ABSTRACT
Love is a deep but difficult concept to situate in political contexts. Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch are among those who have considered this option. There is a naturalness about appeals to love in contexts of dissent and in the aftermath of some terrible politically driven atrocity such as the shooting of Jews in a synagogue by a white supremacist. We do not love our enemies, but there is a case for saying that we have a love of humanity (thought of as a moral community, not a species) is part of the background of our ethical thought. Without it, concern for future generations hardly gets off the ground. This chapter distinguishes between two different pathways to a politics of love.
