Skip to main content
Home

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Series
  • People
  • Depts & Colleges

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Series
  • People
  • Depts & Colleges
The media files for this episode are hosted on another site. Download the audio here.

If I could just stop loving you: Anti-love drugs and the ethics of a chemical break-up

Series
Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Emotional pain and difficulty in relationships is potentially dangerous and destructive. In this talk, I explore some of the potential uses and misuses of anti-love biotechnology from a scientific and ethical perspective.
"Love hurts" - as the saying goes - and a certain degree of pain and difficulty in intimate relationships is unavoidable. Sometimes it may even be beneficial, since, as it is often argued, some types (and amounts) of suffering can lead to personal growth, self-discovery, and a range of other essential components of a life well-lived. But other times, love is downright dangerous. Either it can trap a person in a cycle of violence, as in some domestic abuse cases, or it can prevent a person from moving on with her life or forming healthier relationships. The idea of an anti-love remedy or a "cure" for love is as old as love itself. References may be found in the writings of Lucretius, Ovid, Shakespeare, and many others, and are tightly linked to the notion that love or infatuation-under certain conditions-can be just like a serious illness: bad for one's physical and mental health and, in some cases, profoundly damaging to one's overall well-being. But unlike these ancient remedies, modern neuroscience and bio-psycho-pharmacology create the possibility of designing a "cure" for love that could actually work, raising a number of ethical questions about their possible use. In this talk, I explore some of the potential uses and misuses of anti-love bio-technlogy from a scientific and ethical perspective.

More in this series

View Series
Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

2012 Leverhulme Lecture 2: Reason, Religion and Public Discourse in a Liberal Democracy

This series of lectures attempts to explore whether possible relations between some typical religious virtues, attitudes and practices and typical democratic virtues, attitudes and practices must be a source of conflict or can be mutually supportive.
Previous
Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

The bad seed: facts and values in the study of childhood antisocial behaviour

The speaker presents some recent work that has been done on children who are seen to be at risk of violence; and raises questions about the social and ethical significance of studying children in this way and for this purpose.
Next
Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
People
Brian Earp
Keywords
ethics
philosophy
love
emotions
drug
Department: Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Date Added: 04/12/2012
Duration: 00:40:33

Subscribe

Apple Podcast Video Apple Podcast Audio Audio RSS Feed

Download

Download Audio

Footer

  • About
  • Accessibility
  • Contribute
  • Copyright
  • Contact
  • Privacy
'Oxford Podcasts' Twitter Account @oxfordpodcasts | MediaPub Publishing Portal for Oxford Podcast Contributors | Upcoming Talks in Oxford | © 2011-2022 The University of Oxford