Loving a stranger

Jan Bransen

pp. 143-159

in: Christian Maurer, Tony Milligan, Kamila Pacovská (eds), Love and its objects, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

People can be strangers to one another in many different ways. In our pluralistic global world, this is often merely a matter of unfamiliarity between people accidentally meeting one another in public space. But sometimes the estrangement is deeper and seems to reflect not merely one's ignorance of the other person's scheme of orientation, evaluation, and interpretation, but especially a lack of empathetic access to the stranger's motives. We may be inclined to relate to such strangers with indifference, with a lack of interest that under the influence of our respect for impartial morality might develop into something more decent: politeness, tolerance, and civility.