Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Where justice, because of its reliance upon individual claim-rights, cannot justify ethical responsibilities to care for those suffering from illnesses that do not easily qualify as unjust, love (agape) provides the missing justification for the ethical responsibility to care for those with no legal rights. While the book principally makes a contribution to the literature of ethics and global affairs, it is cross-disciplinary in that it puts together in conversation diverse intellectual traditions, from Thomas Aquinas, to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to Emmanuel Lévinas, to Iris Murdoch, to bell hooks. The result of this dialogue is a rich conceptual account of love (offered through Part I of the book). This then grounds the normative examination of how agapic love—in tandem with, rather than in opposition to justice—proposes to reform global health governance, by allocating co-responsibilities to care for those suffering from illnesses that cross political borders (offered through Part II of the book). The book argues that although love and global affairs do not typically appear together, they should, and if put together, love would change the dynamic of global affairs in general and the design of global health institutions in particular. This book seeks to reclaim the moral force of the neglected value of love and leave the reader with a deeper understanding of love, not merely as an emotion but also—and primarily—as a virtue and practical reason that has a stronger moral weight than one might have originally assumed.</jats:p>