Love and Identification with the Beloved.

The article critically examines Harry Frankfurt’s claim that identification with one’s beloved is conceptually necessary for love, particularly challenging his analogy of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia as self-sacrifice grounded in such identification. It contrasts Frankfurt’s subjectivist, autonomy-centered view with Aristotle’s and Iris Murdoch’s accounts, which emphasize love as concern for another as distinct and valuable in themselves, without requiring identification. The discussion highlights Murdoch’s ideal of “unselfing,” where love involves detached, disinterested attention to the beloved’s independent value, and Aristotle’s notion of friendship based on virtue rather than identification. The article concludes by comparing Frankfurt’s interpretation with Toni Morrison’s portrayal of Sethe in *Beloved*, whose sacrificial act for her daughter resists explanation via identification and instead exemplifies disinterested, self-transcending love.