Call for Papers_ PPI, vol. 10, 2020, 3

“Enhancing Love: Killing Romance or Defending Autonomy?”

The journal Philosophy & Public Issues (PPI) is inviting submissions to a forthcoming issue on “Enhancing Love: Killing Romance or Defending Autonomy?” The issue contains a symposium on Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu’s recent book Love Drugs-The Chemical Future of Relationships (Stanford University Press, 2020) with review articles by Allen Buchanan, Robbie Arrell, Lotte Spreeuwenberg, Katrien Schaubroeck and Mirko D. Garasic, followed by the authors’ replies.

Guest Editor: Mirko Daniel Garasic (LUISS University)

Submission Deadlines:

Long Abstract (1,000 words max): May 30, 2020

Full paper (10,000 words max, upon acceptance of the abstract): September 15, 2020

Aims and Background:

In his famous, dystopian book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley told us to imagine a not too distant future in which the government ensured political consensus -or, at least, a lack of fierce protest against its policies- by providing citizens with a special, legal drug: soma. Such a drug “helped” political stability by ensuring the lack of spontaneous emotional engagement with one another, creating a future in which love disappeared from our everyday vocabulary. Though not built on these premises, Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu’s book wants us to pay attention that -even if as mere side effects- anti-love drugs are already among us. And we should care to think more systematically about the way we want to deal with this scientific development.

Love Drugs puts forward interesting and important questions on how we could implement the already available findings surrounding the love-therapy/love-enhancement debate. How should a medical practitioner interact with such knowledge and tool? If she was able to give a drug to your partner to make the bound to happen break-up smoother and emotionally less destructive, should we push her to do so? Would that be nudging, good old paternalism or else? On the other end of the spectrum, would you take a pill that will guarantee an increment in your romantic engagement with your partner? Would that enhance love or kill it once and for all?

This PPI issue on “Enhancing Love: Killing Romance or Defending Autonomy” intends to explore the new scientific findings put forward by Earp and Savulescu’s work and the potential impact that love drugs could have not only in our private sphere but also on our society as a whole. We encourage submissions of original papers that engage with the philosophical implications (moral as well as political) that clarify the concept of love in relation to different collective identities (religion, gender, race etc.) and contributions that explore the relationship between love, identity and liberalism.

We invite articles discussing following problems (but not limited to):

– What is love? Why should we care about keeping it authentic? Why should we not?

– Who should choose whether to use or not love drugs? The State? The individual?

– What could be the positive and negative implications of bending love to our rational choices?

– Does the expansion into the realm of love trigger any new dimension of concern in the human enhancement debate?

Submission Details:

Please send a (.odt, .doc or .docx) file containing a long abstract (1,000 words max) and a title, prepared for blind review. All personal information (name, affiliation, and contact) must be submitted separately, along with a short abstract (200 words max). Deadline for abstract submission is May 30, 2020. Decisions will be made within a month.

All material should be submitted sending an e-mail to special issue’s editor mgarasic@luiss.it and PPI’s managing editor malpassimo@hotmail.com

Upon notification of acceptance, you will be invited to submit the full paper (10,000 words max) no later than September 15, 2020.

Further Inquiries:

Please direct any queries about this call for papers to PPI’s Editors at malpassimo@hotmail.com. More information on Philosophy and Public Issues can be found at http://fqp.luiss.it/