Kant love?

So far I have been understanding love as the perception of value in another person and everything that flows in our response to that value. I have found a 'valuable' resource to help better articulate what I have been referring to up to now as 'value'. A dictionary article I was reading referenced this work: Velleman, J. D., 1999, “Love as a Moral Emotion”, Ethics which outlines a model of love based on the perception of value. Velleman seems to be influenced by Emmanuel Kant's theory of human respect. I just want to share their ideas as they pertain to this topic, as this may help find a better word than 'value'.

According to this article the word preferred to 'value' is 'dignity'. Dignity is defined in contrast to price:

To have a price, as the economic metaphor suggests, is to have a value that can be compared to the value of other things with prices, such that it is intelligible to exchange without loss items of the same value. By contrast, to have dignity is to have a value such that comparisons of relative value become meaningless. Material goods are normally understood to have prices, but we persons have dignity: no substitution of one person for another can preserve exactly the same value, for something of incomparable worth would be lost (and gained) in such a substitution. (quoted from article)

Kant built his model of respect on this view. Respect is the minimal response to the recognition of dignity in each other, whereas Velleman expands this to posit that if respect is the minimal reponse, love is our maximal response to dignity.

To play with this idea: a tomato does not have dignity, it has a price. So, a tomato has a value, but not the same kind of value as a person. We generally do not love a tomato, that is, we generally do not respond to a tomato by giving of ourselves to it for its own good, as if the good of the tomato was an end in itself. Rather, we tend to consider the tomato as a means to an end. Its price is is thus an exchangeable value assigned to it that can function relative to other commodities that can also function as a means to an end. For this reason we speak of money as a means "do you have the means to buy that tomato?" Yet, while buying the tomato is the end for which money is the means, the acquiring of the tomato is only another means to another end. Typically, commodities are used as means to our own ends (self love). Commodities are objects that may be living or dead, but have no 'dignity', only a price.

There are of course many who would argue that some things we ascribe a price to indeed have dignity, only we fail to recognise their dignity, usually because our own self-love overrides our ability or even our concern to seek out the dignity in others. Thus some would argue that an animal has dignity. We ought to respect animals and perhaps even love them for their own sake. Some would say the life of animal is an end in itself. Even humans have been given a price and sold as slaves to become the means to other people's ends (and sadly this still happens today in monstrous proportions!). It is even claimed by some that "every man has his price". Thus, while dignity may be present, it is not always acknowledged. This results in objectification and ultimately in dehumanisation, the reduction of people to a means. People cease to enjoy people, and start to use them. In doing so they do not appreciate the dignity of the person. In the worst cases they do not even see a person there at all!

Love, in this respect, is the perception not of value as such, but of dignity. As we can see above, while dignity may be present love may not be the result. It depends on whether the dignity is seen, or more importantly, acknowledged. Things can get in the way of this: selfishness, greed, hatred, lust... (interesting where this list can elsewhere be seen).

In light of this, is there a way we can become more loving? Based on the above, we would need to avoid all the tendencies to objectify the other. We would thus need to identify those tendencies and the thought patterns that lead to them, as well as taking a good hard look at ourselves. We might need to meditate on people we might have reduced to means to our ends, and think about their dignity, and try to see them as an end in themselves. Apart from removing the alternatives to seeing dignity in people, we might do well to explore further where this dignity comes from and how we can recognise it in each person. Finally, if Kant and Velleman are right, then respect is the natural response to this dignity, love is the maximal response. We must thus go beyond the natural and give of ourselves for their own good.

what do you think?