friendship?  Why or why not?

1) Robert Nozick offers an excellent analysis of love in his essay “Love's Bond”, by probing into the motivations and mechanisms of this complex emotion. Coming at it from several perspectives; psychology, philosophy, economics, and even Venn diagrams‒ I gained insights that had never occurred to me, and a clearer definition of something that is hard to pin down.

Although Nozick notes that even material things can be “loved”, the focus is on love between people, and for good reason: this is where the real dynamics and the “give-and-take” occur. The common bond for all interpersonal varieties of love, according to him, is that our individual well-being becomes attached and somewhat dependent on the object of our affection. I totally agree.

When my wife is unhappy or not feeling well, that situation affects my own state of mind accordingly. Her emotions influence my own, and the reverse is also true. To a slightly lesser degree, this also applies to family members (and of course that changes as we age; young children are very malleable to their parents' and siblings' moods). But the bond can last a lifetime; my mother passed away about a year and a half ago, following quite a few months of dealing with the symptoms and pain of liver cancer. Her illness and decline hurt me deeply, to the point that I felt physical pain myself. Empathy is a fitting word for this commonality of love.

(2)  In a romantic relationship, identities merge to a degree, blurring the lines between “you” and “me” and developing a new entity‒ the we. The couple will constantly think of themselves as in a partnership, with a shared perspective, common interests... and they usually want to make this union known to their family and circle of friends. I think Nozick's best description of  a we characteristic is his phrase “new web of relationships between them.” This is what happens; they will develop their own routines based around what they have in common, such as favorite music, activities, foods‒ and just like a web this becomes more intricate over time as they build it.

“Trading up” is a phrase that, by the very economic/materialistic terminology it uses, sort of takes all the wind out of the sails of romance. It implies that a partner is merely a commodity, an asset that one can seek to replace with another one of more value. While it happens frequently enough, I think it is most likely to occur when someone has a major change of fortune for the better, and especially if they are single when it happens. Someone becoming a celebrity for example, such as a movie or rock star (it's almost a cliché that rock stars acquire some trophy, super-model girlfriend). To put it bluntly, it is incompatible with romantic love because it is the opposite of romantic; it's callous and calculating. Nozick takes an interesting slant on the “economics” of it, noting that attempting to trade up puts one's time investment in the current union at risk. But more importantly, trading up also endangers that sense of well-being that comes from true romantic love. I believe that even if one were to pull it off successfully, there's a chance that the guilt from doing so might become a real detriment over time. Then again, perhaps many people are so shallow that it doesn't really matter. Nozick's essay isn't meant for them.

 3) The most distinguishing difference between romantic love and friendship, per Nozick, is that with a friend one doesn't feel the sense of “ownership” found in the romantic we. We are more willing to share our friends with others; it's not a threat or betrayal for one's friend to have other friends, as opposed to a lover having other lovers.

I find his description of friendship very accurate, especially his focus on the sharing of experiences that friends engage in, and how doing so magnifies the sensation for each individual. I also agree that having some shared goal can foster strong friendships, such as members of a sports team, volunteers for a common cause, or workers for the same company or trade.