Premium
Do We Love For Reasons?
Author(s) -
Han Yongming
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/phpr.12638
Subject(s) - virtue , philosophy of love , infatuation , true love , philosophy , epistemology , psychology , psychoanalysis , literature , art
Do we love for reasons? It can seem as if we do, since most cases of non‐familial love seem selective : coming to love a non‐family‐member often begins with our being drawn to them for what they are like. I argue, however, that we can vindicate love's selectivity, even if we maintain that there are no reasons for love; indeed, that gives us a simpler, and hence better, explanation of love's selectivity. We don't, in short, come to love for reasons . That which seemed like evidence for thinking that there are reasons for love, then, turns out to militate against that view how can these purported reasons be reasons for love, if they don't engender (in virtue of rationalizing) it?