UPC Keynote Address by Dr. Mariska Leunissen
Maternal Love, Motherly Virtue, and Tragic Tropes in Aristotle's Ethics
Dr. Mariska Leunissen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This talk reconstructs Aristotle's views of maternal love in two argument-pairs in his ethics. In both pairs, the evidence from maternal love reveals something important about virtue-friendship, however, this does not mean that Aristotle also values mothers and mothering as something virtuous. Instead, I argue that Aristotle consistently frames maternal love as being by nature rather than by choice. This kind of ambivalence regarding maternal love is shared by Aristotle's audience and is underscored by his own use of tragic tropes in these two argument pairs. I first analyze maternal love in the context of Aristotle's views about friendship, then suggest how the intertexualities with Greek tragedy should affect our reading of his appeals to maternal love.
