The Case for Reasonable Love

Abstract In seventeenth-century France, the choice of the person one loves, the object of love, is frequently described as irrational. Blaise Pascal, in one of the best-known passages of his Pensées, set forth this view with the example of the effect of Cleopatra's nose on Mark Anthony. This article considers a number of seventeenth-century works in which the choice of the object of love is shown to be a matter of rational choice, as described in René Descartes's Traité des passions de l'âme. First Pierre Corneille's Le Cid, largely considered to be a model of rational choice, is described as conforming to that reputation. Then, Jean Racine's Phèdre, often considered to convey an anti-rationalist view of love, is shown to depict the protagonists as choosing their love objects rationally. The third literary example considered is from Madeleine de Scudéry's Clélie, in which the rationalist and anti-rationalist views are debated and left in an inconclusive opposition. Finally, the article contends that the rational-choice position leads potentially to much more pessimistic outcomes than the anti-rationalist opposition.