ABSTRACT
People prefer to love others and to be autonomous. There is conflict between love and autonomy according to Sartre that leads to him to conclude that others are hell. 1 We did not, however, need Sartre to inform us of the tensions between love and autonomy. But why should there be conflict? We might wish to possess the freedom of another like a thing when we love, as Sartre suggests 2 , but why should love involve that desire for possession of the freedom of the other? And why should desire to be autonomous interfere with loving another? What is there about love and autonomy that produces the strife? And is there no way that we can love and be autonomous? Is there no way that we can love and respect the autonomy of the other? To answer these questions we shall have to understand the structure of love and autonomy.
