Didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. He seemed to be reiterating the same things, and oftentimes contradicted things he said prior.

"Our goals are not important to us exclusively because we value the states of affairs that they envisage. It is not important to us only to attain our final ends. It is also important to us to have final ends. This is because without them, there is nothing important for us to do."

Frankfurt has a remarkably natural, easy writing style that doesn't subtract from the profundity of his arguments as much as one might suppose. A book being labelled as 'philosophy' as opposed to being considered 'self-help' affects its cultural capital, how it is perceived. I think this book can happily considered both - though perhaps because I liked Frankfurt's message, as one typically appreciates the message of a self-help book, I didn't approach it as critically as I would a work of philosophy.
(At the same time, I wonder if I should even mention that, because it seems every review of mine has some element of 'oh no my critical faculties' that my sense of self-doubt should be taken gratis in all forthcoming reviews.)

The book is short and the quote above gives good indication of what to expect, so I'll say no more about the book's content. Instead, I'll offer a bit of pedantry regarding Frankfurt's playing the pronoun game, so read on if that interests you.

Frankfurt uses the third-person 'he' in his arguments, and gives examples of his 'he' loving a woman. I'd go for something more broadly universal when making my argument, but hey, it's no big deal, right? Except that when Frankfurt speaks of his 'he' having a child, the child is spoken of as an 'it'. Considering Frankfurt's fluidity in writing, I assume his pronoun usage is completely intentional, but it's remarkably graceless. He says 'person' instead of 'man', even when through his writing it is clear he is arguing specifically from a traditionally masculine perspective. That aspect of his style seemed like some half-hearted, petty backlash against the singular 'they', which is pretty silly if that's at all the case. I'm not going to assume any more intent to his grammar than clumsiness, but it was so odd an element of his writing I felt it necessary to address it in some way.

Reading this book broke my rule of only reading women and POC authors, but it was lent by a dear friend. It was the usual, but had a few insights to make it endurable.

Rating: 4.5/5

A brilliant Philosophical take on 'Love' and its reasons. Simple as that...

I don't read a lot of philosophy and this is probably considered popular philosophy. Having recently read "On Bullshit" by the same author I thought it would be good to try one of his more serious works. But upon reflection they are both serious and both enlightening. This does seem to get the the basics of how to try to live. One needs to think about how to apply it. Maybe another book would help figure that out...

کتاب فوق العاده ای بود. شاید مدت ها توی ذهنم دنبال چنین کتاب و شیوه فلسفه و تفکری بودم. واقعا با تحلیل هاش از مسائل بنیادین آدمی مثل اخلاق، اراده، عشق، خود دوستی و ... به شوق اومدم. حتما به زودی دوباره میخونمش. نثر کتاب، فلسفی و یه مقدار سنگینه با این حال به دوستداران فلسفه پیشنهاد می کنم حتما بخونند

A challenging and interesting read

Hätte ehrlicherweise „Gründe für Fürsorge“ heißen sollen. Hätte sich aber vermutlich schlechter verkauft.