Abstract

Are there reasons for loving? How can I promise to love someone? Is there such a thing as unconditional love? Am I responsible for loving or for failing to love someone? Can there be love without idealization? This work sets out to show that many of the questions we raise when philosophizing about love are expressive of confusions about what we talk about when we talk about love. Addressing questions pertaining to philosophical discussions about emotions, personal identity and the meaning of language and morality, the author shows how these confusions can be dissolved by carefully attending to our different conversations about love. Her investigations show that many of the challenges we face when reflecting on love do not have the kind of scientific or strictly philosophical character that would allow us to settle them once and for all. They are moral in character and gain their significance from the questions they raise about the place love has in our own lives. The kind of reflection on the meaning of love suggested in this work does not depend on any new discoveries about the phenomena of love. It is available to anyone who is prepared to reflect on our ways of speaking and to question our preconceptions of love and of philosophy. Through such reflection our understanding of love may continually deepen.