Universal Love

Abstract

Abstract For some (e.g. Fromm and Buber) universal love has foundational status in an ethical tradition of love. However the concept is often thought incoherent or ethically suspect. If the latter, universal love even if coherent as a concept of love cannot be a virtuous form of love. I consider and defend universal love against six objections of these two broad types, namely: universal love cannot be both particularist and universal: the very concept is incoherent; if universal love is genuinely universal it is aggregative; if universal love is genuinely universal it is undifferentiated and cannot be love; universal love is overly demanding; universal love is subject to the ‘Moral Sainthood’ objection; universal love is implausible as a virtue.