“Power and Romantic Relationships” – Lucy McDonald (King’s College – London)
Friday, May 30, 2025
4:00 – 6:00PM
Location TBD
RSVP HERE
Join us on May 30, 2025 for a colloquium with Lucy McDonald, King’s College – London. The talk will take place from 4:00PM – 6:00PM with a reception to follow. Location TBD.
Power and Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships with significant power imbalances are often considered defective. Charlotte Brontë seems to share such intuitions; in Jane Eyre, the romantic relationship between the novel’s eponymous heroine and Edward Rochester is initially hampered by its power asymmetries, and only flourishes when the power imbalance is attenuated. Only when partners enjoy something like an equality of power, Brontë suggests, can a relationship achieve its full potential.
In this talk, I ask whether Brontë is right that romantic relationships must aim at equality of power. I will taxonomise the different kinds of power relations involved in romantic relationships, and I will consider a range of arguments for why romantic relationships involving power imbalances might be morally objectionable, or at the very least morally hazardous.
Lucy McDonald is a lecturer in philosophy at King’s College London. She works in ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of language.
RSVP HERE
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