In Defense of the No-Reasons View of Love

Abstract

Although we can try to explain why we love, we can never justify our love. Love is neither based on reasons, nor responsive to reasons, nor can it be assessed for normative reasons. Love can be odd, unfortunate, fortuitous, or even sadly lacking, but it can never be appropriate or inappropriate. We may have reasons to act on our love, but we cannot justify our loving feelings. Shakespeare's Bottom is right: "Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days." Indeed, they keep none and they never kept any: there are no justifying reasons for love.

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Author's Profile

Aaron Smuts
Rhode Island College

Citations of this work

Do We Love For Reasons?Yongming Han - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1):106-126.
Normative Reasons for Love, Part II.Aaron Smuts - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (8):518-526.
Normative Reasons for Love, Part I.Aaron Smuts - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (8):507-517.
The Syndrome of Love.Ryan Stringer - 2020 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7:480-510.
Can Our Beloved Pets Love Us Back?Ryan Stringer - 2021 - In Simon Cushing (ed.), New Philosophical Essays on Love and Loving. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 241-268.

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Slaves of the passions.Mark Andrew Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
The Significance of Free Will.Robert Kane - 1996 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.

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