ABSTRACT

This chapter examines what it might mean to take responsibility for a situation, and indeed to take responsibility for one's future. It speaks about responsibility and love. The chapter distinguishes learning to love from a class of expressions. It argues that there is a kind of taking responsibility which is akin to love. Now, of course love is much more than just a feeling. Under a popular understanding of the word, love is a passion, something that happens to one upon encountering a particular person or project. The attitudes of making the best and learning to love differ precisely in the implied temporal location of the protagonist. Learning to love, on the other hand, involves embracing the situation and striving to eliminate the distance between the scrutinising self and the scrutinized situation. The essentially spectatorial perspective presupposed by the self-deception involved in the vital lie is what distinguishes it from learning to love.