Love: gloriously amoral and arational

Philosophical Explorations 16 (3):298 - 314 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I argue that an evaluational conception of love collides with the way we value love. That way allows that love has causes, but not reasons, and it recognizes and celebrates a love that refuses to justify itself. Love has unjustified selectivity, due to its arbitrary causes. That imposes a non-tradability norm. A love for reasons, rational love or evaluational love would be propositional, and it therefore allows that the people we love are tradable commodities. A moralized conception of love is no less committed to treating those we love as tradable commodities; it is just that they are tradable moral commodities. An evaluative criterion of adequacy, I suggest, encourages the opposite view ? a non-rational and non-evaluational concept of love. Such a love can set up partial obligations, which may even demand that one sacrifice one's life. Only a love that has causes but not reasons can have the kind of value that we think love has, and thus it would only be rational to pursue and foster such a love

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Love and the need for comprehension.Eileen John - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (3):285-297.
Reasons of love: an introduction.Esther Kroeker & Katrien Schaubroeck - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (3):280 - 284.
The duplication of love's reasons.Tony Milligan - 2013 - Philosophical Explorations 16 (3):315 - 323.
Love’s Vision.Troy Jollimore - 2011 - Princeton University Press.
Love: a history.Simon May - 2011 - New Haven: Yale University Press.
Love.Bennett W. Helm - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Self Love.Stephen David Ross - 2010 - International Studies in Philosophy Monograph Series:129-152.
Is it Better to Love Better Things?Aaron Smuts - 2015 - In Tony Milligan, Christian Maurer & Kamila Pacovská (eds.), Love and Its Objects.
The model of love: a study in philosophical theology.Vincent Brümmer - 1993 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-10-18

Downloads
183 (#98,533)

6 months
32 (#91,410)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Nick Zangwill
University College London

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.

View all 27 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Mortal questions.Thomas Nagel - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
On Certainty (ed. Anscombe and von Wright).Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969 - San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe, G. H. von Wright & Mel Bochner.
Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning.Simon Blackburn - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press UK.
The Sovereignty of Good.Iris Murdoch - 1970 - New York,: Schocken Books.
The Reasons of Love.Harry G. Frankfurt - 2004 - Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

View all 28 references / Add more references