No Such Thing as Safe Love or Ethics

"No ethic is worthy that does not require potentially the suffering of those we love. Nothing cuts against liberal ethical sentimentality more than this. We wish that there were some means of holding convictions without requiring the suffering of our friends and families. We try to make 'love' an individual emotion that does not ask someone else to suffer because of our love. Of course, such thinking makes activities like marriage and childbearing incomprehensible since these practices inextricably involve those we love suffering as part and parcel of our joint endeavors."

Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens p. 148