Would it be irrational of you to love an inanimate object? Or would it be misguided to dedicate yourself to a random stranger on the street as opposed to, say, your partner or your child? I take it that such attitudes and actions are irrational. In this dissertation, I explore what considerations provide love with a rational basis. I call these considerations reasons for love. These are the reasons that make love make sense. I argue that the valuable qualities of the beloved are reasons for love. Moreover, I argue that to give a complete account of such reasons, one must reflect on the nature and value of love. In Chapter One, I argue that love’s nature includes valuing a relationship with the beloved and valuing them as a bearer of valuable qualities. In these ways, love is a unique way of engaging with a person’s value, and love’s relational component distinguishes it from other pro-attitudes, like respect or admiration. In Chapter Two, I argue that love, like knowledge, virtue, pleasure, and achievement, is non-instrumentally good for the person in love. Moreover, love is a virtue because it is the right kind of response to the valuable qualities of another person. In Chapter Three, I refine the qualities view by arguing that such qualities do not need to be maximally valuable. Instead, love is grounded in qualities that are good enough. Finally, in Chapter Four, I explore reasons of love, which are reasons for actions that justify the special treatment we reserve for those whom we love. Reasons of love are often treated as a problem for moral theory because morality demands impartiality, and love demands partiality. I address this problem by defending an altruistic, as opposed to impartialist, view of morality. On the altruistic view, facts about an individual’s personal identity can be the ground for morally right actions. I make this case by considering self-sacrifice’s central role in both morality and love.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/49268 |
| Date | 17 September 2024 |
| Creators | Van Fossen, Joel Andrew |
| Contributors | Katsafanas, Paul |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ |
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