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Editorial

What Is This Thing Called Love?

by Tim Madigan

There is something perhaps a bit ridiculous about philosophers attempting to analyze the nature of love, and yet ultimately what could be a worthier topic? Unlike Socrates, I do not claim to be an expert on this matter, but I did become enamored, as it were, of various philosophical explorations of love thanks to my good friend David Goicoechea. While I was toiling away as a graduate student in philosophy at the University at Buffalo, David – teaching just across the Niagara River at Brock University in St Catharines, Ontario – was organizing a monumental 10-year series of conferences on the Philosophy of Love. These took place from 1991 to 2000, appropriately enough around Valentine’s Day each year (not the optimal time, I should add, for a gathering in wintery Southern Ontario/Western New York).

Professor Goicoechea’s efforts were, to say the least, Promethean, if not Herculean. Each year dozens of speakers addressed specific areas relating to love, such as the differing kinds of love: agape (divine or unconditional love); philia (friendship and comradeship); and eros (romantic or sexual love).

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